Another collaboration brew day in the books. Yesterday, we brewed with Upstream Brewing Company in Omaha. We brewed a Dopplesticke, which is a traditional Düsseldorf Alt beer from Germany. This is one of my favorite styles, in particular the one brewed by Uerige.
The brew day started like most, early in the morning and grunt work right off the bat. Richard (the assistant brewer for Upstream Legacy) and I stirred the mash while the grain and water was added. We filled the tun to its absolute capacity for our recipe. I honestly do not see how one person could have done this by themselves. I would have collapsed about halfway through. Richard was grateful I was there to help, and I’m grateful I didn’t pass out and fall into the mash. I’m a little sore today.
After we sparged the mash and collected the wort in the kettle, we waited a bit to add our first hop addition. About this time we broke for lunch. During our lunch we added the second addition, which was 13 lbs. We left the brew house for a few minutes to finish our lunch. A server then came up to us to ask if there should be beer spraying out everywhere. Richard and I ran back to check the kettle…epic boil over. The room was completely filled with steam. You couldn’t see a foot in front of you. Richard bravely grabbed the cold water hose and doused the boil to get it under control.
A few minutes later, after the steam had subsided, we got to see the result. Hop residue everywhere. Thankfully nobody got hurt. Plus, since it was all still wet, the cleanup only took about 15 minutes. We lost about 1.5 to 2 barrels of wort. The hop loss didn’t seem to affect the flavor, as the cooled wort at the end tasted nice and hoppy.
Other than that, the brew day went really well. I’m really looking forward to drinking the finished product. It should be a great beer. Thanks goes out to Mike, Richard, and Upstream for working us into their busy schedule.
Check out photos from the brew day on our Facebook page.
3 comments:
Two words--Foam Control!
Yeah, we added that. Just didn't stick around long enough after that big hop addition.
Right on. That must have been one good boil!
Post a Comment