Re: Decisions

>> <sweiland(a)usfamily.net> 09/09/04 03:09PM >>>

The choice is Russian Imperial Stout. The only objection we could think of is that it's not terribly original. We'd like to base the recipe on Curt Stock's "She-Devil, Double D." (I'm not sure who the name refers to, but I'd like to meet her.) This is one of Curt's few non-swill beers. It's actually won a few medals. You can find it at: http://www.mnbrewers.com/events/mashout/2003mashout.htm#367 OK, you can see the problem. It's about half extract, and this offends the purity of certain members of the fellowship. Piatz is going to formulate two other versions of the recipe in consultation with Curt. One will be a mainly all-grain and one will be a pure extract recipe. Likely, one or two extract batches may be brewed at Barley John's in early November at Longballa's Teach a Friend to Brew event. Rick has graciously agreed to brew a spare five gallons for topping off purposes. Yes, we're going to do individual brewing, as before. Having 11 brewers would be viewed as absurdly risky by many barrel aficionados, but we figure we're so damn good that we can pull it off. It was fun to pool all the different brews for the first barrel. We're going for complexity. I think I'm solid on the above information. Some of the evening is a little hazy, and all I have is a few words Al scrawled on a napkin for reference. There was some bitterness that the St. Paul people were all indulging in amusements while the Minnesota people carried the responsibility of almost five hours of evaluation and decisionmaking. Anyway, here's what I remember, subject to correction: -- We tried a wonderful Oud Bruin that was ruined by the addition of whiskey, so we threw out that style and Flanders Red. -- Braggot and Belgian Strong Dark seemed to be enhanced a bit by the whiskey flavor. -- We again confirmed that whiskey takes away from a Double IPA (although we had a fairly lousy example that was brewed on the St. Paul system). However, we're intrigued by a Double IPA that has more oak character than whiskey character. So, here's a rough schedule: Fill barrel with Russian Imperial Stout in early December. Consider obtaining another barrel in April to fill with a braggot. (Trying to do two barrels at once would be a pain, we decided.) Empty the RIS in July, rinse the barrel with boiling water, and immediately fill with a Double IPA. Empty the braggot in December. If the Double IPA is showing good results, refill the second barrel with a Belgian Strong Dark. That concludes the minutes of the meeting. Several attendees departed for White Castle. Now, that's sacrifice! Paul Attachment: BDY.RTF Content-Type: application/rtf Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="BDY.RTF" ;Creation-Date="Thu, 9 Sep 2004 09:32:07 -0500" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64