Eldridge Pope AK Results

Hoping to keg up my attempt tomorrow. Unfortunately my version is a bastardized version...ended up with doing it as part of a partigyle of an English barleywine/AK split. I thought I had some grains to do a small cap for the mash, but found out i had no steeping grains on brew day. Anyway, mashed at 160F. Ended up with 1092 from first 6.5 gallons and 1034 for second 6.5 gallons. This was higher than expected for first runnings and lower than expected for second runnings (too much crush?). I then added ~3# invert #2 to the AK & ~5# invert #2 to the barleywine...estimated final OG is 1116 for barleywine & 1050 for AK. Pitched Boddington's strain and those suckers took off. Pitch temp was 68F and ambient in the room was 60F...not sure how hot the fermenters got, but the amount of blow off was rather impressive and the bubbling sounded like muffled machine gun fire. I'm hoping this unregulated temp control won't be problematic...but thinking that the thin body of the second runnings for the AK will most likely be. Time will tell.

 

1# flaked maize, along with 12# muntons maris otter and 11# valley malt 2-row. Hmm...wondering if capping with more flaked maize could have worked since I did have 2#s on hand
@Naugled, haven't quite followed the weekend brewing threads, did you end up brewing this last week?

 

the dilution method for the invert seemed to work well and I had a decent licorice flavor (maybe not great) in the end. Boiled the syrup for 20mins and made a bit of mess of the stove top from the splatter, but all-in-all I was happy with the results. I ended up making ~8# invert #2 so thought I would have some to spare, but ended up adding it all in the end.
Do you know what yeast strain you're planning on? Are you going to play with your water at all?

 

same pot I use to steam veggies like greenbeans & brocolli....maybe a gallon and it was filled maybe 3/4 of the way (?). I started with 4# sugar, 2 qts water, a bit of corn syrup, molasses and phosphoric acid.

 

Jack, is that the strain that supposedly has a krausen with a life all its own?

 

Been meaning to follow up. So as stated in my OP, I was worried about thin body of the second runnings (the AK) since I didn't cap the mash. The AK version finished at 1014 and has plenty of legs. I did end up dry hopping with 1/2 oz of EKG. Still carbing up (1.7 volumes). Looking forward to giving this one a go when it's complete.
The Thomas Hardy clone still is bubbling away and has some krausen (I fermented that cooler than the AK).

 

Maybe you're correct...I used 1318 and the top cropping ability of that yeast was on display with the AK batch as it left a 1/2" cake on the bottom of my blow-off collection vessel. The barleywine batch still has a krausen 10 days after pitching (and there was heavy activity within hours of pitching on brewday).
First carbed tastings last night from the bottom of the keg are a little on the sugary sweet side...

 

I can't say exactly now...but the corn syrup was supposedly for stability (to prevent crystallization), but obviously that wasn't needed since I used up all the invert. I think it was like half a cup though.
The blackstrap, I think I calculated it to be like 70 g (?). Unfortunately I didn't take brewing notes on making the invert
although...i did write down the calculations on the instruction sheet...will try to check later and report back.

 

so 4 lbs of sugar is added to 4 pints of water...and as they say, a pint's a pound the world around. Boil-off of water, added back in the form of phosphoric acid, molasses & corn sugar was my estimate. Figure it was 8# total...never measured it though since my scale only goes to like 6 lbs.