What's Brewing & Doing - November edition

What has been your experience with pitching bugs into an already high ABV with remaining sugars to ferment? I don’t know how much the new addition of raisins, figs and cherries temporarily dilutes the ABV, because I don’t know your batch size or the volume of the additions . . . starting at 11.5%, you've still gotta be pretty high. Reference my previous thread for background of my question.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...ll-i-need-to-blend-to-keep-bugs-happy.350323/

 

Wow, November has been a big brewing month...

Bottled 6 gal of Oldsock's Hop Juice recipe. It'll be ready in three days and I can't wait to try it!

Bottled 6 gal of Heady Topper clone. Based on tasting at bottling, that vermont ale strain is magical.

Brewed 5 gal of barleywine, fermented up to 10.8% after 6 days. Planning on splitting into 1 gal jugs and experimenting with oak and spirits. I'm thinking about bourbon, madeira, port and scotch. I also had the crazy idea for a rum coffee vanilla barleywine.

Brewed 4.5 gal of imperial stout (1.132 OG), fermented up to 12% in just 3 days and still chugging away. Most of this will likely get maple, coffee and bourbon soaked oak but I'd like to blend some with the barleywine as well.

I don't plan on doing much of anything related to homebrewing until around February now (except transferring the big beers to secondary).

 

This batch is a 5 gallon batch, getting 1 pound of raisins, 10oz of figs, 6lbs of canned tart cherries. Total sugar addition is around 22oz based on the sugar content by serving size on the packaging.

This will be the highest ABV sour I've done so I don't have much first-hand experience to lend on this subject yet. Most of my sours are in the 7-10% range. I did a consecration clone that ended up at 12% abv that I had fermented with this same abbey ale yeast, then racked to secondary onto a pound of zante currants and pitched pedio+lacto+brett L and it soured nicely.

Right now this quad is fermenting like crazy again, but will keep posting updates as to how it sours over time.

 

Just did a Gingerbread Brown Ale Extract

 

Pulled a sample of my brown ale yesterday for a hydro reading... Right now it is at 1.013 (target of 1.014), OG of 1.053. It should be done though, about a week since active fermentation began... Just letting it condition a bit longer before bottling... Debating about cold crashing for a few days.

Flavor wise, I was a bit stunned. It has exceeded my expectations for what I wanted in my brown ale, so I am ecstatic to get it in bottles and carbonated. I was targeting a Dunkel "ale", and I believe I nailed it. The grain bill consisted of a large lineup of malts including Maris Otter, Light and Dark Munich, Caramunich, Chocolate, Cara-Pils, Aromatic and melodeon malts. Nottingham yeast fermented at 60F for four days and then up to 64F-66F for the second week.

Flavor was malty, bready and an accent of caramel type sweetness in the background. Delicious.