Update on this one. Apologies if I haven't been able to get back to everyone's emails and PM's about this brew.
Currently, the 3rd Dry Hop stage is about to come to an end on Thursday or Friday this week. Flavours and aroma are quite stunning. Clean as a whistle and while the alcohol is just up over 19% mark, it's not over the top or harsh. rather, just a nice gentle warmth and a little sweeter than expected.
Plan from here is to dump a heap of CO2 into a stainless tank to the point where it's totally anoxic and then transfer the finished beer to that and store at 20 C for a few weeks, though we may have to cut that short due to circumstances beyond our control. We'll CPBF it into stubbies and then the real wait begins. Well, OK, we might crack 1 or 2 for "research" purposes.
Biggest question seems to be about what is so difficult about this beer. Simple answer is Nothing. It's a big brew day for sure, but nothing special on the technical side. We didn't have a perfect day and stuff sure went wrong, but each hurdle was easily overcome. The rest is about being patient and meticulous since there's so many extra steps to stuff it up - but, none are difficult, nor technical.
Next one would be about cost. Given we haven't finished yet, I can't give a tally about it to be certain and it would depend on your source. It's not a "cheap" beer to make, but for us, it's not a cost cutting exercise, but something a little special and a little different to the typical IPA's, Saisons and Pale Ales etc that grace the taps. It was more about mates and the process.
A few have asked about re-using the yeast. Not a snow flakes chance in hell. Once either batch of yeast has done the rounds in that type of gravity and alcohol, it's shagged out and likely to be closer to some 3 headed mutant than the single cell organisms they started out as. I retired them to the garden as compost. Though there have been some pretty weird noises down there as each fig falls from the tree and the dogs do avoid the area.
h34r:
One other area of interest has been about the losses. I think the largest single loss has been the yeast volume to date. We haven't been able to work out the exact losses to a couple of kilos of hops yet, since we haven't bottled. We've been very careful to transfer clear wort, free of trub and then to contain the hops in such a way as to minimise the losses, so it shouldn't be too painful.
Would i do it again?
Absolutely! But the next mega brew is still going to be designed to push the limits a little further and break a whole lot more rules.
Bring on bottling day :kooi:
