Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Pliny the Elder Clone

Bottled/kegged the Pliny clone. Pete took his half in bottle form, so I was able to brush up on the bottling technique. I kegged my half. It finished with a FG of 1.016 giving it a slight sweetness as Pliny typically has, and 9% alcohol. Russian River claims they started at 1.071OG and 8% abv, so I'm not too far off. The original recipe was designed by Tasty McDole from the Brewing Network, but I had to tweak it a bit to equal the hops I currently had. Either way without carbonation it tasted amazing!

Next brew probably in a month or so and will probably be the last one of the winter. Planning on a Westy 12/St Bernardus 12 clone.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Brew #8 Pliny the Elder Clone

So as it rained this weekend, I had some last minute free time. I stopped at the brew shop Saturday and decided to pick up some supplies and make a clone of one of my favorite beers, Pliny the Elder. This is also helpful as it's not available around here and I have to trade for it. The brew went pretty smoothly and I ended up with an SG of 1.085 and my goal was 1.084 so that's great. It already fermenting like crazy, so it should be good. Oh yeah, this has an estimated 196.7 IBUs, yeah that's correct it's not a typo! And being dry hopped with 4 more oz of hops for 5 gal batch. Pliny is a crazy bad ass West Coast style Imperial IPA and it shows. This will also help me clear out some of my hops to make room for the new batch I just received. Can't wait to try it.

Beervana

Last Friday night I helped volunteer at Beervana. It was a great time. Lots of great beers, good people, very well organized, and best of all I made out like a bandit with beer. Not only did I get to sample everything I wanted for free (including some very rare beers) I also got to take home about 10 great beers (Duvel, Ommegang, St Fuellien, and more) and I got a growler of Smuttynose Big-A IPA cask and DFH 75min IPA dry hopped with Vanguard. I also got to sample the other two Johnny Cask 75min IPA dry hops which were Warrior and I forgot the third one. I then listed to interesting speeches by Rob Todd of Allagash, and Sam Calagione from DFH. At the end of the night I helped Rob pour his awesome Allagash beers while he did an interview, and then accidentally broke hit tap handle while I was taking it off the keg at the end. He was a great guy and just told me to take it home as a souvenir! I'll def be going back next year.