Backbreaker Wee Heavy

Yesterday was a long, long brewing day, but I got to make a new style and use my new mash tun, so it was well worth it.

The Recipe:

18 lb Maris Otter

10 AAU (56g @ 5% AA) East Kent Goldings @ 60

1 Irish Moss tablet @ 15 min

Wyeast 1728 - Scottish Ale

Mashed at 158° for an hour using about 23 quarts of water. Batch-sparged with ~170° water (more details below).

O.G.: 1.101
Est. IBU: 26.5

This procedure for this recipe was a little different. After gathering 12 quarts of the first runnings, I boiled this down to about 4 quarts to caramelize the wort sugars. Never having done this before, I just let it boil on high for about 3 hours which brought the sugars to near burning; however, based on some tasting of the wort, I think it wasn't too badly affected. While that was boiling, I added 12 quarts of sparge water to the mash tun and sealed it back up. This resulted in essentially a 3-hour batch sparge (a bit more water was required at the end as well).

Unfortunately, the long duration of this process clashed with my band practice, so I heated up the gathered wort and left it in the brewkettle with the lid on for about four hours before commencing the boil; hopefully this doesn't end up hurting it.

The most exciting thing about this week's brewing, however, was that my new mash tun worked perfectly. Right at dough-in, there were maybe two or three drops that leaked from the seal, but after that it worked fantastically. Between the mash and the extended batch sparge, there were 18 lbs of grain and about five gallons of water in there for about four hours with no additional leakage of any kind. Woohoo!