<Cue the Imperial March>
Brewed 31 May, 2004
Ingredients:
1 lb. 40 deg. Lovibond Crystal Malt
1 lb. 90 deg. Lovibond Crystal Malt
1 lb. Roast Barley
1 lb. Black Patent Malt
3/4 lb. Chocolate Malt
6.6 lb. Light Malt Extract
6.6 lb. Dark Malt Extract
2 oz. Galena hops
1 oz. Fuggles hops
1 tsp. Irish Moss
1 Package Wyeast Whitbread Ale Yeast
Procedure:
| Step | Time | Instruction |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | X | Place the bags of malt extract into hot water to make them more manageable. |
| 2 | X | Add 2 gallons of water to the brewing pot. Raise temperature to 150 degrees F. |
| 3 | X | Process the malts and barley in the food processor lightly to crack them. Add them to muslin bags and tie the bags closed. |
| 4 | 12:45 | Place the bags into the cold water and allow the grains to steep. Maintain the temperature at 145 – 150 degrees F. |
| 5 | 13:00 | After 15 minutes, sparge with 1/2 gallon of hot water. Discard the grain bag. |
| 6 | X | Add the Malt Extracts to the pot. |
| 7 | X | Stir the pot until the malt extract is completely dissolved. Make sure no extract remains on the bottom of the pot. |
| 8 | 13:17 | Restart the burner and bring the pot to a boil. |
| 9 | X | Place 1 oz. of Galena hops into a muslin bag. |
| 10 | 13:31 | When the pot begins to boil, add the Galena hops to the pot. |
| 11 | X | Monitor the pot for the first 10 minutes to make sure it does not boil over. If it appears ready to boil over, turn down the heat. |
| 12 | X | Place 1 oz. Fuggles hops into a muslin bag. |
| 13 | 14:01 | 30 minutes after the pot has started boiling, add the Fuggles hops to the pot. |
| 14 | X | Place 1 oz. of Galena hops into a muslin bag. |
| 15 | 14:26 | 55 minutes after the pot started boiling, add the Galena hops and Irish Moss to the pot. |
| 16 | 14:31 | Five minutes later, turn off the heat. |
| 17 | X | Place 1.5 gallons of cold water in a sanitized carboy. |
| 18 | X | Cool the pot as quickly as possible. |
| 19 | X | When the temperature of the wort is below 120 degrees F, pour it into the fermenter. Stir vigorously. |
| 20 | X | When the fermenter temperature is at 70 degrees or below, pitch the yeast. |
| 21 | Pull a sample from the fermenter and measure and record the Original Gravity: 1.097 |
Yes, that’s a 1.097 OG. Yes, that’s freakin’ huge. This stuff is like a syrup, almost. Sadly, it looks like we’ve blown off a good three quarts in the initial fermentation, though some of that can be made up with water during the transfer to the secondary. Due to the high amount of malt in this recipe the instructions call for a week to a week and a half in the primary fermenter, then another 4-6 weeks in the secondary. After it’s bottled, it’s another 8-12 months until it will actually be drinkable, but I’m pretty sure that the final alcohol in this sucker will be pushing 10-12%. Holy smokes! Still, I’d love to make one of these for my own. Onto the “to do” list it goes!
Yikes. Big beer!
I want to do at least one ‘big beer’ in time for FurFest…possibly a belgian-style trippel. Considering the aging needed, I’d better think about brewing it sooner than later.
Thanks for posting the recipe, I’ll be trying this recipe myself as soon as I have some free time– maybe Saturday. Tonight I’ll have to pick up a bigger carboy to brew it in to avoid losing so much to blowoff. For anyone else considering making this, I’d suggest that you take seriously the caveat about monitoring the boil so it doesn’t boil over. There was something alarming about watching this mass of frothy mud lunge for the top of the pot…
Yes, this is the first batch that I had to watch the entire time of the boil. It was always on the edge of not boiling -vs- boiling over.