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Posted: by ColForbinBC (9 hours ago)

I have a barleywine that's been bulk conditioning at around 40F since last May, and I'm planning to bottle it soon. It was my first attempt at a BW, and I'm a little hesitant about how to dry hop it. The hop schedule looks like this:

2 oz Centennial (FWH)
2 oz Columbus (60)
2 oz Columbus (5)

OG was 1.108 and it fermented down to 1.022, so it's got a pretty good alcohol presence to the taste & aroma. It was originally 120 IBU's, but tastes more like 70-80 IBU's due to the aging and the maltiness of the brew. My original intent was to dry hop with Columbus, but I may want to go with something a little different, or a mixture of varieties. I'm envisioning a boatload of really floral, citrusy aroma (Amarillo & Centennial), but I'm honestly not sure if that would work well in a BW. Has anyone had any really good experiences dry hopping a big beer like this? My options are: Centennial, Columbus, Amarillo, Willamette, Mt Hood, Crystal, and maybe a few others.  read more »

Posted: by LarryKemp (9 hours ago)

On saturday a group of us in San Antonio are brewing 60 gallons of old ale to barrel age. Will try to post pics of the monstrous brew gear we will be using, includes a 55 gallon SS drum with the top cut off.

So my bottles of 9.5% Wee Heavy won't carbonate after almost a month.
I have a couple ideas why.
Regardless, my kegging equipment showed up today.
Could I feasibly make a yeast starter with dry yeast, pitch the slurry in to a sanitized keg and carefully pour each individual bottle in to the keg and let it condition/carbonate for a week or two?

What other options should I consider?

Frankly, Otter Creek and I have a rocky past. They’ve put out a couple of beers that I consider worthwhile, but they’ve also put out a lot that I wouldn’t hit a dog in the butt with. For this reason, I almost never seek out an Otter Creek brew. However, this month, the Beer of the Month Club hooked us up with this Otter Creek Pale Ale. So, I’m of mixed mind. Frankly, BOMC hasn’t yet sent us a ‘bad’ beer. But, I know that Otter Creek is capable of making a bad beer. So, we’ll see how this one works out…

This beer pours a rather attractive dark golden brown with a very thin off-white head. The aroma of this brew is rather sweet and has a certain cola aspect to it that is unexpected. Overall, however, it’s not an overpowering aroma, and it comes across fairly pleasant. In the mouth, this beer is good, but not great. There is a fairly unilateral flavor to the beer that doesn’t evolve heavily through the mouth. This flavor still has aspects of cola to it, which gives it a decent kick and a sweetness that is mitigated by a rooty, earthy tone. There is also some hop bitterness here and a fair dose of bready flavors. So, in a nutshell, it’s a typical pale ale, but darker with this cola kick that is hard to describe. Personally, I think there are better pale ales out there, but this really isn’t so bad. If you come across one, there’s no reason you’d need to turn it away…  read more »