18th Brew – 2nd Anniversary – November 15, 2008

Its hard to believe its been two years since the first brew, but it has arrived 17 beers and one mead later. In celebration of this event and since the last brew will have been well over two months previous, I have decided to do our first double brew. Essentially what this means is that once the first brew has finished sparging we will empty the mash and start a new one. If timed right the second brew should be ready for sparging once the first beer is transferred from the boil into the fermentor. I’m definitely planning on running through the logistics before hand so that the timing will be right and one of the brews does not suffer because of the extra work. One of the starters will have to be done before-hand because I only have one stirrer and starter flask.

The brews we have chosen to do are a doppelbock and Belgian tripel. For the doppelbock I’m looking for something like celebrator but maybe a little darker. I plan to use some debittered black malt (if I can find it) to reduce the bitterness and astringency. As for the tripel, I haven’t researched it much, but I would love to make something like the St Bernardus tripel. I don’t have recipes ready just yet, but I will post them along with the timeline as soon as they are finalized.

I imagine this brew is going to start at 7 am and end at 4 pm due to the double duty. Hope everyone can make it because I’m going to need all the help I can get. Oh yea, by that time there will be 3 beers on tap: Fresh hop, Marzen, and Saison.