60 gallon Consecration Clone Brew Day
Myself and four other guys brewed up 60 gallons of a Russian River Consecration clone yesterday. And man was it a hell of a day! I brewed up 10 gallons with my new set up and ending up manning one of the guys' setups while he drove home to pick up some of the real Consecration he got mailed by one of his friends in California.
We started with the exact recipe my buddy Brian got from Vinnie at RR. We used about 140 lbs of grain, made our own dark candi syrup and are fermenting in two 30 gallon HDPE conical fermenters. I had to run over to my buddy's house this afternoon with some Fermcap to run some damage control on the crazy amounts of krausen spewing from the fermenters.
In two weeks we'll be racking from the conicals and into a freshly used Merlot barrel that we scored for free. We looked around for a Cabernet Sauvignon but couldn't find one so we settled for the Merlot. We'll also be adding 30 pounds of dried currants and some Brett, Pedio and Lacto. Let it sit for 9 months or so and bottle. Here's to hoping we didn't screw this one up!
Here's a few pics from the brewday. I wish I had some better pics but once we got going I was pretty busy.
A shot of a few of our setups.
Some more brewing set ups including the barrel in the right hand corner.
Boiling the dark candi syrup.
And the results of our labor going into the conicals.
That is so freakin cool! Never had it, but heard lots about it. That is great that Vinnie gave some idea as the real recipe too. Good looking day!
Yeah its pretty cool. I originally just signed on to help out with the massive amounts of brewing to be done but now I'm full on committed. I love brewing so I didn't want to pass up an opportunity to do something like this. Ironically I'm not a huge fan of sours but I find them interesting. Hey, who knows, by the time this beer's done I may love them.
Just wanted to add that the OG listed in the recipe is 1.092 and we hit that dead on in one of the conicals and 1.085 in the other. So not bad considering we had five different brewers contributing.
It wasn't until 3 days before brewday did we think of the idea of making a giant mashtun to do a single mash as opposed to 5 separate ones. One of the guys constructed it but since it hadn't been tested for its efficiency and ability to maintain temperature we decided to hold off. We'll end up using it for something else and running a test batch first.
good luck man. this is pretty ballsy. 60 gallons of a bad brew is a tragedy. 60 gallons of a great brew is history.
Thanks James. Yeah it is pretty ballsy but I have faith. The lot of us are accomplished brewers. The brains behind this madness has been brewing over 25 years and has experience with sour beers and barrels. And hey if something happens then, oh well. By then someone will have thought of another challenge. The last one was a 13 gallon Sam Adams Utopias clone back in February. I didn't brew that day but I attended and man is that beer gonna been good after some aging.
Great day man, looks really freakin cool. I'm sure that it will be a god damn biblical brew
Just an update... Both fermenters are down to 1.042 as of yesterday. Should be transferring to the barrel within the next week.
FirePitBrew wrote:
Just an update... Both fermenters are down to 1.042 as of yesterday. Should be transferring to the barrel within the next week.
So you are giving it the brett and lacto to finish off the ferment? What type of FG are you shooting for?
thirsty wrote:
So you are giving it the brett and lacto to finish off the ferment? What type of FG are you shooting for?
Correct. Plus whatever sugar is contributed from the 30 pounds of currants. Hopefully we'll knock off atleast 20 points in the next week. We've been discussing when to transfer, at 1.040? at 1.015? at 1.020? We'll see. We'll be meeting up this weekend at a pig roast so we can discuss it then. But basically if we transfer it early then we'll just have to keep it in the barrel longer.
From my buddy who's housing the conicals in his bar, "Really sweet, really fruity... like biting into a plum. It's really good, just really sweet (as you expect). It is a lot lighter than I was expecting too, much more golden than amber."
Of course it'll darken from the currants and the barrel. As for FG, I'm not sure. We're shooting for something in the 11% range so it'll be pretty low, like single digits low and close to 1.000.
FirePitBrew wrote:
[ We've been discussing when to transfer, at 1.040? at 1.015? at 1.020? We'll see. We'll be meeting up this weekend at a pig roast so we can discuss it then. .
Please keep me updated. I just ordered some brett lambicus and pedio that I will be adding to 1 gallon of tripel. I have 6 gallons in primary right now, with a .090 OG and I plan on pulling off the gallon at about .030 to innoculate. (hoping my bugs get here in time!)
Sure no problem Thirsty.
And here's a pic of the barrel in its new stand.
Th th th th th that is true beer pron! May be better than real pron! Jealous.
So does that barrel have any toast in it, or was it fresh oak before it saw wine?
brewchez wrote:
So does that barrel have any toast in it, or was it fresh oak before it saw wine?
The barrel has some toast in it. How much toast though, I'm not sure. I would assume it would be light to medium but I can ask the guy who acquired it, he'll know.
Alright so I'm back from the pig roast. Man, a 215lb pig smoked for 26 hours, homemade sausage, 12 homebrew kegs including a Pliney clone and a DIPA on a beer engine and a keg of Duchesse De Bourgogne is a force to be reckoned with. Legendary.
OK so the beer was racked into the barrel yesterday. The gravity readings were around 1.038-1.040. The reason for racking with this much residual sugar was to give the bugs more sugar to work with. The more sugar they have to work with, the more "sourness" you're going to get into the beer. If we waited until the ale yeast finished out we would have had less sugar for the bugs to munch on leaving a "tamer", perhaps less complex, beer.
So now we play the waiting game. I'll keep you guys updated whenever we pull samples. One of the guys was supposed to drill a hole in the barrel and plug with a nail and beeswax so we can pull samples without disturbing the pellicle. Shoot, I forgot to mention it... hopefully they took care of it.
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