Beers With Friends

One week after the fabled Blizzard of 2016, a small group of friends gathered at mine and Kathy's house for a day of eating, drinking, and brewing.

Ian, Kathy, and me, along with our friend Lucas, brewed a total of about 24 gallons of wort (more than half a barrel - not bad!) over the course of the day.

Lucas brewed what he called a single-hop American barleywine with Chinook hops. Ian, finally taking the training wheels off his new 15-gallon kettle, put together a double batch of his Belgian pale ale - a beer now on its fifth iteration. Finally, Kathy and I tried our hand at a Belgian tripel. The recipe, which you can find at the bottom of the post, was largely inspired by beers of the same style from New Belgium and De Brabandere (Petrus).

Early in the day, I had fun experimenting with Lucas's grain mill (pictured below). A personal grain mill is likely my next equipment purchase - it's hard to overrate the convenience, as well as the cost effectiveness of buying grains in bulk and milling at home.

Plenty of snow still on the ground, but it was unseasonably warm.

Of course, it wouldn't be a brew day if the brewers didn't drink a few beers (or, in this instance, more than a few beers). Another friend, Chad, though not a homebrewer, joined us for the libation appreciation. I don't want to turn this post into an exhaustive review of each of the beers we drank, even though most of them are worthy of such treatment, so I'll simply say that almost all of the beers pictured below were outstanding. That, and it's hard to beat aged gueuze. The 2009 Boon Gueuze Mariage Parfait was everything that the style should be - tart, crisp, funky, dry, and so good you can't put it down.

From left to right: Bruery 8 Maids-a-Milking, Hardywood Bourbon Gingerbread Stout, Quest Maman Brigitte, Brothers Drunken Mornings, Boon Mariage Parfait 2009, Oude Gueuze Tilquin a L'Ancienne 2011, Allagash Confluence, Cascade Apricot Ale, Stone Xocoveza Charred, Olde Hickory Lindley Park, New Belgium Eric's Ale, Sierra Nevada Otra Vez, Petrus Dubbel Bruin Ale, Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza, and two lowly homebrews.

Yeah, we drank a lot. It was wonderful. 

And one of the best parts about drinking unpasteurized wild beers is that we can continue experimenting with yeast harvesting. We ended up with some extra wort from the mash tuns, which we bottled in mason jars along with the dregs from the four wild and/or sour beers that we drank. Now, there's a good chance that the dregs from the Tilquin and Boon beers are no longer viable. In American Sour Beers, Michael Tonsmeire sets a soft ceiling of two years, and these bottles are obviously much older. But with a bunch of unused wort on hand, we figured why not try?

Ian will likely use the Cascade lactobacillus to sour a portion of his belgian pale ale. We plan to pitch the Allagash Confluence dregs into a portion of our tripel once primary fermentation is complete. Ian believes the bacteria may be killed before the brettanomyces is added to the beer, which sounds likely. Still, I'm okay with sampling their brett strain blended with my beer.

Belgian Tripel

Recipe Specifics
--------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.1
Total Grain (Lbs): 13
OG: 1.069
SRM (estimated): 6
IBU (estimated): 31
Brewhouse Efficiency: 67%
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain
-------
94.3% - 12 lbs. 4 oz. Pale Malt (U.S. 2-Row)
3.8% - 0.5 lbs. CaraVienne Malt
1.9% - 0.25 lbs. Aromatic Malt

Adjuncts
-------
1 lb Belgian Candi Sugar, Clear

Hops
-------
1 oz. Styrian Celeia (Pellet, 3.9% AA) @ 60 min.
1 oz. Styrian Celeia (Pellet, 3.9% AA) @ 15 min.
1 oz. Willamette (Pellet, 5.5% AA), @ 3 min.

Extras
-------
1 oz. Coriander Seed @ 15 min.
1 oz. Sweet Orange Peel @ 15 min.

Yeast
-------
White Labs WLP550 Belgian Ale Yeast

Water Profile
-----------------
Profile: Carroll County, MD

Mash Schedule
-------------------
Sacch I - 60 min @ 154F