Various Things
| May 14th, 2008First off, Iron Beer. You should really think about making your beer as soon as possible. Taking into consideration +-2 week fermentation, any secondary fermentation/hopping and whether you decide to bottle or not, now seems like as good a time as any to start. Two people I have spoke with will be bringing 6 22oz. bottles for judging along with the remainder in the keg for power drinking throughout the day. I can only assume they’re going to bottle with beer gun or counter-pressure filler. The jockey box has been taken care of, though I neglected to ask how many taps were on it. In any case, there’s 3 of us solid right now. Mike, Jim, myself. Mike and Jim brewed last weekend. I’m brewing Saturday. Anyone else want to pencil in for certain?
My barley wine experiment has officially reached “out of control” status. I checked gravity and it made it around 9.5%, give or take. That was before I put in 4 ounces of bourbon soaked oak chips and 2 heaping tablespoons of the stinkiest, smokiest and strongest lapsang souchong tea. There already is a gallon of the tea that was added prior to fermentation, though it was straight black tea and not the lapsang. Fished out a couple sips over the weekend and sweet mother of jesus… delicious. It’s unique and pretty strong tasting. Which is fine since I wasn’t making a session ale here. So, now it sits on oak chips awaiting the last ingredient, which are some specialty hops that I have on special order. Then the frankenbeer will be complete. In fact, it should be ready for sampling at Iron Beer. I’m torn on names for it. I’ve tossed around “Skull Fucker”, “Ridiculous” and “Bongwater”. I guess taste of the finished product will determine that.