Boiling again in our new eight-gallon electric boil kettle! I'm going to try mashing in it, too. Hopefully, this turns into a delicious malty beer for next winter. I'm going to sparge again and make a second-runnings amber ale from this grain bill, too.

Like many brews we're dealing with during the pandemic quarantine, I'm taking a name for this batch from Warren Zevon's Splendid Isolation. This particular batch is Lying Down in the Dark to Dream. In origin, it's a riff on Jamil Zainischeff's original recipe, Old Treacle Mine, but it's gone a lot of different places since it started there.

BeerXML for this recipe, generated by BrewTarget.

Ingredients

  • 19.5 lb. Maris Otter pale malt (3°L)
  • 12 oz. Crystal Malt (120°L)
  • 5 oz. Black Malt (485°L)
  • 8.1 oz. Golden Barrel unsulfured blackstrap molasses
  • 2 oz. Warrior (brand) Warrior (variety) hops (15.4% A.A.) at 90 min.
  • 1 smack-pack Wyeast Labs 1728 (Scottish Ale) yeast
  • 12.4 oz. Golden Barrel unsulfured blackstrap molasses, added 5 Apr 2020
  • Addition of 3 May 2020:
    • 1 lb., 8.3 oz. wildflower honey from Georgia Honey Farm and approx. 3 lb. wildflower honey from Haw Creek Honey, caramelized in the Crock-Pot on low for three hours.
    • 2.5 lbs. Made In Nature sun-dried Smyrna figs, chopped.
    • 2.5 lbs. Hadley organic pitted Deglet Noor dates, chopped.
    • 1 lb., 12.6 oz. Happy Village organic sun-dried Smyrna figs, chopped.
  • Addition of 17 May 2020:
    • 2.5 lbs. Hadley organic pitted Deglet Noor dates, chopped.
  • Addition of 25 June 2020:
    • Racked all of batch 195 into new bucket, then racked the braggot off of the fruit and over the chai mead.
  • Addition of 13 September 2020:
    • 5 lb. Haw Creek Georgia honey, caramelized by heating on low in a Crock-Pot for four hours.
    • 2 lb., 1.0 oz. Made in Nature (dried) organic Smyrna figs, dropped.
    • 2.5 lbs. Hadley organic pitted Deglet Noor dates, chopped.

Procedure

Tried mashing in a grain bag in the eight-gallon electric brew kettle, on the theory that it would be great to just set the temperature and have the kettle maintain it. Turns out, though, that having a grain bag in the brew kettle interferes with the kettle's ability to determine its temperature. Tried to start with a twenty-minute protein rest at 122℉, but it's unclear what the temperature was at that point: probably low, but I never measured it with a thermometer, because I did not yet realize that the kettle wasn't measuring temperature properly. Continued to mash, theoretically at 152℉, but it's impossible to say: it was during the mash that I discovered that the temperature measurement was off. Moved the liquid and the grain bag into the ten-gallon brew kettle and topped off with a little bit of hot water to get to 152℉, as measured by a thermometer, then covered the brew kettle with a sleeping bag and held temperature for ninety minutes.

Boiled two hours, starting timer only after the hot break, adding hops and molasses at ninety minutes; chilled with the wort chiller, aerated by pouring through the straining sieve, and aerated more, repeatedly, by beating the surface with a wire whisk. Let sit for several hours while the yeast came up to room temperature—I thought I had smacked the smack pack, but apparently it was not broken, so I cut it open and poured its nutrients in with the yeast back, then popped in an airlock.

Brew day: 19 January 2020
Predicted original gravity: 1.1157
Measured original gravity: 1.074 (?!?!?!?!?)
Calculated as-if original gravity: 1.128 (after blending and sugar additions but ignoring fruit)
Estimated IBUs: 63.0
Predicted final gravity 1.0336
Predicted ABV: 10.6
Bottling day : 26 October 2020
Final gravity: 1.112
Estimated ABV: Unknown: those numbers don't add up.

Yield:

  • 43 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 1 x 375mL beer bottle
  • 3 x 22 oz. beer bottles

Total: Approx. 595 fl. oz., or 4⅔ gallons.

Observations

  • 2020-01-21T11:47: There's finally carbon dioxide discharge from the airlock.
  • 2020-01-22: Xenia swapped out the airlock for a blowoff hose, as the fermentation is so vigorous that the airlock is not venting enough carbon dioxide to be an effective vent.
  • 2020-01-26 (give or take a day): Put the airlock back in.
  • 2020-05-03T17:00: Added four and a half pounds of caramelized honey, two and a half pounds of dried dates, and about four and a quarter pounds of dried figs.
  • 2020-05-17: Added more chopped dates.
  • 2020-06-25: Racked batch 195 into a new bucket, then racked the old ale braggot on top of the chai mead.
  • 2020-09-13: Added more chopped figs and dates, plus caramelized honey, while moving to new bucket.
  • 2020-10-26: Bottled in bottles with white caps.