Begin Brewing!

A long time ago, I began to notice that when I brewed beers over 9-10% alcohol by volume (ABV) that they tended not to carbonate in the bottle.  It became a rule of thumb for me to always include bottle conditioning yeast (either CBC-1 or champagne yeast ) any time I brewed a beer over 9%.  I forgot to do that with a beer that came out at 10.9%, and it failed to carbonate.  I learned with that beer that by  inverting the bottles daily for a week  to rouse the yeast inside, I could achieve carbonation. When I brewed a batch of beer intended to replicate  Dogfish Head's Palo Santo Marron , I decided to take a chance and not dose it with bottle conditioning yeast either.  After weeks in a warm location, there was virtually no carbonation, even using the bottle-inversion trick. For another two weeks, I increased the temp to 80F and did a daily inversion of the bottles, while also rotating them around the space inside the cooler to ensure that eve...

The finished beer, after additional conditioning yeast was addded I've been a fan of Dogfish Head's Palo Santo Marron ale since the first time I had it. The strong brown ale, aged in huge Palo Santo wood tanks is a very rich, unique-tasting brew.  I recently encountered a potential clone recipe for it, along with a pound of the Palo Santo wood. The recipe was said to have taken second place at a national competition and some other medals. I ended up adjusting the recipe before brewing, for a couple of reasons.  First, I felt like it had too much wheat in it (4 pounds) and I might have had to add rice hulls to keep wort flowing through it.  I also couldn't get my hands on de-bittered black malt unless I mail-ordered it for around $13 a pound (including shipping). That seemed ridiculous, so I used Carafa III Special instead. Ingredients 11 pounds 2-row Brewer's Malt 1 pound, 4 ounces Cara-Pils/Dextrine Malt 1 pound 2-row Pale Ale Malt 1 pound Carame...