Damn dude. First, the recipe is interesting - there will be a LOT going on in that beer, which sounds awesome. Big german body and then you hit all the hop points fairly hard so it should have a lot of green. Second, I can't imagine having to mash and sparge and boil with someone, while drinking, after having been out and drinking. Well, I can imagine it, but I imagine I'd do a lot of it wrong.

No pics?

Been looking at rents, and yeah even though Boston ain't cheap, SF is even worse.

Yeah, Jesse told me some numbers after their recent move out there that made my jaw go slack. And they some high rollers.

My rent + pre school costs right now are at about $5k a month. So it would hurt to move there, but it wouldn't be shockingly different.

Other than both the pale and the mild being a little under-carbonated, here's how they shaped up now that both batches are mature and mostly consumed. The Mild is just too boring, I'll try again later with that clone recipe Billy found, see if some roasted malts and more lively hops can wake it up, but as-is it's just mousey brown beer with no oomph. The pale, on the other hand, is an excellent first effort into that recipe chain. I will make very minor modifications to smooth out the hops (first wort hopping), up the crystal % a tiny bit and diversify it (20 and 60 instead of just 20), and lower the alcohol content from 6.5 to about 5.75. They are VERY good but shitballs, you want to drink three and when you do you're bombed at bedtime.

Going shortly to grab ingredients for a big DIPA. Cats can we talk about how you mash? Can I get a detailed paragraph of what works for you and why? I don't have "problems" but I am new at it and curious what I might improve on. I've done batch sparge and no sparge, and only had that one chlorphenyl problem that was probably a pH thing. The rest taste pretty great, no noticeable off flavors.

For example, I pretty much do not stir during the actual mash. Process so far:

1. Heat strike water using my calc sheet, and that part has been working out very well, I can usually nail the temp.
2. Pour strike water into 10 gallon cooler, close lid.
3. Dough in and stir to avoid clumps.
4. Close lid, start timing.
5. Drain off (and here's where I would first wort hop...) into the kettle and start the heat.
6. If I'm sparging, then I heated it in that kettle and then transfered quickly to a bottling bucket (don't have 2 kettles) so the kettle would be empty for the runoff. So I'd then pour in all of the sparge water, stir for a second, close the lid, and let it sit for... 10 minutes tops? I have no pH meter. Also I tend to sparge lower temp, like 165, out of fear of tannins.
7. Runoff sparge water, continue boil, done with mash.

Yeah I started with a few high ABV beers at a taproom. Jerkass showed up and during brewing we shared three bombers also tried a shot of whiskey into the warm wort...which was surprisingly good. I had to dump the last gulp of mine out because I was getting so drunk. When we were all cleaned up we shared another bomber. I didn't feel so good in the morning. Though I'm sure jerkass was fine. I'll try to never do that again.

I was too distracted for pics.
I do have one of Black Hole Brew fermenting and my first mead. Maybe I'll post those if I ever get caught up on work.

Just got ingredients for the DIPA I will brew tomorrow. I did NOT print out my damned recipe first - the chance snuck up on me, so I went anyway. I knew the malts - it's just 14 # of 2 row and 1# of Honey malt. But the hops, which are everything, I had to wing. I knew it was 1 oz of Warrior as a clean bittering hop for th beginning of the boil, but they were out of Warrior, among others. Apparently some canadians had just come in and bought the place clean out of several things in bulk, including warrior, simcoe, and sorachi ace (but not all the 1 oz bags thank god). Anywho, I got another 14.9% Alpha bittering hop whose name I have spaced on, and then the same total ounces of hops (13), made up of a lot of simcoe, centennial, chinook, and some cascade. 2 kinds also came in 2oz whole leaf bags, which I'll use for dry hopping. As for yeast I'm going to double down - I have a pack of chico, and I'm also going to pitch another of a higher attenuating british ale yeast. Also have to bottle a 5 gal batch of saison, and I have 2 goooood 22oz beers to enjoy during all this.

Tomorrow will be fun.

Starting the Double. This pile of hops is massive.

Hop schedule is massive.



14 ounces now, 4 more dry hopped later.

jesus. are you going to make a larger volume since you'll lose a lot to hop gunk?

"Larger" in the sense that I'm boiling 6 gallons down to 5, as opposed to making like a 3 or 4 gallon batch.

First runnings came in temp corrected at 1.054... so then I sparged 2.5 gals and got the boil volume up to 6 gals. Simcoe is in as first wort hops. Temp is 195F, climbing. Need to get that grav up. Wish I knew more / had good software. Not sure where I will wind up here after the boil.

To me, this reads like:
"Flaho kghpdgn fgken ldnodj wort adgln correctlda'gjg [dgjcg alcbnz;//////....."

Damn, dude.
I just like to drink the stuff.

ha ha.

Here Todd, this is pretty much all you need to know...

Came out to 1.071 OG, Cats, so I'm right on target for an 8+ % brew. Holy trub, too. Sweet lord. Looks like pea soup in there. Gonna be at least one secondary transfer to clear it up some.

Started fermenting in about 3 hours. I pitched one pack of Chico and one of a british ale yeast that was "medium/high attenuating". Reconstituted both in just warm water this time, no sugars. Bubbling is audible from the couch and the dining room table, so I could hear it slowly progressing from 1 blub every 4 second to 1 every 2, then 1 a second, and by the time we finished watching that Hitchcock movie it was about 2.25 a second. Just before it got going, the hops had settled down into a 4-inch layer at the bottom of the fermentor. As soon as the yeast got cranked up, they all started swirling around and it turned to pea soup again.

Seems to have stopped at 1.020. Isn't going any lower, and that's with two packs of yeast, both moderately aggressive. I mashed at 155, which isn't too high or too low, because I wanted SOME sweetness left to balance out those hops. But I didn't quite hit either of my gravities... 1.073 vs 1.077, and 1.020 vs 1.014. So I'l looking at 6.9% alcohol instead of 8%, and a chewier, sweeter beer because of it. The samples taste great, I guess. And I'm going to transfer tonight to a secondary and dry hop the fuck out of it.

Cats I really meant it - I would like a detailed description of your specific mash process. I am on a bit of a witch hunt.

my "specific" mash process:
I heat 6-6.25 gallons of water to ~162...I throw in a campden tablet to get rid of chlorine in the cities tap water.
I throw my 12-13 lbs of grains in the bag and mash it in with 1 tablespoon of Mash stabilizer and 1 teaspoon of gypsum. I've been hitting too high every single time. I think the kettle has momentum still, or stirring it up makes it warmer because there were hot pockets at the bottom. Wouldn't be a problem if I go back to the cooler. I mash for 90 minutes. I give it a stir every 15 minutes or so. Sometime toward the end of the mash I may add heat for a minute or two if I've lost a lot. Then I pull the bag up and sit it on a cookie rack and rinse it off with ~2 gallons of almost boiling water.

On a good day I get about 65% efficiency. That is not good, but the beer is delicious.

Wow. So very different.

I just mashed Pale 1.1 and it's boiling now. About to go toss in hops then cool, will explain tomorrow.

Tablespoons of this-n-that aside (which I should probably be doing), you're mashing in a larger volume of water than me, and for longer. Yesterday's pale, for example, went thus:

- Mashed 8# Maris and 1.5# crystal in 4 gallons at 154 for 60 mins (no stirring except the first dough in - lid stays on, temp stays rock solid, and by the way I can nail whatever temp I need everytime somehow with my ecel calc sheet, that part is working VERY well)
- Heated 3 gallons of sparge water to about 180
- Drained off the first runnings
- Poured all 3 gallons of sparge water in, stirred, let it sit 10 mins, drained it off too into the kettle

After boiling an hour I went from 6 gallons down to 5, cooled, and came out with temp corrected OG of 1.060, or 7.86%. I don't know how to calculate efficiency correctly (I'm plugging in figures from after the boil because I didn't write down the pre-boil grav, and it's saying that's almost 85% efficient which is basically impossible). But it seems like I got a lot of sugar out, for only using 8 pounds of base malt and coming up with 1.060.

Had the first one last night (bottled for 6 days) and holy fuck was it good. Not just the hops, but that malt body was excellent. Fuck me I did something right. It's VERY much the body color / flavor / ABV of Two Hearted, but with a bigger dry hop presence. Like a hybrid between 2H and Heady. I will have to make this again, and soon. So 14# of 2 row and 1# of Honey Malt is a great ratio. Nice clean light amber color, not too much sweetness, but the honey tones are there. Great shit.

We're having our AHA Big Brew Day on Saturday at Blue Bloods Brewing Co. The weather has been kind of shitty here recently, so it will be nice to have us a professional mash system for our base wort, and be able to brew inside a large garage like structure with the assistance of air circulation fans.
I believe the actual Big Brew Day is May 11th, but we had too many scheduling conflicts to make it work. I'm going to make a Red Rye IPA with mostly Australian and New Zealand.
I'm going to steep a pound of Melanoidin and a pound of flaked rye in my brew kettle while we are mashing the grains, and then add them to the base wort at the start of the boil.
My hop schedule is going to be:
Australian Topaz at 60
Pacific Gem at 30
Amarillo at 15
Nelson Sauvin at 5

I will also be having my robust porter judged for the final AHA club only contest ever. It is extract beers, which is my specialty. I'm not sure how many of my fellow club members will be entering it to see who gets to represent our club at the event, but it would be nice to have a beer advance to it.

So what's the big mash, just 2 row pale?

I believe there is a little Crystal 40 in there besides the two row, and maybe a little something else like Victory malt.
It is basically just the base grain bill for a standard pale ale.

So my Oak Aged IPA tied for first place in the judging for who gets to represent our home brew club in the final AHA club only contest, but a guy who had four beers advance to the NHC beat me out in a tiebreak vote.
I'm happy I did as well as I did with that beer, since a few bottles have been overcarbonated. My Porter has some slight astrigency issues according to my friend the BJCP master judge, but the aroma was spot on, so I am content with that rating too.