Well the 2009 Barley-wine brew-day is complete and we made some serious gravity in the garage today. With about 55 lbs of malt and over a pound of hops we ended up with 3 brews of all fairly substantial gravities. Rocky’s Bigfoot clone kit came in right at around 1.080. I did a partigyle brew with only one malt and one style of hops. I split these between 2 batches. First was a barleywine with and initial gravity of 1.136 and looked somewhat like maple syrup going into the fermenter. The second runnings were collected and I made an IPA with an initial gravity of 1.068.
During the course of the day we did have the opportunity to sample some very good beers along the way. Rocky brought a bottle of his espresso/coffee stout that has been cellaring for about 4 years and was absolutely peaked as far as a complex and well balanced combination of malt, roast, coffee and hops. I particularly like the little almond notes that developed when you drank it. We also enjoyed about a similar vintage of my chokecherry stout that really aged nicely as well. I was particularly interested in the development of the chokecherry flavor over time. We also sampled my barley-wine from last years brew session which is really starting to come into its own with a year of age on it.
Below are Rocky’s pictures of the day’s work and the work in progress. We had a blast and hopefully will have some good beer to show for it.
Ryan
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