Just finished brewing a Wee Heavy today. We had some problems lautering today, but it was OK because the interesting thing about this recipe is the extra carmelization step. There are only 2 grains in the recipe, 17.5 lbs of pale 2 row, and 0.5 lbs of roasted barely. In order to not have to boil for 4+ hours to replicate the caramelization that Scottish breweries get, 1 gallon of the first runnings are taken out and reduced down separately to about 1 pint. The reducing creates a lot of chemical reactions that we would probably not be able to achieve on out set up.
The first picture is at the beginning of the boil with 1 gallon in the pot. The picture below is after ~60 minutes of boiling and there is very little liquid left. A lot of dark foam is created while the liquid is boiling, and the result is a very thick, syrupy, liquid that gets added back to the boil kettle with the rest of the wort.
We ended up with a little more than expected in the carboy, 5.5 gallons instead of 5, so we put a blow off tube on top instead of a normal airlock. The blowoff tube will allow all of the krausen (or foam) created by the fermentation to go through the tube and out into the growler filled with sanitizer solution. If we didn't do this, the krausen would eventually blow the airlock off the top and clog everything up.
We moved the Wee Heavy upstairs where it is a little bit warmer and the bubbling from the blow off tube kept us awake. Hopefully the beer will be as intense as the fermentation!
ReplyDeleteOnly at your house could the beer keep you up at night it usually puts me to sleep!
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