Big Monster Brewing – Sweet Charity Amburana Aged Wee Heavy

This transcript was generated automatically from the episode audio. It may contain errors and does not label speakers.

0:00 If you’ve been a long time follower and listener of the NEOZAZ Podcast Network, you know we have a little bit of a philanthropic history with the Artmore Project from Star Wars and Character and helping Haunts and Helping Pups with the Catacombs of Halloween Horror Nights. We’ve taken that hobby, been able to do a lot of good with it, and now it’s time to take another one of my hobbies. and try to do the same thing. That’s all up next. Welcome to Big Monster Brewing. It has been as long as you think it has. It’s been a long time since I put one of these episodes out. And I’m going to say it’s been a long time since I put one of these episodes out, but not a long time since I tried to put an episode out. Long story short, I think I went into this in the recordings. Of preparing for brew day, I had some episodes recorded on the app that I usually record all my brew days for. Sat down to record an introduction and a tasting like I’m doing right now.

1:10 And also download the files so I could put the episode together. And the files were gone and the. App was clearly updated because it looked different from the last time I used it. And I did everything I knew how to do to look for just the files alone, forget finding them through the app. That clearly was not going to happen. And I could not find them. And I was a little disappointed. I’m not upset because I could have. pulled them off earlier. I should do that, knowing how technology tends to work against me many times, but I was a little disappointed because they were recordings for a brown ale and then recordings for a Belgian dubbel. Beers, most beers which I’ve never had made before, at least not in I know I haven’t done the Belgian one. Maybe I’ve done a brown ale like as a one gallon or something back when this is a YouTube series, but it it’s been so long I don’t even know for sure. So two brand new beers, brand new styles I was planning to bring to the feed. Gone forever. So

2:14 Oh well, I mean not a whole lot I can do about it. They’re gone. So then with that The other brewing I’ve done since then kind of didn’t feel real motivated to record because I was like, What’s the point? It’s probably just gonna disappear again until we got up to this beer. This beer. Both the beer and why I’m brewing it have given me reason to record this episode. I am brewing what I think is going to be a very special beer. And it’s going to be for a very special event. It’s something we have never done before as a club, and it’s pretty amazing that we’re getting the opportunity to do it. So getting into the event first, we’ve done a lot of festivals. I’ve recorded a lot about brewing. I’ve done for festivals. I barely ever record for festivals. I’ve made that joke before, and it still stands true. I always forget to record at these events, but this is not a festival. This is, its name is Taste! Central Florida and it is the biggest Culinary and beverage event. In central Florida, and it’s 100% for charity ticket sales. There’s a couple events that go on inside for fundraising. There’s something called the wine door where you can buy a key, and if your key opens the door, you get X amount of dollars of wine that’s behind the door. There’s also another thing for liquor as well.

3:35 I think it’s a door, I think it’s another thing like that. There’s a thing called a giving tree where you buy I don’t know if you buy a ticket or give a s specific donation, but then you can pick one of the leaves in quotes, little envelope on the tree and there’s something in there. You definitely get something for your money, gift certificate from somewhere or some kind of prize, as it were. And every penny of that. Did I mention the ticket sales or I’m going to actually look, I think I know what they are. I’ll check it in a minute. Everything, everything goes to charity. It goes to help. Hungry and homeless children in Florida. All the proceeds go to Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida and the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida. And we were at Science on Tap, the very first. Festival of 2026 for us, usually the first festival of the year, period. And one of the recruiters for the food and beverage participants was there, and she was absolutely blown away. about what we had at our tent. And she asked me for my contact information.

4:38 And I just kind of thought, okay, that’s, you know, she’s really happy right now. That’s the last I’m going to hear of her. It was either that night or the next day I did hear from her, and we got signed up and we’re part of this. We are the first and only home brew club, and that’s Brewers Anonymous. If you’ve forgotten what my homebrew club is, I’m still vice president as of this recording. First and only homebrew club to ever be invited to this, and we are stoked. We are absolutely excited. We are bringing our best beer possible. And I am going to be making something super special. And actually, let’s. It’s here’s why, because I’m looking now. The tickets are, that’s what I thought they were. They’re$200 tickets. So we don’t want to be serving beers that we’re not going to drink ourselves, and two, that is a clone of something you can get anywhere. So we’re going to bring special beers. And then, while I’m here, let’s see. What is the. Wine door. Wine door is$75 a A key, okay. All right. And the liquor locker, that’s what it’s called. That’s$50.$50 a key. So every penny, and I’m mentioning that because every penny of this.

5:42 It’s a high price event, but it’s a fundraiser and every penny of it goes to charity. And with that, I am going to make probably my most complex, complicated beer where so many things can go wrong, but if it goes right, it’s going to be worth taking to see event. And it’s going to be an Amburana Aged Wee Heavy. If you’re not familiar with Wee Heavy, it’s a European strong ale by style classification. It’s a high ABV beer, very, very malty, barely any hops. The hops are kind of there just to curb the cloyingly sweetness that this beer can be, but the hops are there just to knock it down past cloyingly and still be sweet and very rich and very complex if done right. And The Amburana, if you’re not familiar with that particular wood, it’s a wood. It’s the Amburana, I have spiral. Wood spirals for this. I’m gonna soak them, I think, probably in Four Roses Select. So it’s kind of gonna be a bourbon barrel. Amburana aged, wee heavy. Amburana brings a very unique flavor to beers that it’s aged on, particularly a blend of vanilla, cinnamon, and then, of course, that kind of natural wood flavor.

6:50 But it’s not directly vanilla or cinnamon. It’s more of a natural, smoother. Cat, well, should be smoother if you remove it from the wood quick enough because it can get very aggressive very quickly. And that’s probably where the hardest part of this is going to be to dial in. But we’re nowhere near that yet. But the we have ye alone, it’s gonna be a big beer. It’s gonna be somewhere around 10%. My recipe is aiming for, I think, about 10.5%. With efficiency drops, which there very well could be, I could go as low as nine, but that’s still good. Nine is like the bare minimum I want. I’m hoping closer to 10. Nine and a half, nine, seven, five is kind of where I would like the beer to be, but if it’s a little over or a little under, I’m fine with that as well. And the malt complexity in this should be. one of the easier things to do. What’s going to be difficult in brewing the beer is the mash. There is no way my Anvil Foundry can do the amount of malts it needs to make a double-digit

7:51 ABV beer and and actually make it all malt. I could do liquid or malt or dry malt extract. I probably use dry if I was going to do that, but I don’t want I want this to be all malt-driven ABV. No sugars, no nothing like that. No candy syrups, no nothing. I want it all malt-driven. So I’m gonna have to do a reiterated mash, which I’ll explain more as I go through the process. But it’s basically splitting the grains in half. And you mash with your first half of the grains. Then you take the grains out, but you don’t remove the liquid. You don’t put the liquid in the boil kettle. That’s usually the next step after mashing. Use that same liquid to mash a second set of grains so that. Mash, the with sweet wort that’s coming from the mash sort of doubles. It doesn’t double. Uh the calculation isn’t double. It’s more like a 1.6 uh Amount of sugars that come out of the second one, I guess you’d say, or 0.6 instead of or 60% of the sugars rather than 100%, somewhere around there. I’m giving some really round numbers, but that is a way to utilize my Anvil Foundry for mashing and then transfer all that liquid to the boil kettle.

8:57 Which I’m going to boil on gas for the first time in, like, I don’t know, three, four, or five years. I’m doing that because I want a super heavy rolling boil for two hours because I want the melanoidins in those malts and those sugars that come out of the malts, I should say. To really caramelize and really thicken up, get heavy, and Bring the complexity that this beer will need to carry all of the flavors I want to bring to this event. So, different brew than I think I’ve ever really done on this show. And a lot can go wrong. But hopefully, I have been planning on this, the recipe and the calculations for the better part of a month now. I’ve been really working hard on this. We should be able to get something. We’ll see what it is. So, a lot of work. It’s going to be the longest brew day I think I’ve ever done in my life. I think I’ve scheduled like 14 hours for it. Hopefully, I can get done at 10 to 12. but I’m planning on actually being out there for 14 hours. Um now why I guess one question I didn’t answer I don’t have any notes on this if you’re wondering why if I’m already going to a gas boil why am I not just using my old system that can handle all this because my old system does not have temperature control for the mash and one of the most important things for the complexity of this beer is to make sure I have long chain sugars which you get with higher temperature mashing.

10:16 I can mash in at a temperature, seal everything up, and hope it holds for an hour. It tends not to. It’ll drop a degree or two, or maybe more, depending on the weather. With the Anvil Foundry, it’s going to hold it at that temperature I need to make those complex chains the entire hour for both mashes, not just one, but two. Although, arguably, and not even arguably, I will concede that if I were to use my old system, I wouldn’t need two mashes, but I also wouldn’t. Necessarily get the results I want. This way, I’m assured the results. Putting in the extra work and the extra effort is going to assure me the closest chance of the results that I want in this beer. So that’s why that’s happening. So, a lot more on that to come as we go. In fact, this show is probably going to be a very long one because we’re going to start right off with me digging out my old equipment that I haven’t used in, like I just said, three, four, five years. And making sure, one, it functions, and two, that some kind of life form hasn’t grown in them out in my hot garage since I. This stuff away less. So let’s get right into those recordings, and this should be a fun one. I’m really looking forward to this beer turns out and really excited about this event. So let’s hit those recordings right now.

11:21 Been a while since I’ve done one of these episodes, I guess. I’m assuming this will be done. And I say that because it’s not been a while since I’ve recorded one. Because I recorded two full episodes of beers I’ve never made before: Brown Ale and a Belgian dubbel, but those recordings disappeared after an update on this app and completely disappeared, not just from the app. Like I thought, okay, the app just indexes them differently, it doesn’t see them. So I used some tools that I have. when I connect my phone to my computer to actually see files that are saved, they’re gone. Hopefully, this doesn’t happen with a new update. I did a couple tests to make sure the files are still there, and I’m going to probably, best I can remember, I’m not very good at this, upload the files. Somewhere to my computer or to my cloud account from this app the day I’m done recording that set. We’ll see. Oh, what was going on with that? Oh, the reason I want to make sure this one is done. I haven’t been brewing as much this year as far as the amount of times I’ve brewed, but I think I’ve been brewing about the same amount of beer. I’m brewing much larger batches so I can spread them out over competition, which is turning out to not be the best idea because now that we’re in the second half of the competition season.

12:33 They’re starting to show their age, so. I mean it is what it is. That’s that’s what I ha the the Methodology I had to take this year, just between everything that’s going on. We had a very large competition for our homebrew club. for the state of Florida. Homebrew Con came back and it’s just things in life. Crop up that need my attention more than brewing. But speaking of actually, in the same vein of that, something has come up that I really want to make sure I document because I think it’s going to be fun and it’s a pretty exciting opportunity. At one of the festivals, which I’m sure I’ve explained this in the opening, but I haven’t recorded the opening yet because it’ll be done in the future. So I’m kind of going to give a recap of that here. to make sure that’s all covered. The first festival we did this year, Science on Tap, we got invited to pour at Taste! Central Florida, which is the largest culinary and beverage event in Central Florida, and it’s 100%. For charity, every single penny that they take in from the ticket price to the events they have inside, they have a couple of things they got like a wine door that you buy a key, and if it unlocks the door, you get like

13:36 I don’t even know how much wine. I think they said like$5,000. I’m not sure that’s right. I don’t remember the details, but it’s a lot. Even$500 is a lot, but I think they said$5,000. Same with it. There’s like a liquor cabinet type, same kind of deals, a ring toss for like rare and expensive bottles of wine. There’s a thing called a giving tree where you buy a leaf and you pull it down. There’s something in there, like a gift certificate or something inside that. Everything they take in is for charity. It’s for the coalition. them in Central Florida and the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida. feeds the homeless, it focuses on kids first. A tremendous cause. They’ve raised, I think, millions at this point. They’ve been doing for quite a while. Biggest thing we’ve ever been invited to be part of. And it’s such an incredible honor that they thought so much of our Yeah. invite us to this and Because of this, I’m trying to brew a very special beer. I’m going to brew a couple standard beers and ones that you probably heard before when I get to those recordings, if I record those. The special bear I’m making is a Amburana

14:39 Barrel-aged, Wee Heavy. And I’m starting that process today, and I’ll be brewing it in a week. And what I’m starting today is that. Uh, with how big this beer is going to be, I’m gonna have to do a reiterated mash, which I’ll talk about when I get to that. But I also have to do a gas boil. Even it’s not even a power capacity thing with my Anvil Foundry, because I do have a 240 or 220 adapter, whichever, I think it’s 220 actually adapter. So I could get it to the boil I need. It’s the capacity. I am going to be boiling for two hours and Between the amount of liquids I need to do the mash and then follow up with the boil. I think technically it’d fit, but it gets a little dangerous. So I’m not gonna chance that. So I’m gonna dig out my old 15-gallon brew kettle and brew on gas and give it the most rigorous boil to just drive those melanoidins. And get that really rich flavor. This beer is kind of gonna be like my contribution to this event. So today is tearing down. I haven’t used that thing in like years, two years, three years.

15:51 actually probably pandemic, so six years. I think that’s right. No, that’s not true. I remember doing some pandemic videos. Let’s say, those will say on the safe side, three years. I haven’t used it. So it needs a scrubbing. I need to tear that down. I need to tear down the higher, more closer to industrial professional pump I have. That’s not. made for the anvil. I need this for the kettle. So I need to tear all that down and clean it. And that’s what it’s about today. That’s what today’s recording is about. Although you’ll hear everything in one episode, but that’s what I’m going to be documenting today, that cleaning process. And I have to find the hose as I go with that, too. I just thought of as well. So that should be an interesting ordeal. I think I know where they are. Usually I’m I got a 50-50 shot of being right on that. So, I think I started this recording to avoid all that because it’s a lot of cleaning. So, I gotta bite the bullet, pull this stuff down, start cleaning, and that’s what I’m gonna do right now. So the first thing I wanted to get was the tubes because I said there was a like 50-50 shot that I knew where they would be. I wish I hadn’t said that because there’s two of them.

17:00 I found one. I found 50% of them. I feel like I set that up karmically. And let’s see. Is this going to be. Yeah, it’s gonna be. It is going to be a showstopper in a sense of uh Uh Uh, what I’m planning to do, but I mean, I can adjust. Um, what I’m going to do is dig around where I found this. I would assume the second one is not far, but that’s not always the case. So. Yeah, uh that’s where I’m at on this. I just thought that was freaking hilarious that. There was only one after I said I have a 50-50 shot of finding the two. So I had to share that. So I’m gonna keep digging. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Ooh, I think I just did. Oh my God. Could I be that lucky? Could I be this lucky? Come on. It’s really stuck in this box if this is it. You son of a gun. It’s gonna make me fight. Under ah, ha ha! Huzzah!

18:05 I found them both and they were within vicinity of each other, but they weren’t together. So, okay, we’re good. Okay, back to the same plan. So, I’m gonna pull down the kettle, break that down, and start cleaning next. I pulled the kettle down and I was. I want to say, I’m curious about the inside. I was going to say concerned, but that’s not true. I was wondering what state I left it in when I kind of wrecked it up on the top shelf three years ago. It’s really not bad. There’s some dusty little particle stuff that it’s in the garage, so every time you shut the door, something. kind of Rattles the ceiling and whatnot. It’s not a living area, so something falls into it. So it has some debris in it. So I’m just gonna give it a good rinse, wash it down. Otherwise, it’s in pretty good condition as far as cleanliness goes. I’m gonna break down, it’s got two ball ball valves. I think they’re called ball valves, they’re not butterfly valves.

19:08 Two ball valves on it. I’m gonna take those apart, soak them in some really hot PBW to get anything that’s in there out. Technically, I mean, I guess. Everything that’s going to go through those. Connections in the hose is going to be boiled, so it’ll be sanitized. But I’d rather not, you know, kind of pull out unnecessary gunk and put it into beer. So I’m going to give those a good cleaning. The pump I have eyes on right now. I’m going to grab that. I’m going to take the head apart and clean that. And I should probably oil it. I don’t know that I have it. It uses it like. That kind of chainsaw oil, the same little metal can. Well, maybe they’re plastic now. It’s been a while since I bought them, but a little can, little drip can that you use for that and for like weed whackers. I haven’t used this as long as I’ve used the kettle. It probably needs some. I can’t imagine it’s gonna hurt putting it in. And then I think I got everything I need for the boil side. I’m still gonna mash with the anvil, the big anvil. I’m gonna do a reiterated mash, like I mentioned before, and we’ll talk more about that.

20:11 Brew day and then I think I’m all set. Oh, no, actually, I did think of something and I’m glad I’m looking around again. The chiller I have, I have an immersion chiller. I have JaDeD Hydra, I think. It’s a 75-foot coil that I use for immersion chilling. I haven’t used that for a while either. First thing I’m going to do is pressure wash it. And then I’m gonna actually run some water through it outside of the kettle and see if there’s a lease. Make sure there wasn’t any kind of corrosion in all these years because I don’t want to be putting unsterile water into my beer when I’m chilling it. If it does leak, I don’t expect it to. If it does, I have another one. It’s, I think it’s 50-foot. It’s called Macilla. I use it for the Anvil Foundry. It’ll work. It’ll cool it a little slower. It’ll work just fine. But if I could use the more surface area, the 75 foot, that’s what I’m going to try. But I want to wash it first and test it. So that’s where I’m at. Gotta get back to it. I’m gonna go ahead and work on the pump first. I just dug it out and pretty simple from what I remember. It’s got a stainless steel head. I’m gonna take that off. There’s four screws that hold it on. I’ve got quick, I’ve got another ball valve on the outlet, I believe. Let’s see, yeah, out, it has an actual arrow. So I’m gonna tear that apart.

21:31 Clean that. I have quick disconnects on each one. If you were to ever see this, if I start doing videos again, my disconnects for my hoses are backwards. Like the ones on the pump and the kettle, there, see if you can hear it. That’s the thing you slide to disconnect. You usually have that on the hose. And then the that’s this is the female end, and then the male end is actually on the pump and the valves and whatnot. Because while hot water boiling water goes through these, these Get really hot and they’re hard to touch with your bare hands. And I did that because I was impatient. I wanted my quick disconnects now, and they didn’t have the size to do it the right way, but they had the size to do it the backwards way. And I thought, well, it’s not gonna be that big a deal. Well, it’s not a big deal. I mean, I get a little like. Utility rag, and that’s enough to block the heat. But I wish I had exercised a little patience and done it the right way. If I end up doing these kinds of boils in the future, I may go ahead and re-plumb all these with everything going with the opposite connections. But it gets the job done, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do. So I’m going to take this apart.

22:47 My only concern until I open this, well, first is that it runs. I haven’t even tried that yet, but after I open it, I’m a little concerned that there’s, I think there’s an O-ring in here, and I’m hoping that hasn’t dried out and degraded because I don’t know what size it is, and I don’t know if I can get one by the time I’m brewing, but we’re gonna find that out right now. So that’s kind of putting a cart before the horse. So let’s find out if it’s okay first, and then we’ll see. What we need to do, if anything. Pump is a part, and O-ring looks good. It’s a silicone ring. It’s not like the black. kind of I don’t even know what the the Material is called. So I think this is gonna last quite a while. It does feel a little dry, but I am going to. I think that might be like surface dust or like maybe corrosion, I guess you could say. In fact, the more I’m handling it, the more it’s kind of getting on my fingers and not on the O-ring, which is good. So I’m gonna soak that. And otherwise, everything’s okay. The propeller is gross, but if I knew that.

23:49 That’s why I’m cleaning this. The head is a little, I got a little bit of buildup in here from sitting all that time, but I’m gonna give that a little hand scrub first with a Sponge, one of those blue textured sponges, and I’m gonna soak everything in PBW and we’ll be good to go. So, looks good. I’m not too worried about. The uh well I haven’t tried it firing it up yet, but the mechanics of it, like the parts? I’m pretty confident in it. So if it fires up, we’ll be in good shape. If not, I will use one of the anvil pumps. They’re not as strong, and I won’t quite get the. Whirlpool, I want when it comes to the chilling, which is really what this is going to be used for. But again, I mean, it’ll still work. It’s this, it’s just going to be a little slower. Same with the chiller. So I have everything I need. It was really the. Hoses that I didn’t, which in fact, you know what? Now I think about it, if I didn’t have these hoses, I would have been okay with the anvil anyway, I guess, with some of some adaptations because they don’t have quick disconnects. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. At least I hope it doesn’t matter. We’re gonna find out when we fire up the pump. But first, I gotta clean this before I even think about firing it up.

25:01 While I’m waiting for the water to heat up that I’m going to use to soak these, I’m going to soak them in PBW, which is a caustic-based cleaner. It’s not a straight caustic, so it’s a little safer, I guess, for home use and it won’t. Skin off. I’m not sure if this caustic does that. I don’t think it’s great for you, either way. Anyway, that is not even what this recording is about. While I was waiting, I looked up the how to oil this pump again because it’s been a while, and I actually found the manufacturer video on YouTube, and it is a 3-in-One oil. That’s that’s what I remember being. But they also say use olive oil. So I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe just go ahead. We have olive oil. We’ve got all kinds of olive oil. For some reason, we have more than one type. But I can get the cheapest one than the cheapest looking bottle, I guess, and use that. Or maybe I should get some real oil because I’m not sure if one’s better than the other for the longevity of the pump. I’m not sure if I will be using it again. Um I’m glad I have options. Uh w chances are, actually, hmm.

26:03 Because I know I bought a bottle of that 3-in-One oil when I bought this. I think I might know where that is too. And I’m not gonna say this is 50-50 shot, I’m right, because I don’t wanna find half the can of oil, because that means the other half is. Like, not in the can. So, I’m gonna check. I’m glad I have options when it comes down to. If I would think, in my mind, I prefer to get the 3-in-One oil, but if I don’t have time to get it before I brew, I have an option. So, that’s good. That’s kind of what this recording is about. Actually, the recording is for me to remember that when I forget to buy the oil. To use the olive oil, but you get the benefit of hearing me remind myself, I guess. I’m not sure if that’s a benefit. I’m now outside with the pressure washer, as you can probably hear, and giving the JaDeD Hydra, a really good once-over. Well, actually, a several over. I’m going through it several times with the sprayer. And I also have my scilla out here to give that a good cleaning. It’s been a while. But, quick story.

27:10 Because I could make it. The first hour of this ordeal was getting the pressure washer to work because the spray tip was completely rusted over, so we had to soak it in a CLR mixture. For a few minutes, and then give it a good kind of Scraping and cleaning on the inside, but after that, it worked fine. But of course, that story was much quicker to tell than the actual work that went into. Doing all this. So, all right, I gotta turn this and get the other side, so I need a free hand, so I’m gonna get back to my power washing here. Everything is cleaned and reassembled and looking good. The cleaning wasn’t as bad. What am I trying to say? It wasn’t as things weren’t as dirty as I thought they were going to be. So, well, I guess that makes cleaning not as bad. I didn’t know what to expect with it sitting around for so long. I mean, I clean everything before I put it away as it is, but I guess there’s just like that idea of things that. Might have been missed even if it was a little bit when you put it away. If I’m brewing like the next week or even the next month, it’s not that big a deal. But three years later, it could have been a big deal. It could have grown into something that was problematic, but none of that. So that was good. The two things I haven’t tested yet are: I haven’t tested the immersion chiller for leaks. That’s not a big concern. I don’t think that’s very likely.

28:30 And if it is, or if there there are some, I do have. The one that I know doesn’t leak because I just used it. So I have a backup for it, which I don’t think is going to come to that. And I have not tested the pump’s power yet. I wanna oil it first because of the three years again. And I know I can use olive oil, but I gotta go to the hardware store anyway to get a canister of welding oxygen because I’m gonna have to directly add some oxygen to this beer because it’s gonna be so big. Instead of just shaking it like I usually do, I want actual real O2 going into it. Since I’m go since I’m already going to the hardware store, I’ll see if they got like whatever the smallest container of the 3-in-One oil that they have, and if it’s not like super expensive. I don’t even know what I would consider super expensive. I guess I got to see the price first for what the size is. I’ll just get that. I feel better doing that. I know the manufacturer themselves said I could use olive oil. I just feel better using 3-in-One oil just because it seems like more an appropriate thing, I guess. But hey, I got again, not a terrible concern because I have a

29:34 Backup. I have olive oil and not a terrible concern if the pump doesn’t work. I have the anvil pumps as well, which that’ll be a little more challenging, but it won’t be a deal-breaker. So we can still get through the brew day with those. So I think that is. All I have to do right now, oh no, it’s not. I actually just set up to do this. I guess I’m going to be testing the propane burner, which I haven’t. I wasn’t planning to do, but in hindsight, it seems like a good idea. But I’m going to do that because I’m going to. Boil that immersion chiller I just power washed for like 20-30 minutes to get a nice oxidation coat back on it. Although everything I read, in more than one spot said like a power washing is not going to remove that oxidation coat because that’s a chemical thing. That’s not a physical thing. I guess it’s a physical thing through chemicals, but you need to chemically remove it, is what I’m trying to say. Just to be sure, I’m still gonna boil it for 20-30 minutes. To make sure it Is still there. And I also saw one comment in all of that that I was researching. It said, if you’re not sure.

30:38 Go ahead and boil it for 20-30 minutes and taste the water after. You know, if it tastes metallic, okay, you probably need to passivate it and make sure you get that layer on there. If it tastes fine, you know you’re good. I’m like, oh, okay, well, I wanted to boil it anyway to be sure, and I’ll also do that. And then I’ll know for sure. And if that is a problem, I will passivate it with some Bar Keepers Friend. But I don’t think I need to go that far. For everything I read, the power washing. Does not strip that. So I’m not too concerned about it. But for my own peace of mind, I’m going to boil it. And it also gives me a chance to make sure the propane Burner is running. And we have like plenty of propane tanks. We bought a Grill from a friend of ours, and he gave us all his propane tanks. One was already half full that was attached, and then two that had never been opened. Plus, I already had two from my brew days. So we have five, five, and two of them are full. And so I am not concerned about running out of propane. So that is one thing I’m definitely not going to buy. Come in another.

31:42 Testing phase of a piece of equipment that I didn’t consider testing, but makes perfect sense that I should be testing it. And that was I have dug out the gas, the propane burner, which has also been sitting for. Three years, so of course I should test that. I hooked up the gas, lit it up, saw that not all the little holes on the burner were firing, which of course they’re not. I mean, God knows what’s in them after three years. So I hit it with a wire brush pretty good, lit it again, a lot more lit up. It’s not 100%, but it’s a lot closer. So I’m letting it cool down again now. I’m going to hit it with a wire brush again. Then I think we’ll be good. And then I’m going to boil that water to put the immersion chiller in and Marked off my to-do list before Friday’s brew. As far as the water goes, my wife had bought a new hose that I thought it’s not a green garden hose. Maybe this hose will be okay. I can just put in some Campden tablet with some and get rid of the chloramine and I’ll be able to test the water. Now I tried it. I didn’t fill up the kettle, but I filled up a little bit and.

32:46 Took a little cup, tasted it, and it was, it’s definitely hose water. And I’m not entirely sure, it’s so strong of a hose water. I’m not entirely sure if there was any metallic flavoring being drawn out of these coils that I would pick it up. So I went and filled up five gallons of water, one gallon at a time from the sink inside the house, poured that in there, and I put a Campden tablet in to burn off the chloramine. And now it’s it’s It tastes like water. It doesn’t taste like anything. Just tastes like water. So now I’ll definitely be able to tell. Once this test is done. Once I give the burner the thumbs up to try. So glad I’m doing all this now and not figuring out that these were things I needed to have. Done before I started brewing on what’s already going to be a very long brew day. I got all but four teeny tiny little burners to fire. And it’s a big, I think they call it the banjo burner. It’s not like the small single one that you get with like on the side of a grill, and it’s not the.

33:53 Next bigger ring that’s like a kind of a ring of these small dot burners with a couple down the middle. It’s the next size up from that. So it’s a lot of them. Only four not firing. I think we’ll be okay. And maybe the gas pressure will eventually just clear whatever’s stuck in those last four. But I painstakingly lit it and turned it off. I don’t know. The better part of 10 times, not quite 10, to take a visual account of what wasn’t burning and hit it with a wire brush. And I went as far as got a paper clip to really clean out those troublesome burners. So, all before I can live with that, I am boiling the water now. And of course, it looks like it’s going to pour. Why not? Sure. Let’s throw another thing in the mix to. Slow this process down, but either way, it’s it’s going now. Water should be boiling within no longer than 30 minutes. Then I’ll throw the chiller in there for 30 minutes and then let it cool for like probably an hour before I can actually taste the water. Now, probably like 30-40 minutes again, everything’s 30 minutes. We’ll see. Those are.

34:58 Possibly the famous last words, and I’ll be up all night doing this. I just left the hardware store and I did end up getting the 3-in-One oil. And it wasn’t terribly expensive, it was like$9, but there was a little hesitation buying it. And not because of the price, but because how much there was, considering I need like four or five drops. It’s a lot. Even though it’s a small bottle, it’s a lot for four or five drops. But It’s I guess it’s paying for convenience. If it gets the pump running properly, which I still don’t know that it is or isn’t, but if I definitely don’t want to try until I oil it, if the pump runs properly after adding the oil, I paid for the convenience of being able to use the proper pump. I do have a backup pump, but it won’t be as easy as this will be. So it’s paying for the convenience of having the correct equipment, assuming everything works. If it doesn’t, then I’ll be mad that I bought it. It’s a little frustrating too that I know I bought this before and I don’t think I’ll find it.

36:01 Before Friday, if we even have it, there is a good chance we don’t. I’m not sure what the odds are, but we may not even have it anymore. So I got that, and I got the reason I was going anyway, I don’t remember if I said this before or not. Is to get an a oh, I did, I did, I said an oxygen tank from uh their welding section because I’m gonna be adding direct oxygen to I already having a deja vu, I explained all this, and I’ll probably explain it again when I actually do it. So I think I have everything I need now. I did finish boiling the coil. And the water, of course, was near boiling hot when I turned the gas off, so I’m letting it cool for a little while before I attempt to taste it. Maybe by the time I get home, I’ll be able to taste it, see if there’s any off-flavors in there. and then decide whether or not if I’m going to do anything else to that coil. prior to brew day. I did the taste test of the water post-boiling the coil, and at first I thought maybe there was just a

37:02 Hint of something, maybe from the copper, maybe metallic. Couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it was quite warm. It was really warm. It was almost like you just got a coffee and let it sit for 10 minutes warm. So it may have just been a, what’s the word, a physical reaction to that. Cause then I just put that sample in the fridge for. More than an hour because I forgot about it. Then I took it out of the fridge, tasted it, nothing. There’s absolutely no flavor change to that water whatsoever. It was just water. So I am now more than confident in using that coil for the chilling of the wort, except for the, I guess, the only lingering question, it’s not an exception because I don’t know yet. The only question is: is there any leaks? Did anything corrode in those three years? So I’m going to have to do that test as well, make sure it’s not going to spew unwanted water into the finished boil of the wort when the brew day comes.

38:07 That strange humming noise that you just heard for a couple seconds is the sound of a pump successfully running. In fact, you can probably hear how strong the whirlpool is in the kettle with the test water. So that’s good news because I’ve waited till the very last minute. It is about 8:30 a Thursday night. I’m gonna be brewing 8 a.m. Friday morning, so less than 12 hours. And if it didn’t work, I’d have to adjust the anvil pumps. But I don’t have to do that now. So what I’m going to do now, well, first I’m going to shut this down, drain the water, rinse the Boil kettle because this is hose water again. I don’t want any of that left over tomorrow. And then I’m gonna set up the anvil inside the house so I can run the timer. I mean, I can run the timer outside, but I don’t know what the weather’s gonna be like tonight. It’s that time of year in Florida where a freak thunderstorm can come out of nowhere. So I’m gonna set it up inside, set the timer. Get it up to temperature by 8 in the morning and wheel it out here, plug it back in, hook it all up. If I take another 10-15 minutes for whatever temperature drop there was moving it, and I’m also going to mill the first part of the grains tonight, so I might talk about that. But let me get sun is going down very rapidly, so let me get this uh

39:25 Pump test all cleaned up, and so I can move everything inside and start doing everything I just talked about. We got the water set, and altogether we’re using 11 gallons of water for a five-gallon batch, which sounds like a lot, but what we’re really aiming for is six gallons. And when the boil is done, a little more than five and a half of that is going to go into the fermenter. The rest will be what is the trub in the bottom of the kettle. And I know this kettle, and it’s roughly about 0.4 gallons is what usually is left behind without picking up too much of the particles and matter in there. So we’re starting off and Along with that, we’re going to have evaporation of a gallon an hour, which is exactly what you get in the sun here in Florida with a gas boil at the rate and the rolling boil. I’m going to do this. So that’s two more down, and there’s going to be a lot of grain absorption because this is a huge. Recipes, huge grist. My goal, one of the many goals of this beer is to make that 10% out of malts completely. Well, out of grains, the grist. No sugar, no DME, nothing all malts. So now I’m going to go measure out the grains for the

40:43 First part of the reiterated mash. And I’ll talk more about that there actually right after this. All right, so I’ve been saying reiterated mash several times in these recordings and probably did in the opening as well. It’s time to talk about what that is because we’re starting it now. And what what it is And we’ll talk every step of the way through this, but setting up, it’s Where you take your entire grain bill and split it in half, and you’re going to. Add it to your mash tun. We’re gonna have two additions to your mash tun. And it’s not. Here’s the thing: this is where the reiterated part comes from. It’s not a double mash. A double mash is when you fill it up with water, you mash your grains, you drain it, you fill it up with water, mash your grains, and drain it. When we’re filling it up with water, which I just talked about in the last recording, we’re going to add the first half of our grains. We’re going to mash for an hour, we’re going to sparge the grains, and then we’re going to take the grains out. But we’re not going to drain it and fill it with water. We’re going to leave that initial sweetwort that that first mash made in there and we’re going to add the second half of our grains to that sweetwort. We’re going to build upon the first mash, the first sweetwort we created. We’re going to double-ish it, not really like.

42:04 About 1.6% duplicated, I guess you call it. I’m not sure what the math term is there for that. That’s what a reiterated mash is. If you did clean water twice, or fresh water, whatever to call it, with unmashed water, not no sweet wort, basically, twice, that’d be a double mash. That’s a reiterated mash. And the reason we’re doing that. Is a big grain bill. It is, oh god, what is it? It is 20. It is almost 21 pounds of grains for five gallons. Most of my beers are like 10 to 12. And once you get past 12, your efficiency drops. And what that means is the amount of fermentable sugars you get out of your mash. So we need to keep it under 12. And we’re doing that. We got a 10 and a half, no, we got a 10.3 and a 10.5. mash our weight grist grist sorry grist for our mash So the, I’m not quite sure how to read out the recipe here, but I’ll tell you what’s in the first mash. I’ll tell you what’s in the second mash when we get to that too. We’ve got

43:05 Six and a half pounds of Maris Otter. That’s our base. Then we got two pounds of Golden Promise. That’s also part of the base. Then we’re gonna put in A let’s see, what is that? It’s more than a half pound, about three-quarter pound. of Crystal Twenty. Then we’re gonna put in Six ounces of Crystal 40, and then we’re going to put in half a pound of honey malt, which actually pulled that off another recipe that sounded really interesting for what we’re trying to do at the Amburana. And then I’m going to put in a quarter pound of Cara-Pils in this first mash. That’s not the entire grist, that’s the first grist. So I’m about to weigh all that out now. And mill it for tomorrow so that when the strike water is ready and I get the anvil outside and get ready to mash, I can dump it right in. We want to start, like, I want to get up at eight o’clock. I want to be dressed and ready by 8:10. And then I want to be hopefully mashing in by 8:30. By the time I move everything and get the

44:07 Water back up to temperature. So I’m weighing out the grains now and I’m going to go ahead and mill them. And I’ll weigh out the grains for the second mash tomorrow while this mash is going because I’ll have an hour to really can’t do anything until I have all my sweet wort. So that is the plan. So right now I’m going to go ahead and weigh this out, gonna mill it, and then I’m gonna haven’t turned the foundry on yet. So I’ll turn the foundry on and set the timer. And then that’ll be it for the night. Now I’m gonna have a beer, relax, and go to bed a little earlier than usual so I can get up. Actually, it’s not true. 8 o’clock is not, I actually don’t even get up that late for work, so 8 o’clock is not too terrible. So I’ll probably go to bed at a normal time. Not that that has anything to do with this recording. Not sure how much you can hear me over the mill. I’m milling the grains out I just talked about. It’s the spike mill, I think I’ve talked about it before. One of the best investments I ever made. It does such a freaking great job chewing through these grains. I kind of want to do a quick recording: one, during the milling process to give you another idea of what’s going into everything. And second, I want to talk about the.

45:12 If you’re familiar with a Wee Heavy, you know it has a very distinct mahogany-like color. Okay, we’re almost done here, so I can finally turn this off. Okay, there, much better. So we’ll see if the first half of that recording came through. That mahogany color, you’ve just heard what’s going into this first mash, and that grist, not a single thing in there except some of the caramel malts. To a degree, but not even enough, lend to aiding in that color. And that’s because the darker malts are gonna go in the second part of the reiterated mash. And I do that, I don’t know it’s necessary, but here’s my thought process: even though it’s gonna extract some of those, a little bit of that rose flavor, which I actually kind of want. In this beer, because there’s going to be some pale chocolate malt, some roasted barley, just to give you a little hint, it’s going to extract some of that roasted flavor. I don’t think, though, having it in a sweet wort from the beginning is going to make any difference in putting in the second half of this of the reiterated mash, but I don’t know, so I’m not going to take that chance. I want a little bit of it, I don’t want it to be overpowering. So, we’re going to add.

46:18 Those stronger, specific specialty flavors in the second half of the mash. So that’s the thought process there. And we’ll talk more about that when we get to that part of the mash. It is brew day and I’m pretty excited to get started. But if you recognize the acoustics of this recording, if you’ve heard the show before, you probably know I’m in my car. That’s because I’m gonna get breakfast because I got up early. I didn’t set the alarm early, I just got up early, which is not unusual when I’m off. And on the weekends. And this is actually the paid holiday for July 4th. It’s Friday, so it’s a weekday, but I’m off and usually. On those days, once I’m up, I’m up. I I I don’t fall back asleep even if I want to. For some reason, I can fall back asleep on workdays, no problem, and hit the snooze like seven, eight times and sleep between each snooze alarm. But weekends, when I’m up, I’m up and I was like, I could lay down, but I’m not going to. I know I’m not going to sleep. So I’m going to get some breakfast, which is probably a good idea with the heat and the.

47:23 Labor, it’s going to come with this mash to have a proper meal of some sort, at least to have more in my stomach than I usually do. I usually have like a cereal bar and a Red Bull. But I’m going to Wawa to get a big breakfast sandwich of Sizzli, and I’m going to, of course, get a Red Bull. I’m going to pick up some more Gatorade. I do have two bottles of Gatorade, but I’m going to get another two if they’re, or one or two, depending on what the if they’re on sale, just to have it because it’s going to be hot. I was sweating, like my shirt looked like I was in a rainstorm after I did the grains last night, and I was just 20 minutes in the garage after the sun went down. So I know I’m going to be just sweating from the second I step outside to the second I’m done. And it’s going to be at least a 12-hour day, if not more. And with that, I think I’m probably gonna go through like three or four shirts because once the sweat. Just sets into the shirt and in this humidity in Florida, it does not dry. So, I’m predicting three or four costume changes along the way, too. But I am about to go in the Wawa, get breakfast, and then I’m going to get started. And like I said, the opening this recording, I’m pretty excited about today.

48:32 Got the anvil foundry outside. I have the pump hooked up. I got the water recirculating. I just added the brewing salts, so I’m letting the kind of water recirculate for a few minutes to get those mixed in, and then I’m going to mash in. In fact, I’m actually going to the garage to get the grains now. It is about well, let’s see, not about, let’s look at the clock. It is 10:18. So, by the time I Mash in, I’ll be about five minutes ahead of. I want to say schedule, but I don’t really have a schedule of my estimated schedule. My only schedule of anything is to Be done, however long that takes. But so far, so good. We’ll see, I didn’t lose any heat in the transfer of the foundry to outside. So I didn’t have to wait for it to heat back up, which I kind of put in my plans. But that’s where I’m starting to save time. So gonna get the grains mashed in and We’ll be started. I am mashed in on that first half of the reiterated. Reiter, oh man, this is gonna be one of those days. Reiterated mash. And this one was a little tricky. I don’t know why. I had a lot of doughballs, which I usually don’t have with the.

49:48 Since I’ve been using the spike mill, but there was, and I it was easy to take care of. I got out my old mash paddle that Quinn had made me, Quinn from NEOZAZ made me with my three vessel system. The end of it looks like a hop cone that smashes through dough balls. Just give it a good 30 seconds to a minute, go back and forth, up and down in circles, do that, and they’re gone. So. That took care of that. So I have the timer set, not recirculating yet. That was a lot of mixing with that mash paddle. So I’m letting the grain bed settle a little bit and then I’m going to start recirculating in about five minutes. If I were following my predicted schedule. I am a couple minutes ahead, but again, not really worried about that. One thing I added to the grist that I didn’t mention yesterday, but I also didn’t add it yesterday because I did it today. Put in about a half pound of rice hulls. I think I’ve talked about those before. They don’t add any flavor or aroma or anything to the beer. They just help create. Flow pockets in the grist so you don’t get a stuck mash. And the Anvil Foundry, since I’m still mashing on this, since it’s tall and skinny and it’s a lot of green, it could easily get stuck. So that’ll help it not get stuck. Or if it does, help it loosen back up so it starts flowing properly again. If I had my, if I was using my mash tun, the non-temperature controlled mash tun.

51:04 Probably wouldn’t do that because it’s much wider. So the grain bed gets spread out more. But in this case, I added it and I’ll be adding it to the second one as well. Again, it doesn’t do anything to the grist and it doesn’t really even take up all of its room. Even though when you put them in, when you put a half pound in, it looks like you’re not going to have enough room to put your entire grist in. That’s because they’re so. Light and airy. Once they get wet, kind of shrink down a little bit as far as the compression goes. And they don’t really expand or anything. They’re just there to let water and at this point sweet wort roll through them. So that’s what they’re That’s what I’m using for. That’s what they’re typically used for in brewing. So, all right, I am going to eat my breakfast. And by then I should be ready to start recirculating, and then I’ll get the crisp together for the second half of this mash. I had the recirculation going for a couple minutes now and then we look like we’re good as far as the mash not being stuck yet, at least not starting off stuck. And I usually determine that by taking off, there’s a, it’s called a, I don’t know what it’s called. It’s a perforated plate that goes on top. It’s a drip plate is what I’ve heard it referred to as. I don’t know what’s actually what it’s called. And that’s where the recirculated sweet wort goes over.

52:17 So it can spread across the top of the grain bed as it goes through again. But I take that off and I look, and if the liquid on the sides Of the malt tube that fits inside of the boil kettle. The liquid on the sides is within like a half inch of the liquid that’s in the malt tube, pipe rather, not tube, malt pipe. Then I know it’s not stuck. This was like dead even. I think, I don’t think there was any difference in height. So we’re good there. So now I’m gonna get the second half of the grist together. I’m gonna talk about that real quick. And this is where the darker malts are gonna come in, like I mentioned in the last, I was gonna say yesterday, but you heard it in the same recording. But we’re gonna start off with the other half of the base malt. And that is another six and a half pounds of Maris Otter and another two pounds of Golden Promise. So that is alone. That’s, let’s see, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 pounds of base malt, which is already way more than my entire grisp for most of my other beers. Just to show you how big a beer this is intended to be. And then with that,

53:19 I’m going to put in a Pound of flaked barley, which should give a really nice, smooth, textural element to this. We’ll see. That’s a lot. Sort of, well, I mean, it’s not terribly a lot. It might have. I was going to say, it may affect the. Uh, clearness of it? I guess that’s the word I’m looking for. The clarity, that’s the word. But I’m not real worried about clarity because it’s going to be listed, well, it is going to be barrel age, even though it’s going to be an oak spiral, but or Amburana spiral, not oak. So I don’t think clarity is going to be expected. So I’m not worried about it. And I, again, I’m just trying to make this a unique beer. And along with that, There’s going to be six ounces of pale chocolate malt. which I find brings a nice color and a little bit of that Roasted flavor without being acrid or ashy. It’s actually very smooth. It’s not too chocolatey to me, maybe dark chocolate in that realm, but it’s a I like it and you can use a little more of that.

54:20 Than a regular chocolate malt and not overdo it because it’s a lower kilned and lower roasted malt, at least in my experience. And then at the end of that, four ounces of roasted barley, which I was thinking originally I was gonna add to the sparge. Use it more as color, but that’s a quarter pound against almost 20 pounds. I’m not too worried about four ounces of it taking over. So I think we’ll get the color contribution. I don’t think the flavor is going to dominate. the rest of everything we read the past two recordings on these mashes. So. save myself a little more time and go ahead and put it in. The rest of the grist on the second mash. So I’m gonna get that together now, mill it up, and then I’ll be ready and waiting to be added to the sweetwort once we get past this first phase of the mash. I had a little bit of an oops on this one. Getting the grits together. I was on a roll measuring, dumping, measuring, dumping. I measured out the.

55:26 The flaked barley, and I dumped it in the bucket with the rest of the grist. And you’re not, what’s the word? I’m gonna say this, although it’s more a little less definitive than a statement. You’re not supposed to. Mill flaked ingredients. I don’t know that you’re not supposed to. You don’t have to. That’s more the word. So I did take out as much as I could. There’s still maybe like an ounce in there. It is what it is. All it’s gonna do is break it up. It’s not gonna destroy it or gum up the works, I don’t think. It shouldn’t have gone up to mill that little bit of it, but I was like, ah, crud, I didn’t need to do that. But oh well. I haven’t milled yet. So we’re about to find out if that’s gonna make a difference. But it’s not a lot. I’ve now mixed up everything. So that like those flakes of barley are kind of in with a bunch of grain. So it won’t be a, it won’t hit a clump of what was left over on the top of it. So it should be okay. We’re about to find out actually. Everything got milled. There was a moment where it kind of like slowed down, and you can see if I stand over the mill, and you can see it kind of funneling down, and the middle of the funnel is where it’s

56:38 Hitting the rollers, and that middle like shrunk to a very tiny spot. I think that might have been the pocket of uh. Flaked oats that I didn’t mix in as well as I thought I did, but it got through. And everything seems okay. I will probably. This it’s a do a cleaning just for the um Oh, what is the malt dust? Anyway, just do that once a year. I think it’s been over a year. While I’m doing it, I can actually access the rollers and give them a kind of feel and make sure they’re not gummed up. The reason I’m worried and say gummed up a couple times here now is that the flaked oats are pre-gelatinized. There’s not a whole lot of heat, but there is heat when it goes through those rollers. So it shouldn’t have really, they shouldn’t have been in contact long enough to make. Any kind of buildup on them, but I’m gonna check. I’m gonna check the blades or whatever. They’re not blades, they’re I don’t know what they are. I call them rollers, but they’re the mill rollers. They’re what actually crushed the grains. I’ll give them a look, make sure. And if they feel a little tacky, I’ll wipe them down. I’ll look on the internet. I’m sure not the first person that did that, so I’ll see.

57:43 But the remote nations are to clean that off, but They made it through and the grist looks okay. Like whatever other grains were at that pocket, they still got milled. As far as I can tell, good enough. It’s tw it’s over 20 pounds of grains. If the two ounces of those grains didn’t get properly crushed, only partially crushed. I ain’t all that worried about it. I just gave the first phase of this mash its second stir. Got another one coming in about 20 minutes. And temperature’s holding is at 154. I don’t think I mentioned what temperature is mashing at. I was thinking of doing 156, but with the high gravity we’re already gonna have and some of these sugars that just aren’t gonna convert, it’s not, and I don’t mean under-attenuate, they’re just not gonna convert. Won’t be cloyingly sweet, but there’ll be a little more sweetness on it. I decided not to. I decided to knock it down a couple degrees to keep it from being cloyingly sweet. At 156, and with the addition of the Amburana, which does bring a unique. Perceived sweetness with it. I thought might be a little too much. Although I do want it full body, but that’s why I added like the flaked oats and a few other adjustments I made. So I don’t think it’s a risky change, but it is a change kind of last minute. And the mash nowhere near stuck, which is great. The water calculation, I actually used.

59:05 Claude to help me with that, the AI agent, because I don’t know that it’s still right yet. I won’t know until the boil’s done and I put everything in the fermenter and see if I fill the fermenters and how much is left. But I’m glad to see that the at least the mash side of it seems to be working because that always concerns me with this much grain. And that’s about it. I am going to. I was gonna get the hops ready, but really, no sense getting the hops ready now, considering I have a Full mash to do. So I guess I’m gonna maybe relax because sweat level is about four right now. And it’s going to get to a 10 within an hour, if not sooner. I’m getting the sparge water together now for the first half of this mash. And I’m actually gonna heat that up inside, even though I have a propane burner and a full, several full propane tanks outside, which would heat it up quicker. I know this is gonna happen. You’re gonna hear it in my voice as the day progresses. Once we get to the boil.

1:00:07 Propane exhaust from the burning, which there is some, it’s not the smell of the propane, it’s actually the exhaust from burning off. And the heat and the inevitable hydration, no matter how much I drink, is going to give me a blazing headache at one point. I know it’s coming. I knew that going into this. You’ll hear the energy drain from my voice as we get to that point. I’ll try to keep that all in check, but I know it’s gonna happen. So, with that, I’m waiting till the last minute to have to turn the propane on. So, this is gonna take a little longer, but it’s gonna get the job done. It’s gonna get it to 170 degrees. So it’s no big deal. It’s so it’s two gallons. It’s I have the salts ready. When it gets up to about 100 degrees, I’ll put the brewing salts in because that’s when they seem to incorporate best over 100 degrees. And then I’ll very carefully lock it outside and sparge outside. But that’s the reason I’m doing that inside. And I’ll do it again for the second mash inside as well. We’re 50 minutes into the first mash, and now I am setting this to 168 to do a mash out.

1:01:13 Which just made me think of something that I did not. Consider going into this is will that temperature drop? Back down the 154 when I put the second mash in. I think it’ll be okay. As soon as the mash out is done, I’m gonna drop it to 154 again. And oh, I just had the best idea, okay? I am going to, the sparge water is at 142. I’m gonna stop it at 150, 155, just to be safe. That will definitely drop. The 168 down, maybe not the 154, but it’ll be less time to wait for it to get down to 154. Actually, 150. I’m gonna stop this at 150. Yeah, I’ll do that because I’d rather it’ll be easier without getting more equipment out. If it drops before below 154, it’ll be easier to heat it up than to cool it down. I won’t have to hook up the chill or anything. Didn’t think of that. The mashout, it’s part of my routine. I’d hate to skip it, especially when I wanna draw.

1:02:23 Every last bit of convertible sugar out of that, which it gives a little bit more, not a lot, but in this case. I need everything I can get out of it. Like I said, it might be a completely unneeded step, but I will feel better having done it. So I’m gonna do it. And it’s more for my peace of mind. It’s gonna be one of those things where, if I don’t do it and I taste the beer and something’s wrong with it, I’m gonna blame myself for not doing it. So, I’m gonna go ahead and do it. But I think the sparge idea will help. Now, the hotter the water, it supposedly rinses the grains off more, but I don’t see how 150-degree water is going to make a terrible amount of difference as opposed to 170-degree water rinsing the grains. So, I like that idea. I’m glad. I talked this through on this recording. I’m not sure I would have had that idea without verbalizing everything. While I’m waiting for that mash out to hit and hold at 10 minutes, I’m gonna explain what I’m gonna do after I sparge because that is, there’s a lot going on and I don’t really wanna stop because that’s where I could lose time.

1:03:34 So what I’m gonna do, since I’m adding another two gallons of water to the wort, of which like a gallon and a half will probably make it through, is I’m going to, after that’s done, I’m gonna stir everything up really well because now we have the lighter wort on top. Stir it all up so it’s nice and everything’s incorporated. Then I’m gonna drain a gallon of that sweet wort out of the mash tun. I’m doing that for two reasons. One, to make more room in the mash tun so I can add the second grist in there. Two, I’m going to boil down that first. Gallon to about half. Traditional wee heavies, you boil down a certain amount, gallon, gallon or two, well, gallon to a quart. I’m not gonna go that far. I think that’s a little more than I would need to do. Plus, it’s a new thing I’ve not done before, so I feel like I could overdo it. So, I’m gonna boil it down to roughly half. I’m still gonna do the traditional. Boiling down to the wort, the initial wort, to bring more richness and fullness to the beer, but I’m not going to go push it all the way because there seems like there’s a danger of overdoing it. And

1:04:48 This beer is not going to be lacking for flavor. Overall. So if it wasn’t the, if I wasn’t going to do the Amburana edition, maybe I’d be a little more, what’s the word I’m looking for? A little more daring in doing the full court or boiling it down to a doing the full boil, I should say, down to a court. But I’m going to be a little conservative. So I’m going to boil it down to about half. Not going to be real clinical about it. Gonna kind of eyeball it. And then I’ll add that in. Once I drain that final sweet wort after the second mash, I’ll add that in with it. We’ll start a two-hour boil. So that’s all going to happen, like I said, very quickly to get to that point. And it’s going to be sparge. Mix, drain, get on the heat, empty the grist out of the malt pipe, rinse down the malt pipe, add the second grist, stir, mash. I gotta do that. Like, I can’t stop in any of those steps. That’s why I’m recording this now. So that’s what will have happened by the next time you hear this recording, or you hear the next recording, I should say.

1:05:54 Got a few more minutes for the sparge to finish making its way through everything in the malt pipes. I can give a quick update. Using the 150-degree sparge water, I think, helped a lot. It dropped at the 160. And I think once I get the malt pipe off the top and let it kind of sit in the air, in fact, I might even fire up the recirculation to help cool it down. Should get down to, if I can get to 158, that should be good because putting in the grains are gonna drop it a couple degrees, and then once things get recirculating, it’ll even out. Pretty quick. So I think we’re okay there. The sparge did get stuck, which is what didn’t anticipate because if you don’t have a stuck mash, you usually don’t have a stuck sparge. But that’s fine. Unsticking a sparge is way easier than a stuck mash. You just break up the grain bed a little bit and whoosh, it goes through. So that was an easy fix. So. You got, let’s see, five more minutes to let it drain out. I let it drain for 10 minutes to make sure I get as much as I can out of it. And then I’ll go on to that list of things I just recorded in the last segment and get to the second part of the mash.

1:07:02 I’m in the middle of all those things I said I wasn’t going to stop and record about, but I am because I just thought of something. I have my one gallon of wort. It’s gonna bring it in a boil, but I realize that’s only half of the sugars. Like we have the other half to go. So I’m not. Going to do that boil until I have everything together. So, what I’m going to do, and I’ll do this in conjunction. Actually, I think everything’s going to work out just fine. Once I get the second mash done, I will then collect. I already did pull out a gallon of the wort because I needed the room in the anvil. But I will, once I drain, once I have that second half of the reiterated mash done and everything in the boil kettle, I’ll take a gallon out of the boil kettle of all the sugars and then I’ll boil that. I’ll boil that while the Boil temperature is ramping up on the main kettle. So I don’t think I increased any more time except for the few minutes to do this recording. But I’m realized, it’s like, wait a minute, this is not going to bring the this half-sugared wort that I’m going to boil down is not going to bring that richness that I intended to do. So

1:08:09 Little change of plans, not boiling it now, but I’ll boil it later once I have all the sugar. So we’re still gonna add that step into it. It’s just now been pushed off about an hour or two. Okay, another quick update. During all of that, the anvil, the sweet wort in the anvil dropped a 156. I rinsed off the malt pipe with cold tap water, cold, and quotes in Florida. So the malt pipe’s probably about 75, 76 degrees. Drop that in, 155. Target’s 154. We’re good. I’m going to get the second bucket of grist, mix that in, and we’ll have the second part of the reiterated reiteration. Wow, I’m going to get worse with that word as we go. Reiterated mash. Okay, second half of the reiterated mash is mashed in. Yeah, you deliberately heard me slowly say that word to try to get it out. And that actually sounded more, I think, more awkward than when I mess up the word. Just to recap, what we’re talking about, we’re talking about a reason, there we go, reiterated mash.

1:09:20 So I mashed half of the grains in the entire Grist, so a little over 10 pounds in fresh water, RO water treated with brewing salts for proper pH and all that. So, but fresh, clean water. Did that for an hour, sparged it. Did not do anything with that sweet word except take a gallon out so I could have the capacity to do the second half of this. Then, once I cleaned out the Malt pipe. I put the malt pipe back in, put in the second half of the grains, which is also a little over 10 pounds, but put it right into that same sweetwort we just made. So no additional fresh water. And that’s where we’re at now. Stir that in. I’m going to let that mash for an hour. And once that’s done, I’ll get that into the boil kettle and then we’ll get onto the boil. So what I’m going to do now. I do not have what the measurement should be for the first half of this mash, but I still want to get a measurement anyway out of curiosity. I want to see how many more points.

1:10:26 The second half of this mash. gives. So I can kinda get a better number. Of how my system handles a mash like this, because I was basing it on what other people have done because I’ve not done it on this system before. So I’m gonna go ahead and get that measurement, record it, and then measure the pre-boil gravity coming out of the once everything’s incorporated into the boil kettle and see what the difference is so I can use that later if I ever decide to do something like this again. The gravity measurement pre-boil, keep in mind, on this first mash is 1040, which is pretty respectable for a pre-boiled gravity. With a gas boil, it’ll probably would be around 1050, or yeah, 1050, which is a five, over 5% beer. Maybe a little more, depending on how well your yeast attenuates. So if I can get 30 more points, that’s 1070 two hour boil. 1090, my goal looks like it’s 1095, and that’s a variable goal. That was me knowing the percentage could be swayed one to two either direction. I explained that in the beginning. So I think we’re on a good path. It all depends on how.

1:11:39 Well, this second mash does, because their second half of the mash does, and I don’t know how it does on my system. But if we’re in like 170. I mean, we’re in good shape for where I want this beer to head. So I’m pretty encouraged. That’s fun. This has been fun so far. So yeah, we’ll see what’s going on. Quick heat level check: sweat levels about a six. We’re into one bottle of Gatorade. I have four. I don’t think I’ll have all four today. But it would not surprise me if I do have all four today. And I’m staying as hydrated as I possibly can because I want to. Because I know, and I’ve explained that before, by the end of this, I’ll be hurting. The less I can hurt, the better. So I’m trying. I’m gonna weigh out the hops now, and this is super easy. If you heard just about any other show, especially a hop forward show of any of my beers, there’s a whole like list of different editions at different times. This is not that, this is a multi-beer, so it’s the hops are there for balance.

1:12:45 It’s not adding a whole lot of bitterness. In fact, I think it’s gonna be like 28 IBUs in the end. And let me just check. I have the amounts. Okay, uh the times. So 1.6 ounces of East Kent Goldings at 60 minutes and then 0.2 ounces at 15 minutes. And those numbers, they were originally 2 ounces and 0.25 ounces, but I got the package I got of the hops this year for this brew: 6.6 alpha acids, which is kind of high for East Kent Goldings. And I gotta trust that this was checked properly. So I put that in to Get the actual calculation to stay at the same IBU range, which I’m glad because the less hot matter in there, the easier it’s gonna be to rack this beer off in the fermenter. So that’s good. So, yeah, that’s all I have to measure out. That’s gonna take me like a minute. I’m going to do that now and then just some more sit around and wait, which I should not complain about because we’re not going to have a whole lot of that today.

1:13:52 We’re about to get to the mash out step of this phase of the mash. And right before that, that’s when I get the sparge water ready. So I’m back inside of two gallons heating up to 170. I’m gonna get it heated completely up to 170 this time for this one. This is gonna be my usual sparge method. And let’s see. I guess that’s really it for the reiterate, except for saying the word for this mash process. I’m not even gonna bother anymore. I thought I’d be talking a lot more about it, but it’s I think having stepped through it now, phase one, explain what I did at the end and start phase two. That’s the best way to approach how to explain what this process actually is. So I thought it was gonna be a lot more complicated to get across verbally, but I think talking about it along the way paints a good picture. You let me know if anyone wants more information on that. I don’t know who.

1:14:54 Listen to this at Bruise, but be happy to explain what I did. Don’t know what the result is yet. Maybe stick around to the end. When I do the tasting, maybe you won’t want to know how I did this. We’ll see. Got the second half of this mash draining, as you hopefully heard. I kind of pointed the mic at the kettle here, and sparge water is almost at the temperature, it’s not quite there yet. It’s got like another 10 degrees, should be another minute at most, probably not even that much. And then I’ll be able to sparge this, and then we’re gonna move on to draining this into the boil kettle. And then I’ll grab that gallon of sweet wort, boil that halfway-ish down, and add that back in as the boil is ramping up. That should actually help bring up the boil another degree. Now I think about it. It’s not done yet by the time I come back out here. And then the long, long part of the day, not that it hasn’t been a long day already, it’s been about, let’s see. Uh

1:15:55 Over three hours so far. So three-hour mash process, and we’re not completely done yet. So it’s probably about three and a half hours by the time the mash is done. Long brew day, but I knew that getting into it. And yeah, been fun so far. I’m really enjoying this. I am sparging the second half of the reiterated mash. Yes, I did slow down to get that word out. And the sparge process, no different if you heard the show, but it’s been a while. I heated up the water, I have a two-cup measuring cup, and I am pouring it over the drip plate. So I don’t know what the thing’s called, but. That’s what I’m doing. And it’s the mashed pipe, the malt pipe, I’m sorry, is well outside of the wort. So it’ll go through all the grains, rinse them, pull those last valuable sugars out, and add them to the wort. And once this is done, I’ll let it sit here for about 10 minutes. so that everything can drip out.

1:16:56 And then I will drain this into the boil kettle, give it a good stir, and grab that gallon of sweetwort to boil down. I have completely drained the Anvil Foundry and I’ve got eight and a half gallons, which feels right because I’m about to pull a gallon off and boil that down to a half gallon. So that’ll drop it to seven and a half. Add the half back off eight, two gallon burn off for the boil. Six gallons, about five and a half into the fermenter, like I want to get, and leaving that half gallon behind for trub. So, numbers are looking good. Oh, speaking of numbers, I am going to, I almost forgot I wanted to measure this. So, I’m going to go ahead and get a sample and measure this before I pull that one gallon out. Took a real pre-boil, or the actual pre-boil gravity reading, I guess you’d say now with all the words in there. It is 1070 on the nose. So that’s what I was hoping it would get to at the very least.

1:18:06 I think my calculations that to get it to 1090 say Like, it needs to be closer to 1075, but it’s I’m not too worried about it. So, even if it like Only goes down 10 points, which I’m expecting to go down closer to 20 points, the way this boil goes. Let’s see what that comes out to. It’s still gonna be in the 8% range beer. So if I do get the total… Ninety five, yeah, nine. Nine percent on the That and if it goes over, well, of course, it’s just gonna be higher from there. So, yeah, I mean, I’m happy with this. I think we’re gonna get at least eight percent out of this. That’s assuming the yeast doesn’t over attenuate, which this yeast can kind of do. I don’t think it’s gonna dry it out, I don’t think it can dry it out. The mash temperature I did on this, but it could over-attenuate, and the expected attenuation is 1025. That’s the ending gravity. It could go to 1020, could go to 1015, and that’s just going to increase the alcohol level. So, my point here is. This is in the range, I think. By the time we’re done, I’m very confident this is going to be in the range I want it to be. So assuming the yeast ferment everything properly, we don’t have a problem there. But the starting point is where I want it to be. So I’m very excited that this first test of doing the mash on my anvil.

1:19:19 This way, this reiterated mash seemed to have worked out. There’s some tweaking to make it a little more accurate, but. That’s pretty cool that we’re that close. Got the gallon of sweet water up to a boil. I’m fiddling with the adjustment on the electric burner knob here. I want it more of it to simmer because I don’t want it to burn. Or scorch, which I’m not really worried about because this is my induction kettle that I use for one-gallon batches, and it’s with a thick bottom. It’s really good at not scorching things, but I don’t want to take the chance. And I’m just kinda gonna watch it. Gonna go back and forth, check how the boil temperature is coming up on the boil outside, and check this. And when it looks halfish. I don’t have anything to really measure it, but when it looks noticeably reduced, I’ll stop. I don’t really want to push this too far. I want to kind of test the waters on this because we got a lot of things that will help the flavor. This is, I want this to do what it’s supposed to do, but if it falls a little short.

1:20:25 I’m not terribly worried about it, but I would like to. Try to be a little more, try to include some traditional things in the style I’ve not done before. And plus, since it’s for a special occasion. Make that extra effort, but again, not to the point where I think I’m endangering the beer. So that’s where we’re at now, and probably. Be doing some time filling once this boil gets up because there’s a whole hour where I don’t have anything to do. I have to clean things, but that will not take an hour. Just added the boiled wort back into the boil kettle. It’s a little more than half. I just, I don’t know. There was, I wanted to try this, but I didn’t, again, didn’t want to push things and screw this up. So it’s, it’s, uh, It’s a little more, or yeah, a little more than half, but not quite three quarters of a gallon. That’s fine. What’s really cool is that this is the big boil kettle, the full runoff is now almost out of boil. And I thought it would be faster because it went in at about 160 degrees. All I needed to go up another, what’s that, 52 degrees to get to boiling in Florida?

1:21:39 So it’s pretty quick. I mean, it is about to, the hot break is starting to form. It’s going to boil here in less than 10 minutes. So I scheduled again in my seeing how long this might take, I scheduled way longer for the skin up to a boil. So that’s going to save us some time here as well, which is great. In fact, okay, I starting to see there’s always a little spot that. Bubbles first, and it just started. So we are going to be at boil in less than 10 minutes now at this point. I cleaned up everything I possibly can. I put away possibly everything I can. And I still have an hour and 40 minutes, actually, a couple more minutes than that left on the boil. So I’m gonna do something I usually don’t do on brew days anymore. And that’s have a beer. Usually that kind of just derails everything, but since I’ve got so much time to do it, I’m gonna go ahead and have a beer. And I’m having a Helles from Zillicoa in Asheville, North Carolina. We were just at this brewery about this time, two weeks ago, I think, actually. Yes, lunchtime.

1:22:51 Saturday. We were at Zillicoa. It’s one of our favorite places. We’re there in town for Homebrew Con, and we went and got a couple beers and had lunch. And this, ironically, is not a beer I bought from there. I found it at a local bottle shop just two nights ago, and I grabbed a four pack, and I’m going to have some right now. And it’s quite good. So, if you ever, I don’t know how widely distributed, I didn’t know they distributed in Florida. That’s the first time I ever saw it, but I’m happy about it. If you see it, get it. I have never had a bad beer from Zillicoa. One really important thing I forgot to do, but I’m doing right now, is to check the old immersion chiller for leaks. I meant to do that. Like when those first recordings started. So, as you can probably hear. That’s water coming out of the coil, so water’s going in, water’s coming out, and I see nothing spraying or dripping.

1:23:54 anywhere else. So we’re good. Okay. I feel better now. Well Not that there was, I had the backup, we discussed this several recordings, but for sure now this coil is ready to go. So I will definitely be using it to chill this batch when the boil’s done. We finally hit that one hour mark and I added the first hop addition after what felt like an eternity of waiting. So I put in that first edition of 1.6 ounce of East Kent Goldings and then nothing for 45 minutes. But I’m gonna start sending up the chiller stuff. Although, I mean, it’s still a little early, but better to have everything connected and be able to drop it right in the pot than rush to get it done. That’s what I’m going to focus on next for the little bit of time that’ll take. I will say, surprisingly, with one hour left to go into boil and then probably two hours after that to chill and. Rack everything into the fermenter and then clean up. That I’m not as overheated, sweaty, or just like hot as I expected to be today. I mean, it’s as hot as it was all week, all summer, as hot as it always gets in Florida. But I’m not terribly overheated. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m hot, I’m sweaty. I’m not soaking through my clothes like I expected to. So I haven’t.

1:25:15 Change my shirt, and I probably won’t at this point. I am going to. I can already tell between with all the water and cleaning and the movement it’s going to take to clean up, that’s when I’ll soak my shirt. But I’ll be done then, so it doesn’t really matter. I do have just the hint of the beginning of a headache, probably because of the more. More of the propane exhaust and a little bit of the heat, both like a double whammy, but more of the propane exhaust. So I’ve come inside for a little bit to get completely away from it. Maybe that’ll help keep that at bay. It’ll just make everything easier, obviously, if I don’t have a full-blown headache. And I guess I could take something. But when I get headaches like this from the heat, it’s like I. Take something once in Like that that’s Whatever good that does is the less good it’ll do. So if the headache increases after taking something. Even if I take something again, it’s really not going to curb it, if that makes sense. I’m not quite sure how to explain what I’m trying to say. I’m trying to say is like, I’m going to wait till I feel it’s at its worst, then take something, and then that should be the best approach to getting some relief.

1:26:23 Yeah, um And I think this day is going to end up being shorter than I anticipated, but I’m not going to say that because anytime I say something like that, something comes up I’m not expecting. Been good so far. I’m really enjoying this. I wouldn’t want to do this method every brew. Like, not at all, obviously. But it’s nice to have this option and nice to do something different. So, been fun so far. I’m running the pump now for about 10-15 minutes to sanitize everything in there. I do have a fairly significant airlock issue with the outgoing. Tube for some reason. It seems, I actually disconnected the end going to make sure it was flowing. It’s flowing pretty well. I don’t know where this airlock is coming from, so I’m not really going to worry about it. More oxygen in this work, the better, because it’s going to be a big beer and it’s going to need the oxygen to propagate that yeast. So I’m going to let it go. I’m not going to mess with it too much.

1:27:23 More. I already disconnected and reconnected it several times and just cannot seem to get rid of that airlock in that hose. It might get better when it cools down, but I don’t know why. But I think it’ll pump out the wort out of the kettle. That’s the main thing. I’m hoping it whirlpools, but I have a spoon, a big mixing spoon. That I can use to whirlpool. In fact, I mentioned that. I’m going to put that in there too, which I just did, so that gets sterilized as well. And we’re getting to the last end of the boil edition, so that’s what I’ll be back with next, probably. Second hop addition went in. That’s the 15-minute 0.6-ounce of East Kent Goldings. And in five minutes, I’ll put in the yeast nutrients, and in five minutes of that, the Whirlfloc tablet. And I will actually start pumping the water into the bucket that’s going to feed the chiller. Because, let’s see, it’s two minutes. Yeah, actually, that’ll probably be about.

1:28:26 It’ll fill it up pretty nicely by then. It’s like two minutes a gallon out of that faucet. It’s a five-gallon bucket, and it’s five minutes. Yeah, that should actually be perfect. And then we’ll chill this down and that will take Sometime, but I need to get. I just realized I need to get a thermometer to check the chill rate of this because this is not the anvil where it tells me the temperature. So actually, we will go do that now. 510 minutes left in the boils, I added the yeast nutrients, and that’s just about it. I got a little graduated cylinder filled it with sanitizing solution, and I have my stick thermometer soaking in that because I am going to have to take actual physical readings, which I did not consider until now, but I have everything to do that obviously. I kinda just went through that in the last uh recording or at least talking about how I needed to take physical readings. So all prepared for chilling. I’m not prepared for racking yet. And I’m going to rehydrate my yeast, which I never do. But I’m going to this time because I kind of need them up and running, so to speak, when I pitch into this huge wort.

1:29:36 That I think it’s going to be huge. It’s actually reduced quite a bit. So the starting pre-boil gravity is already pretty high, so I expect the ending gravity to be quite high. So I’m going to rehydrate that yeast. That’s going to take about 15-20 minutes, but chilling is going to take quite a while because this is quite a large amount of wort as usual. Okay, boil is done, whirlpool is running, pump is running through the chiller. I have zero airlock now in my chugger pump. I’m wondering if it had something to do with the turbulence of the boil, which I kind of, now that I see that and experiencing this again, I kind of remember that being a thing. Not a problem, just a thing. So now we’re good. We are cooking. So, well, not cooking, we’re chilling actually. So. I’m gonna let this run for about, I don’t know, 10-15 minutes and then take the, I almost said gravity measurement, that’s not what I meant, take the temperature and see where we’re at before I start adding ice to the boil because we’re outside. That ice is gonna melt faster than it does inside. But I bought more ice to compensate for that, but possibly not enough in the Florida heat. We shall see.

1:30:55 Brewing is done, the wort is cooled. It’s been transferred to the fermenter, yeast is pitched, put into ALDC. I did take a final measurement. The goal, the target was 1.095. The actual was 1.104, which means we’re now out of 10% range and possibly into 12% or severe under attenuation. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. I have some ideas if it stalls. I think yeah, this is gonna be an interesting Beer in the end. So I’m pretty excited again. I know I’ve said that all day, but really have been. Good brew day. Cleaning up is going to stink because it’s been a while since I’ve done this. I don’t recall what the best way to do this is, especially with this chiller, but we’re going to figure it out. Probably have to reinvent how to do it. A little while after I cleaned up and put everything away, and didn’t record any of that because it’s cleaning up and putting things away. So, nothing exciting there. As far as any tricks I couldn’t remember about cleaning everything, nothing really came back to me because I don’t think there was any real trick to it. The pump.

1:32:09 is was a little tricky. It’s not as easy to Take apart as the anvil ones were, so I just gave it a really good spraying with hot water through one end of the pump out to the other. That should at least get enough stuff out of there so that it won’t grow anything or kind of seal shut from anything drying sticky. So it should be good to go next time I use it, which may Mm, nah it’s not gonna be three years. It’s not gonna be the next brew, but probably do something like this again, not the whole mash, but some kind of gas boil with the anvil as the the Mash ton. I did, let’s see, I’m trying to think of things I didn’t record. I did add direct oxygen to the wort for about a minute. I do expect the yeast to eventually take off once they do, so I’m gonna put a blow off tube on tonight before I go to bed. I actually thought of that before. Putting it into the fermentation fridge anyway. But I was tired and wanted to be done, so all I wanted to do was airlock it and get it in there.

1:33:10 And put the blow-off tube on later because I knew the yeast are not going to take off that quickly. They may take off tonight yet, like even before I go to bed. But as far as getting to blow-off tube levels, that won’t happen. The earliest that would happen is overnight, if even that fast. So, not too worried about that. I should have time to do that. And I think that’s about. All except, oh, I did want to mention this is a reason I recorded in the first place. All in all, it was an eight and a half hour brew day. So I’m reasonably sure it’s the longest brew day I’ve ever had. But it not it’s not as long as I allotted for. I thought I actually thought it was gonna be 10 hours, but I allotted 12 hours in my schedule for it in case I was wrong there. So eight and a half is pretty. I’m pretty surprised by that, especially with the double, not double mash, I already messed that up, the reiterated mash and then the two-hour boil. That’s. Eight and a half hours is pretty good for that. I usually Have a six-hour brew day with the five-gallon batch at the anvil. Sometimes a little shorter if I start the water overnight, but.

1:34:16 Eight and a half for to get it to one point one oh four starting gravity. That’s, I’m surprised. I’m pleasantly surprised by that. That’s pretty cool. So now it’s in the hands of the yeast. We’ll see what happens next. It’s 15 hours later after pitching the yeast. We do have a Krausen, so the yeast are active. And with that, I added a second dose of oxygen, which is something I planned to do during this whole process, but hadn’t talked about it until now. What that does is help the yeast kind of propagate longer and create more cells and take care of the large amounts of sugars that we have in there that use the oxygen to build their cell walls, which The healthier their cell war walls are, the more they’re going to propagate. And what I have read, I haven’t done that before, but what I have read is: this is about the time to do it. The time listed varies. Like some people say 12 hours later, some will say 18. Most say, I will say, I haven’t seen anyone said, do it past 24 hours.

1:35:19 But the kind of physical indicator that I’ve read, and I’ve not done this, so I’m not entirely sure, but what I’ve read is once you have your krausen started to high krausen in that range, we’re not quite at high krausen yet. I expect that to be later today. But when you’re in that range, that’s when it’s a good time to do that because the cells are propagating and they’ll need that oxygen. It was clearly fermenting, they’re clearly propagating, so I added. the oxygen and hopefully it helps blow through the ridiculous amounts of sugars that are in there, even more than I planned. So that’s where it’s at now. And that’s just a waiting game. I expect in about another eight to ten hours to really see some activity and Be really happy that I did put a blow-off tube on last night. I didn’t report that, but I did put that on before I went to bed because I was afraid there was a possibility of. The need for a blow off tube overnight didn’t happen, but I would be willing to bet money if I didn’t put it on there. It would have happened.

1:36:24 For three days in the fermentation, in fact I’m even gonna look at it to kind of describe, you can still see a lot of the colonies of yeast and the turbulence that the whole fermentation process creates with the CO2 release and everything, it’s still going very strong. And I think we’re past In fact, I can visually see it. We’re past the blow-off tube part, which we did need. The blow-off tube was absolutely needed. I’m sure it saved me a mess because for two days, Two full days it was pushing krausen out of the blow-off tube into the of sanitation solution and just the bubbling constant bubbling that was going on. Sounded like a like a witch’s cauldron just continually just for for about two days. They didn’t actually Check it every hour for 48 hours because I didn’t sleep, of course, but it was going strong. But I think we’re past the blow-off tube stage, so I’m going to put airlock on. Later today, no hurry. And there’s a huge. Let me look at it again. Let’s see if I can get like a, there is.

1:37:29 like a good two inches, maybe more. Of trub on the bottom of the fermenter now, and all that is. There’s most of it, I should say. Some of it is going to be proteins and particulates, but most of it is yeast because the yeast propagated so much. Now, when I Cold crash it, that’ll condense. But right now it’s about the biggest. yeast cake, I think I’ve seen in maybe ever because of the big beer. One little frustrating thing, and didn’t dawn on me until I saw the problem. I put in one of my Tilt hydrometers, which they’re not. I don’t know why I have. Such bad luck with them in general as you’re going to hear. But my first bad luck is that they’re never accurate, but I don’t really use them to measure the gravity. What they are is they’re floating hydrometers, and they’re supposed to show you what your current gravity is so that you know how your fermentation is progressing. Mine have always been wrong, but the one thing it’s really good at is letting me know when things have slowed down or even stopped because the number stops changing. Even though the number is wrong, at least the number stops changing.

1:38:33 Last time I used this particular one, the red one, I have a red one, I have a blue one. The red one, Gave me some bizarre wacky numbers in temperature and gravity. It’s like, okay, something, either this battery is going or this thing is dying. Forgot that, and I put that, that’s the one I put in. And now I’m getting no reading. So definitely, either the unit is dead or the battery is dead. Hopefully, just the battery. No terribly big deal I have in EasyDens. that only needs a few drops of Beer to get a reading on, and I have the starting gravity. So, between getting the reading, I can even use a refractometer if I want to, but the EasyDens will be more, I guess, more accurate. It’ll be less work, less calculations. So, I can still get the reading. with not Terrible amount of effort. So, but I’m nowhere near checking it yet. I’m not going to check it for at least a week. In fact, I might, let’s see, it’s three days into it.

1:39:34 I think by day five I’ll start raising the temperature a little bit. Kind of boost the yeast. So today’s day four, right? Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. So tomorrow, maybe. I’ll raise it a degree. For two days, another degree for a couple days, up until it seems like we’re kind of. Past the point of uh We’re levering out on fermentation, I guess. That’s what I’ll start measuring. So that’s where we’re at and looking good. Hoping this. Attenuates enough to Get it to that percentage I want, somewhere between nine and ten, though it could be more now that I overshot my original gravity. But if we can at least get in that range and get rid of the cloyingly sweet sugars, I’ll be happy. I replaced the blow-off tube with an airlock, like I kind of mentioned I was going to do in the last recording, and the airlock’s popping not as aggressively as I expected it to. And now I say that, it seems to pick up maybe the build up in the headspace after the short time the blow off tube was removed, needed to build up. Okay, it’s pretty. It’s a little more active than it originally was when I just took a look. So, okay, that’s probably about the pace it should be now at the fourth day.

1:40:54 Of fermentation, everything still looks pretty active in there, so not terribly worried about it. Like I said, I think in recording I’ll take a measurement tomorrow actually, or I’ll ramp up the temperature tomorrow. I’ll start adjusting and filling with the fermentation and seeing where everything is very soon here and make a plan of when I’m going to think. That this is done. It’s gonna be up to the yeast to figure that out. It’s really not in my hands, but I at least can kind of plan to see, guess what they’re going to do. So my initial fears were a little unfounded, maybe a lot unfounded, because with these readings and the calculation, our gravity right now is 1.020, which for any other beer I’d be making would be sweet. I would say that stalled if that’s where we’re at in nine days. However, this started very, very high, 1.104, which you probably remember. much better than I do, since you just heard it and it wasn’t over a week later. That puts us at exactly, exactly, and no decimal, twelve percent.

1:42:05 So I think we’re okay. Wow. Okay. I did not expect to get to 12. And I have some here. In fact, I. I’m going to taste it now. Actually, let me pull. I’m going to do one more read, like a secondary reading. I’m pouring some in another cup to taste and leaving enough to do a secondary reading just in case. I don’t know what the problem would be. There should be no temperature range difference. It’s at 67, and the room is at 74. So I’m just going to take a second reading for a second opinion, but I’m going to taste. What I have here So, oh my. And no carbonation. That’s that’s pretty good. Hot. 12% nine days old. And by the time we serve this in August, it is, to give you an idea how long it’s gonna sit, it is July 12th. Right? Yeah, July 12th. So we got a month and 16 days, so a month and two weeks, roughly, for it to age. Oh, that’s going to be nice.

1:43:11 I’m pretty excited about this beer. So, with it being 12%, I clearly don’t want it to ferment anymore. I’m not sure it could ferment anymore. Like I said, there hasn’t been any activity for a couple of days. There’s probably something going on, but not enough to bring it up. Terribly much, maybe a measurable amount, maybe like 12.1 to 12.2. So I think I’m going to go ahead and start cold crashing. I am going to be, this is my only concern, I’m going to be away. Starting Wednesday. It’s Sunday. And I’ll be back the following Sunday. So I don’t want to cold crash it too quick. Usually the preferred method of cold crashing is over a week, but I might be able to cheat that and do it over the next three days if I give it 24 hours for each step. I’m going to look that up. To see if that is a good idea or a bad idea, but I’m also not wanting to leave it at the temperature it’s at for the next week either. So I’m a little torn. So I think I’m gonna lean towards the cold crashing unless I see something that says to 100% not do that. So I’m actually gonna look that up now. And if it’s safe, I’m gonna do it now because it is six o’clock and I

1:44:27 will be leaving uh that gives me to date and then I can set it again Monday that’s a second temperature drop and then Tuesday that’s a third temperature drop then I’m out Wednesday maybe I could like shave off a couple of degrees and do it before I leave Wednesday’cause I have a m I have a close to noon flight. It’s 11 o’clock. I won’t be leaving the house till about 9.30 10 so I can do it on the way out if I set a reminder. So I’m going to look that up and see what my best plan is. I’m really hesitant to leave it sit another week at 67 degrees because I don’t think it’ll get too much more for a minute. But again, I can taste where it’s at. It needs to age. So I’d like to get that aging done as quick as possible. And then I’ll start thinking about doing the Amburana addition when I’m back. So let me look that up and I’ll tell you what my decision is in the next recording. Possibly one of the first times in my life I think the internet unanimously agrees, or at least close to unanimously agrees, or closest I’ve ever seen, I should say, is to let it sit for another week because it’s such a big beer and it’s still got a lot of things to come together. Letting it sit at this higher temperature.

1:45:38 Is all it’s going to do at this point? If it’s not fermenting anymore, the live yeast that are still there at the generation they’re at in this beer are going to continue to clean it. Everything I’ve read for big beers like this is to let it sit at this higher temperature. So that decision is pretty much made. In fact, I think I’m going to bump it up just one more degree to kind of get it going again because that’s what I’ve seen. I’ve actually seen 68 to 70 at this point. I don’t feel comfortable at 70. I think that’s too warm, but 68 I can live with. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna bump it up to 68 and let it sit for the time I’m gone. And when I come back, we’ll work with the Amburana. Back from my trip, and once I got in and settled, unloaded, and all the things you do when you return from a trip, I checked out the spirals and they’re completely submerged in the bourbon now. They’ve taken on enough liquid, absorbed enough liquid to now sink and no longer be buoyant. But I did ask my wife to shake that mason jar.

1:46:39 Every time she could think, could remember, just to make sure it all got covered. So it looks good. I am going to let it sit for. Couple more days and then I’ll add it. And then I’m going to take a sample every day. Everything I read said sample it every two days, but I really don’t want to accidentally cross into what I think is too much. By one day, if I can avoid it. So I’ll be sampling it like every 24 hours until I get the balance I like on the beer. And I did buy a medical pipette, a Pyrex glass something. Some kind of medical grade, not well, I don’t care about the medical grade, but it’s a medical type of pipette. To take a sample, it’s a little more maneuverable than my wine thief in the top of a carboy. And I should be able it’s I forget how many milliliters it is, 20, 30? I think it’s 30. Yeah, 30, because I wanted it long. I wanted to get it a sample from the top, middle, and bottom, because I’m sure without agitation, those flavors are kind of gonna congeal around the wood. So that should give me a nice sample and a little more controllable too than the wine thief to do samples like that.

1:47:52 Uh, yeah, I haven’t tried it yet, but I will soon. Probably in three days or so, it’ll be probably very soon in recordings for you. So that’s it, that’s where we’re at. Looking good, ready to get the Amburana on and Kind of finish off the flavor profile of this beer and then get to packaging and aging it. It’s another brew day, but that’s not what this recording is about. I’m just saying that in case you hear the fans for the Anvil Foundry going from where I’m recording, I am talking about, I just added these spirals to the fermenter, and two things I wanted to talk about. One was spirals, it is plural because I had to break it to get it into the jar. That I was soaking in with bourbon. I don’t think I mentioned that before. It just kind of dawned on me now because the process I went through this time, I had to go through twice, and it was a little more ordeal than I thought it was gonna be. Everything I had read said to add the spirals when you’re at fermentation temperature, not after your cold crash. So I, and Amburana, as I’ve mentioned several times.

1:48:57 Does not need a lot of contact time. So I’m figuring I’m gonna take these out in a couple days and then I have to cold crash for like you know week after that. I don’t wanna leave them in that extra week because then it’s gonna, it may not draw as much flavor when it gets to the cold crash temperature, but the cold it’s not like if flipping a switch. So I wanna get those spirals out before I get through that process. So what I did was get I got some fishing line. Cut a couple strands of it, a few feet, I don’t know how long I didn’t measure it, and I actually soaked them in sanitizer. I don’t know how dangerous unsanitized fishing line is, but I figured why take that chance. And then I tied them to the spirals and then tied them to the other side of the fishing line to a toothpick so I could just pull them out when I think the flavor is ready to go. I here was the tricky part. I put on not rubber gloves. I think they’re called nitrate gloves. They’re blue gloves. I’m not even sure. Nitrate sticks in my head. I’m not sure that’s the right word for them. It begins with an N, but I put gloves on so I could tie them because I knew I could be handling the spirals with this, tying the fishing line onto it.

1:50:05 Fishing line is very difficult to maneuver with any kind of gloves on, apparently. And it took me way longer than I thought it was going to. But I did get them tied on. And then I could tie the other ends to the toothpick with my hands because that part of the fishing line wasn’t going into the beer. But oh my God, I thought this was gonna be like. I don’t know. I was gonna say 10 minutes, but I don’t even think I thought it was gonna be that long. I don’t know how long it was. It was way longer than I expected. But they’re in. I’m gonna start sampling in a couple days, maybe even just one day, 24 hours, just to see how fast this is gonna add character to it. But they’re in, they’re soaking, they’re hopefully doing their job and making this beer just a little more. special for this event. It’s been two and a half days since I put these spirals into the Wee Heavy and I checked it just like the, I think the internet almost unanimously, if not unanimously, has been talking about Amburana in beer has said start checking in two days. And now I see why, because it is.

1:51:14 Exactly. what I want in this beer right now. In fact, Just to save another recording, I’ve now taken them out because I could see how. Well easily one more day wouldn’t be too much. I just didn’t even want it to give it another hour. I was like, I’m getting up now. This is exactly what it tastes like. And it tastes phenomenal. The wee heavy bass is still there. There’s an accompaniment of that cinnamon type. Flavor that Amburana brings without being like that, the kind of sharpened little burn that cinnamon actually does bring. It just has that little bit of flavor. There’s a nice wood tannic quality to it. And then there’s just a hit of vanilla. It’s the vanilla in from the wood, but just a little bit of all of that. Mixed in with the or accompanying, I should say, well, mixed in, I guess, technically with the base that Wee Heavy is amazing. This is exactly what I hoped it would be. And I’m glad I checked the beer when I did easily. This has only been two and a half days, roughly. I’m guessing the half. One more full day would be too much. If this is what two days has done,

1:52:23 And one more day would have been too much. So this is. Yeah, the, I don’t even say the rumors, the reports of Amburana infusing quickly is no joke. No joke. So I have got those spirals out. I am now cold crashing because it did say when working with wood in general, whatever it was, Amburana or otherwise, should do it at your fermentation temperature. Not, you shouldn’t do it cold, is what it came down to. So now. I’ve already set everything up to Cold Crash. I put the CO2. Straps on there and yeah, just gonna cold crash it for probably about three, four days. Well, after it gets down to temperature, so probably next five days, I’ll do the temperature ramp down in three over three days. So it’s doesn’t shock whatever yeast is in there and make them do anything weird to the beer. That’s Of the Few yeast that are still alive, and then keg it and carb and start getting it ready for the event. I am in my car, but I’m not driving out to get anything related to this beer nor dropping off anything related to this beer. I’m in my car because there was such a long time between kegging and letting that beer just kind of mellow and age and blend together and then actually carbonating the beer. But by the time I got to carbonating the beer,

1:53:46 Apparently I forgot I was recording this episode because it didn’t even occur to me to record while I was doing that. So it just hit me now that I didn’t do that. I did it like three, four nights ago, day actually days ago, it was on the weekend. Little while ago, so I’m recording now. There was nothing special to report. It was, I looked in the style guidelines to see what the carbonation level should be, and it’s moderate, which is good because the Blichmann QuickCarb that I use is what it does the best. It’s a little It struggles with getting it highly carbonated and the like a lower carbonation, like for a British bitter, it does okay. I think it’s still a little too much, but that’s actually easier to remedy than when the beer’s not carbonated enough. But that middle ground, that moderate, medium carbonation, whatever word you use to describe the middle ground of carbonation level. It does that pretty much. automatically so

1:54:46 That’s what I did. Ran it for an hour and 20 minutes. That’s 20 minutes longer than they say you need to, but. with the Florida. heat the temperature rises On the beer very quickly when it goes through the lines and is to the open air, because I don’t really have a way to do it in a refrigerated system. So I put the extra 20 minutes to get a little more in there. I also increased the carp the PSI. On the regulator about halfway through to push a little more in there too to compensate for the temperature. But that was done. I tasted it when it was done. It is. Better than it was last time I tasted it, and now it’s going to be Aged for, let’s see, I did it Saturday. The event is Friday, so well, a week. It’ll be a week by the time I’ll be a week in a few hours by the time I serve it. but I’m gonna probably pour myself a glass. Ish, just a little bit, half glass, because this is mostly for the event Thursday or Friday to record an in-studio recording of the tasting. So that is actually next. I don’t think there’s anything else to talk about.

1:55:48 If there is, that’ll be before that, but the tasting is coming very soon. You’ve sat through probably the longest episode I’ve ever recorded. We’re nearing the end. Alright, it is finally tasting time and I’m incredibly Excited to talk about this beer and describe it. And first, let’s start with the appearance. It is generally, I guess you call it a mahogany brown. And if you Hold it up to the light if the light catches it right. This is kind of hard to take a picture of, but you can see it in the picture. There’s like a ruby-ish highlight to it, not quite bright red ruby, but definitely in the ruby spectrum. And like I said, you can see it on the cover photo. In fact, if you see the cover photo, you’ll see it’s held right under a light to try to catch a little bit of light to give the Color a little more of a showcase of this beer because it’s just not a flat brown. It has a very small head that is already gone, had a very small head on pour, I should say, because it’s actually medium light carbonated.

1:56:53 And it’s a little undercarbonated for style. And that’s not really what I planned. I did actually carbonate it to the volume it should be, but Do you believe the very high alcohol percentage on this is what kind of didn’t let the carbonation set into. The rest of the body of the beard. It’s still carbonated, it still has some body to it. I’m not saying at all that I wanted more, I’m just saying that’s kind of where it went. And that’s and the head just completed it dissipated, which I expect with every high ABV beer Russian Imperial Stout, barley wine, old ale. They’re not known for their giant head retentions. But let’s get to the important part here, aroma and taste. You rummage right off the bat. You get a Completely I mean a completely incredibly complex Array of aromas. And it’s hard to pick out what’s first. In fact, Every time I go back to this

1:57:55 It’s something is different. So, I’m just gonna tell you everything I’m getting from this. So, first, I get a very light. Like a breath of alcohol. Like, there’s a little bit of that heat sweet alcohol just coming off the top of this. And behind that Is the malt character definitely the specialty malts the long boil melanoidins are present really present a hint and I mean a hint Of what I might call a roast character, maybe slightly closer to coffee. I think, I mean, coffee is a roasted type flavor, but it’s a little less harsh and straight up roast from my description. So I’d say just a touch. Kind of that coffee roast. And then. Get That wood character, but not super strong, not like a raw wood, just a little bit hidden of it there. And Weaving in and out of everything I just described is a cinnamon-like aroma and a vanilla-like aroma. And that’s

1:58:59 Actually, a characteristic of the wood. That is from the Amburana. It’s Pulled that, well, the last three things I said there. The wood character definitely has pulled that out. The cinnamon character, that is from the Amburana wood. And the vanilla, it’s the vanilla in the wood itself, in the yoke itself. So. That’s where all that is coming from. There was no vanilla, no cinnamon in this beer whatsoever. Now on to the tasting. This This is a beer that just gets better. every time I taste it. And I think it’s because This is the first beer in a long time. I made that benefits from aging. It just gets so much better. I can’t believe how much better this is. I just had this. Let’s see, it was that was Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, three nights ago. In fact, I probably had it. Almost exactly now. It’s it’s three nights and plus some hours. I know I think I had it about four o’clock. And it’s a Six now, if you wanted to know. So it plus two hours.

2:00:02 Three days later, it’s not a completely different beer. It’s an even better version of the beer than what I had three days ago. It’s as un Unbelievable. And everything I described in Aroma. comes out so strong in the best possible way on taste. So let me Let me get you some specifics other than just help. I’ll just say it, how fucking good it is. Mm-hmm. One thing I’ve noticed as opposed to when I kegged it. I actually kinda noticed this a little bit Few nights ago. The alcohol, like when I first, when I after I carbonated this and then ran the lines, there’s about 15 feet of line. The beer just gets stuck in there after you carbonate. You don’t want to push it out either because then you’re pushing oxygen into your keg and that’s bad for beer. So I just drained the lines into a glass and tasted it. It tasted very good, much like this, but it also tasted like someone put a shot of whiskey in my. beer, but it was a it was in a good way. That alcohol heat that That burning, that kind of like spirit.

2:01:07 Character, that’s gone. It is smooth. You know, there’s alcohol in it because you can taste it, but the burn is completely gone. What is a little more prominent than it was before is the tanic character of the wood that kind of tannins that pools. That gets pulled out of the wood. So there’s a little more wood character, or at least it’s coming out more now because that alcohol heat is gone, I think, but in a very pleasant way. But let’s keep going here. Depth. That rich malt character. Is just such a good base for everything else this does. And the cinnamon and vanilla character from that that wood is just such a compliment to that. It’s not a, I wouldn’t call it a Direct character of the beer. It’s a compliment to everything else in here. Maybe a little, I am entering this as a wood-aged. Now, since I have some left over, in fact, spoiler alert, Taste has come and gone. We’ll talk about that here shortly. And oh oh man, I’m swirling it and I just Took a bit of I have it in a snifter basically, a tulip glass, so is actually what it is.

2:02:13 The aroma is so good. What was I saying? Oh, I entered this as a wood. Uh beer, and if the judges really need to know what Amburana is, they also are going to say it should be in a spice beer because it can kind of taste like a spice beer character. In fact, like Be interesting to enter it in both, but I am not giving that much away to beer judges and beer competitions. I’m keeping. But little what there was left. There’s enough for the next competition and then enough to enjoy with some friends and hopefully let’s sit for a little while, a couple bottles as well. So let’s see, let’s keep going here. It is just so incredibly complex. I mean, this is without a doubt. I mean, there’s not even, I can’t even think of a close second place. This is the most complex beer I’ve ever made in my life. And it’s just so. It’s not crushable because you don’t want to drink a big glass of just this because it all that complexity can get a little palate fatiguing, but a nice 10-ounce tulip glass, which is what I have.

2:03:14 And I actually had to split it with my wife. Uh she said you shouldn’t drink all that, it’s twelve percent, so you should give me half of it, which is what I did and uh it’s this is that’s as much as you you want of this. You may want two of these eventually, but probably not back to back. I am this was made exclusively for Taste. But I’m going to make this again for me. It’s. I am entering what I have in the next competition. One, because I need the entries, and two, it would be fine. I think it’s fine. There’s not like any kind of contractual obligation. Be kind of cool to put a follow-up post that the Taste exclusive beer is now a whatever metal award-winning beer if it happens to place. We’ll see. It might not do anything, and no one will ever know who I entered it. But I’m gonna make this again for me. And um for for friends and and people in my brew club to share, uh this is not a festival beer. This would not be appreciated at a festival the way so many people come and just

2:04:17 Drink to drink. This, this might be one, it might be one when I do make it again. I might grab like four bottles. And when you start getting people that you know appreciate beer, say, hey, you want to try something? Unique, but it’s not something you want to make five gallons of and put on tap because you’re you’re basically Giving away a lot of work. That’s the other thing about this. What I’m really, really happy about is that. I can taste every bit of work that went into this. And I’m not just saying that because I put all that work into it. You can really taste. You can taste the three hour boil. You can taste that it’s all grain. There was no Direct sugars or what was the other thing? Um Any malt extract put into this to get the ABV. It’s all grain recipe. The you can taste the three-hour boil, that really rich. That’s, I didn’t talk about body, so let me talk about body real quick. I mean, no doubt it’s full-bodied. It’s lightly carbonated, which is fine. It has some carbonation to it. Um I was aiming for more, but I think within it works. And I think that’s about all you’ll be able to get into it with this 12% alcohol. Um smooth and I’m not sure what else to say about it. Body is it’s definitely uh

2:05:28 What you’d expect for That beer, so but you can taste that. The whole three-hour boil is in that. The the very careful timing of the Amburana noticeable, I think, or uh recognizable because it’s not too overwhelming and it’s just enough to balance it out. And I think the fact that it’s starting to age now is also showing as well in a very, very good way. So I take one more sip before we talk about taste. So this was a pretty big hit at Taste. In fact, we were a pretty big hit at Taste. We had the most beers. Brews. I shouldn’t say beers. We had the most brews of anybody by far in the beer garden. We had 16. Five meads. Four siders. No, four Celters, sorry. Three Celts, sorry. Hold on, was this? Let me see. Five meads. Yes, five meads, three seltzers, one cider, and the rest were beer. Okay, I had the. Go through that again. I don’t even try to name everything that was on there, but this was one of them. And having it listed at 12% and having it listed as a Taste exclusive really made this beer move. It was probably one of the kegs.

2:06:33 was The most Well, I don’t want to say this empty. Here’s the thing. This was not a beer fest. And these aren’t, weren’t all. There were 2,000 attendees. It was a huge event. Absolutely huge event. 2,000 people, 2,000 tickets sold. Not all 2,000 people were beer people. So we didn’t kick anything, which was good. We had everything available. But we came home with a little more, I’d say a little more than half of what we brought as far as total capacity. The Amburana. This one, the Wee Heavy Sweet Charity, that’s probably about half full when I brought it home. What else did I bring? The Pale Ale was a little more than half full, and I made a black IPA. Now it was about half full. And that’s about what everything was: give or take. Some were a little, a little more, some were a little, a little more full, some were a little less full. But we know now what we can. expect as far as how much we’re going to serve next year because we were invited back on the spot. Having 2,000 people having paid an incredible amount of money for their tickets, I was incredibly shocked how friendly, I know this sounds weird, how friendly, nice, and happy everybody was to be part of this. Because I don’t know that I didn’t expect this directly, but it wouldn’t surprise me that someone came in with a chip on our shoulder saying, I spent this amount of money. I am going to be.

2:07:53 Ultra-critical to everything that I’m getting for it. And no one seemed to be. Or maybe our beer and cider meads and seltzers are that good. I’m not sure. My point is: it was an incredible night. It was a lot of fun. Again, I said this before we got invited back on the spot. We got invited to three other events as well. One we can’t do. It’s like a music festival that it’s actually a for-profit festival. So we can’t do that legally, but we can do the other two if we decide to do them. I made no commitments because we already do 12 local things. Branching out to a 13th and 14th might be a little. little much, but incredible night. And here’s the thing, here is the biggest thing about this. Is the money that it raised in one night in one event from five o’clock? That’s when the media came in. There weren’t even people there yet, five o’clock to 11 p.m., six hours. Of coming in. And there was other chances for donations. There’s a thing called a wine locker where our wine door where they had like hundreds of keys. I couldn’t even count how many keys yet. 75 bucks a pop. One of those keys opened a door that was on standing on a door free on a door frame and behind it was a huge mountain of wine. I think it was like$7,000 of wine.

2:09:01 So I don’t know how many of those keys got sold, but a lot. There’s a liquor locker. Same deal. You’re given, I think, a combination or maybe a key as well to open a locker. And I think that was like$1,200 or$1,500 a beer. That one was a four-digit, or not beer of liquor. That was a four-digit price. So another thing you said, I think that was a$50 fee. There was the giving tree. You paid whatever the fee was for that. I want to say$50. I’m not sure. It was some amount, and then you just go and pull one of the Cards, the envelopes that are on the tree. They’re envelope-branded envelopes for Taste. You pulled one off, and inside it was something like. I don’t know who gave what, but let’s say if Big Monster Brewing was an actual brewery, I probably would have given them like a$100 gift certificate. So they would have doubled their money. Something that’s the kind of things that were in there for restaurants and breweries and wineries and distilleries. And then there was, we got to participate in something this was pretty cool. There was called the Beer Passport. Had all, there was 18 beer stands, 16, sorry, 16 beer stands.

2:10:02 And in this passport was the uh every every brewery and a little description of them and a little block like you would stamp your passport. They give us these little circle stickers to put in. And if somebody, anybody, everybody, everyone that had the beer passport, if they had that completely filled out with all 16 stickers, they put their name. Phone number, contact information on the back of the passport and put that into a uh drawing box. And there was two prizes. We were in Beer Garden 2. Our Beer Garden 2 had a really nice Metal BrewDog. Cooler that was full of BrewDog cans. And then the other side had a Lost Coast branded. Refrigerator filled with C V distributor. distributed cans. So two prizes for that. So we got to participate in that. So that was a lot of fun as well. There’s not much about any of this episode I’m not happy about. The brew day went well. The fermentation went phenomenal to get a 12% when I was aiming for nine. And the final product is, I don’t know if it’s the best beer I ever made because I’ve made a lot of beers I’m really happy with, but it’s definitely the most complex.

2:11:18 Yeah. It’s one of the best. It’s definitely the best high ABV beer, hands down. Take my old als, take my. Barley wines that I made during the pandemic, and they don’t hold a candle to this. So, if I were to classify my beers, I’d say this is the This is the best high ABV beer I made. And here’s something I hadn’t noticed until now. I’m swirling it again because that armor is really good. There are legs. Down the sides of my glass. And that is an indication of how thick the how viscous the ABV is on this. They’re sheeting down. Usually that’s something that’s reserved for sack meads because they’re in double digits. But this is doing it in this beer. And I’m going to have another sip of it again. I can’t believe how good this is getting. And it’s warm now, too. And that’s just as good. This is one of those rare beers for me where it’s as good as it is cold as it is warm. Most of the time, when they get warm, something about it starts to express out, especially the hoppy beers. That’s when things like start getting a little grassy and vegetable. You want to drink an IPA cold or a pale ale. Pale out is a hoppy one. This tastes exactly the same.

2:12:31 As it did when I poured it, only warm, but it still tastes the same. Fantastic. I am So happy how this came out and how much work I put into this paid off, and I am. Happy to do it again. All right. That is it. That is, I believe, now officially the longest. Episode I’ve ever recorded of this series. Might also be the only one I’ve done for 2026 so far. So we’ll see what I can do about that. No promises, but with this one being such a special occasion, a special event. And a special beer, I wanted to record this. So, on that note, thanks for hanging in there for however long this comes out to be. And until I see you in the next episode, cheers.