Hello! Well, usually I leave it to Dann or Anya to write these posts, but I thought I would do a little crazy brewday post today.
We’re brewing Our Finest Regards today. That means it’s winter, except it’s 61 degrees outside! Not complaining though. Our Finest is our holiday all-out barleywine, which we make using a “reiterative mash”, which is a stupid and fancy way of saying we brew twice into the same liquor. We mash in, transfer to the lauter tun, run off the wort and then mash in again to the same liquid. It’s the only way we can think of to make an all-malt, really strong beer.
Last year was our first attempt at thi
s, and Dann remembers saying he was worried when he mashed in the second time that he’d end up with a giant dough ball rolling around in the mash tun. And it’s funny (hilarious!) that he said that, because that’s exactly what almost just happened! I milled in the second batch of grain, 1830kg of it, we mashed in, and all that grist just floated on top of the first runnings. Lordy. It’s a crazy thing: I guess imagine putting a few spoonfuls of flour on top of a glass of water, and trying to get it nice and wet, and then imagine the whole affair is the size of a couple of backyard swimming pools… Anyway, we pushed it all under (mill in 1800kg, then try to push it into 1000 gallons of liquid: we are getting a good work out today!) and added a bit more liquor, and it seems to have hydrated okay now.
All good fun, and the first gravity was good and high so we are on our way to a good tasting barleywine. Like last year’s, it’s heavy on the Yorkshire malt: Maris Otter barley, plus some pale, brown and so on. I’m about to go back and mill in another 80 bags for tomorrow’s first mash.
Also: a quick thank you to everyone who came to our Babayaga Party the other night. We had a really fun time at the Independent in Somerville once again. John Funke and Bocky rocked it with Soviet-era disco and Rock n Roll, Anya was heroic at telling people’s fortunes as the witchy witch herself, we had delicious free pierogies and of course a lot of dark and smokey beer. I’m really pleased with the smokiness of Babayaga this year.
It’s so awesome that people come to our parties. We love parties!
Cheers all! We’ll be brewing tomorrow too, then it’s all Harvestfest on Saturday: come see us there if you can!
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