Baby Got Batches

“I… like… big… beers and I cannot lie
You other brothers can’t deny
You crave rich malt pouring in your face
Sticky hops and belgian lace…”

So I won’t give Sam Calagione’s “Pain Relievas” a run for their money… but I crack myself up.

OK. So this past Sunday I brewed another 15 gallons of Choking Sun Stout. Ever since my American Brown Experiment with Brian I’ve been dying to see if I could do a bigger batch as a single mash using just the gear I’ve got. We used Brian’s burner to heat our mash-out water, and I don’t really want to run out and get a new burner just for this setup when I know I’ll be going to a sculpture at some point… So for this solo batch I did things different. Same gravity setup, as with the 20 gallon batch, but I only did 15 gallons (1.070 OG)… and I heated sparge and mashout water together, transferring the sparge water to the HLT when it hit temp and heated the rest of the mashout water to boiling. It all worked just fine… I probably could have even done a 20 gallon batch if need be. These 28 gallon kettles are monsterous… and the kettle with a false bottom works awesome as a mash tun. I need to work out a better system for keeping the tun insulated – the sleeping bags work, but they’re a PITA and are getting pretty craptacular with wort and malt stuck to them – should be fun trying to get them clean.

As of 7am this morning, they were very visible signs of fermentation, and things were rocking as of 5pm this afternoon. Big batches rule.

Latest count towards my 200 gallon limit – 160 gallons from 15 batches. Its actually been 180 gallons brewed, but 20 gallons of that went home with Brian, so I’m not counting those towards my total. And before you all start screaming DRUNK!!! and pointing the fingers, we’ve given away nearly 50 gallons this year… and another 50 is basically sitting in our basement in kegs and bottles. So no, we didn’t drink all of it. YET.