Thursday October 7, 2010 posted by: BeerNard in Brewing Experiences

So we brewed the Patriot Stout on 9/11. svossler and I got started about 10am at his maple syrup production facility, with some help from linknlog and vossybrew along the way. We managed to get the job done, although the day was full of unexpected hiccups.

First we found that the gas line to the stove was leaking. After careful consideration we determined that keeping all of our appendages was crucial, so we carried the half-heated brewpot to the other stove on the premises (of course it's good to have two stoves for circumstances like these). The boiling took forever, and a liquid propane burner is now on my list of required equipment for the next time I brew a batch this large (15gal / 5gal boil). A side effect of the excruciating time we spent waiting was a lack of focus, and consequently a nice boilover where we lost some hops to the crack between the stove and the weird antique appliance next to it.

Another side effect (this one positive) was that we searched around and found enough extra ingredients to brew another batch of trusty old Mapale at the same time (Maple syrup, a little extract, dry yeast and a bag of hops that svossler just happened to have in his car). We were able to sacrifice some of the dry extract we were going to use for that extra kick in the stout and replaced it with some "Dirty" Vossler Maple Syrup. The dirty just means unfiltered, so it had some maple solids in it. People don't like chunks on their pancakes I take it, but in beer it will all settle out, and might allow some more of the syrup to make it through the initial fermentation stage and add flavor.

During the boil, we mashed about 10lbs of blueberries in water with a potato masher and heated them up to sanitize them.

The big brewpot with boiling wort up to the brim only had one handle, but luckily, our friend Brian (linknlog) has no fear when he has access to a couple of Martha Stewart stove mittens and a little homebrew in his belly, and we got the pot off the stove and over to the keg we used for a fermenter.

**Take a step back for a second. To get the kegs ready, we bleached them, with possibly way too much bleach, and rinsed them out no less than 30 times until the smell of bleach was finally below my olfactory detection level, which apparently is significantly more acute than my brewing buddies', who thought they were clean about 20 minutes earlier and had given up watching me sweat (what was that story about the goose/elephant/chicken that made the cookies, and the other animals wouldn't help until it was time to eat them).

Ok, so now on to filling the kegs. Let's just say pouring a scorching hot 50lb pot with one handle through a tiny mesh screen held by a man holding a baby into a one inch diameter hole is not a walk in the park, and leave it at that. Somehow, a good percentage of the wort did end up where we wanted it, and the blueberry mush followed after some modifications to a funnel and a little prodding.

The last step was filling the keg with water. The syrup farm has some of the best spring water around, so we didn't feel it necessary to filter it, and thought a garden hose would be a perfectly adequate delivery system. We prepared some intricate calculations for the amount and temperature of H2O we'd need to end up with around 15gallons of wort at 80°F and our exact desired original gravity... and then completely disregarded them because I forgot my hydrometer and because, apparently, water from a hose connected to some pipes connected to a hole in the ground comes out at whatever temperature it feels like coming out that day. It worked out well though and the temperature was perfect according to the directions that the good people at Wyeast were kind enough to put on their label. As far as the density, we'll just have to assume that it was about right. We didn't have an exact target anyway because i'm not sure what contribution high viscosity blueberry mush would have.

All in all, it was a fun day, and bubbles were flowing through the blowoff tube the next morning. I know that this wasn't a finely tuned, well engineered process for brewing beer, but that's half of the fun. If we were trying to start a microbrewery and needed every batch to be the same, things would've been done a lot differently I'm sure. But we're not, and we're still experimenting with what equipment we need and how best to do things. The way I see it, if you're too concerned with all the details and having everything perfectly planned before starting something, it will never get done. Sometimes diving in head first is the best way to learn, and making mistakes is by far the easiest way to be sure you'll improve the next time. From my experience with homebrew, as long as everything is sanitary, it's pretty hard to screw up, and the final product is either great, delicious or outstanding. Happy brewing, and I'll let you know how it turns out when we drink it. In case you want to be in the hills of Allegany County for a taste or two, the goal is Thanksgiving.