Skip to main content

Brewing "Dark Abbey" at Barley's

Last year, I entered the 23rd annual homebrew competition at Barley's Ale House in Columbus. To my shock and amazement, I won the competition with my Belgian style Dark Strong Ale. On March 15, Angelo Signorino, Jr., and his brewing assistants Tate and Singer made my dream of brewing a professional-sized batch of beer a reality.

Angelo preparing to load the first bag of barley, and me preparing to stir

The day began at 10am when I arrived at Barley's. We went over the recipe to make sure it looked correct. Not surprisingly when dealing with pros like the guys at Barley's, it did.



Seventeen bags of grain (plus a bit, I think) went into the mash tun. The Barley's crew did the heavy lifting since my shoulders are pretty arthritic, but I helped stir the mash for a while and helped load the hops. If you don't think that brewers like these work hard, then it's only because you've never seen them mash in. Lugging the big bags to the brewing system, dumping the contents into the mash tun, and stirring to ensure the grain is properly hydrated is a lot of work. I only did a very small part of that and it was all my shoulders could handle.  I'm very appreciative and grateful to the guys for all they did.


When the mash was finished, the guys unloaded the grain from the mash tun.  It weighed over 800 pounds going in. After soaking up some water, I'm sure it was far heavier coming out.


Loading the grain and unloading the spent grain was a lot, but the heavy lifting didn't end there. The guys had to haul those large white containers out to the street, where a farmer took it with him.


With the spent grain disposed of responsibly, the effort turned to cleaning the mash tun while the wort started heating to a boil in the kettle.

False bottom in the mash tun, designed to keep the grain out and let the wort through

Yeah, that's someone inside the mash tun cleaning it!
Once the mash tun was cleaned, the wort had just about worked its way to a boil. This particular wort really likes to foam, as you can see in the image below.


Hops, yeast nutrient, and Irish Moss all made their way into the kettle... along with 55 pounds of Belgian candi syrup (seen below). That is probably more than I have used in my entire home brewing history!

55 pounds of Belgian Candi Syrup
While all this was going on, the fermenter was sanitized. We then shook up the massive bags of Wyeast 1762 yeast and loaded those into the fermenter before sealing it up.

Now that's a lot of yeast!
The wort was oxygenated and chilled as it made its way into the #4 fermenter.


Seeing my beer's name (temporarily) emblazoned on a 10-barrel fermenter was a proud moment.


I watched, with great respect, the hard work that Angelo and his team do every day.  It was an absolute pleasure to hang out with them for the day, and is something I will never forget.

I'm looking forward to seeing this beer again when it comes out of the tap on April 14!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Grainfather Specifications for BeerSmith, Beer Tools Pro, and Other Software

Recently, I've been trying to "dial in" settings in BeerSmith and Beer Tools Pro so that I can do a better job getting my actual brewing results to match up to the figures in the software. Below are some of the figures I've worked out with my US Grainfather. Given manufacturing variances and possible measuring errors on my part, these might not match exactly to yours, but hopefully they're close enough that it will help you. BeerSmith Equipment Profile: Brewhouse Efficiency: 83% (based on my experience, yours may vary) Mash Tun Volume: 8 gallons Mash Tun Weight: 8.82 pounds Mash Tun Specific Heat: 0.12 Cal/gram-deg C Mash Tun Addition: 0 gallons Lauter Tun Losses: 0 gallons Top Up Water for Kettle: 0 gallons Boil Volume: 6.25 gallons Boil Time: 60 minutes Boil Off: 0.40 gallons per hour Cooling Shrinkage: 6% Loss to Trub and Chiller: 0.53 gallons Batch Volume: 5 gallons Fermenter Loss: 0.40 gallons (yours may vary) Whirlpool time: 0 minutes B

Yellow Label Angel Yeast vs. Typical Brewing Yeast

I currently have my second batch of rice wine fermenting with the "magical" yellow-label Angel Yeast from China, and wanted to share some of the more unusual aspects of using it.  If you've never seen or used this yeast, I suspect you're not alone.  It ships in a 500 gram package that looks like this: What makes it "yellow label" is that yellow box you see in the upper left corner of the package.  This implies that it's yeast for distilling (though you do not need to have a still or distill the output to use it).  As I understand it, inside the package is a mix of yeast and other materials which will convert starch into sugar and directly ferment it, without the need for a traditional mash step.  This can radically shorten your brewing time.  For my most-recent batch of rice wine, I heated 3 gallons of water to 155F, poured it over 13+ pounds of uncooked rice straight out of the bag, let that soak for an hour, rehydrated some of this yeast in warm water,

Things I've Learned Brewing with The Grainfather, Part 2

In the last post, I shared an overview of The Grainfather, recommended equipment to use with it, and an overview of the brewing process.  In this installment, I'm going to talk specifically about mashing and sparging. Having brewed over a dozen batches with it, I'm finally becoming very comfortable with the device, the mash process, and how to get what I want out of it. I don't consider myself a "master" of it yet, though. For those who have never done all-grain brewing, I want to provide a quick overview of the mash process itself. Mashing - With or Without The Grainfather The goal of mashing is to turn the starches in the grain into sugars. More specifically, you want to turn the starches into a mix of fermentable and unfermentable sugars that provide the flavor profile associated with the beer you are brewing. A sweeter beer might warrant more unfermentable sugars. A more dry beer will demand few unfermentable sugars. To a great extent, controlling the