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Notes

- Add 625mg potassium metabisulphite to 25 gallons water to remove chlorine / chloramine (if required). (Given the high amount of grain used and longer boil time, with 20 gallon kettles you will need to fill the HLT and MLT separately with water). - Water treated with brewing salts to our Balanced flavour profile: Ca=50, Mg=10, Na=16, Cl=70, SO4=70. (Hit minimums on Ca and Mg, keep the Cl:SO4 ratio low and equal. Do not favour flavour / maltiness or bitterness / dryness. For balanced beers.). For complete details on how to adjust your water, refer to our step by step Water Adjustment guide. - 1.25 qt/lb mash thickness. - Single infusion mash at 149F for 120 mins. - Raise to 168F mashout temperature and hold for 10 mins. - ~90 min fly sparge with ~5.6-5.8 pH water (measured at mash temperature). Collect 15.8 gallons. - Boil for 120 minutes, adding Whirlfloc and hops per schedule. Lid on at flameout, start chilling immediately. - Cool the wort quickly to 64-66F (we use a one-pass convoluted counterflow chiller to quickly lock in hop flavour and aroma) and transfer to fermenter. - Oxygenate the chilled wort to a level of 14 ppm dissolved oxygen. Given the high starting gravity, a second dose to 14 ppm is recommended approximately 12-18 hours after the yeast has been pitched. For complete details refer to our Aerating / Oxygenating Wort guide. - Pitch yeast and ferment at 66-68F (wort temperature). We use modified stainless fermenting buckets in wine fridges. - Ferment until approximately 5 points from final gravity and then raise the temperature to 70-72F until finished. In our case we simply turn off the fermenting fridges and allow the beer to naturally rise to room temperature. Assume fermentation is done if the gravity does not change over ~3 days. - If you'd like to oak this beer, add one ounce of American medium toast oak cubes per 5 gallons to brite tank (we use 5 gallon glass carboys) that has been purged with CO2 to avoid oxygen pickup. Rack beer on top of oak and steep for ~21 days at room temperature. You may optionally soak the oak cubes in bourbon for a few weeks prior to use. Gelatin is not required as the beer will drop clear over the ~21 days. The resulting beer after a few months of aging is a subtle toasted oak / bourbon flavour as you would get with bourbon barrel aging without all the complexities of barrel management. Feel free to play with the amount of oak, the type of oak, and the contact duration. For more information see our Oaking Your Beer guide. - If you do not oak this beer, before packaging you may optionally rack to a brite tank (we use 5 gallon glass carboys) that has been purged with CO2 to avoid oxygen pickup, add 1 tsp of unflavoured gelatin dissolved in a cup of hot distilled water per 5 gallons of beer, and allow to clear for 2-3 days. - Package as you would normally. We rack to kegs that have first been purged with CO2. We chill the kegs to near freezing while carbonating at the same time in a 6-keg conditioning fridge. After ~1-2 weeks at serving pressure the kegs will be carbonated and ready to serve. In a hurry? Feel free to raise the CO2 pressure temporarily to 30-40 PSI to carbonate fast over a 24 period, and then turn back down to serving pressure. - Carbonate this beer to fairly low levels (no more than 1.6 to 1.8 volumes of CO2 to minimize carbonic bite and let the hop/malt flavour come through). Over carbonation destroys a lot of the subtleties of this beer. Do not over carbonate. Another option that we've used is to serve the beer on a stout faucet pushed by a 30/70 CO2/Nitrogen blend, producing a nice creamy head and close to flat beer. One inexpensive way to mimic this is to use a syringe (without needle). Pour the beer as you would normally and then suck up a syringe full and force it back into the beer, hard. Repeat 2-3 times and you'll knock most of the C02 out of solution leaving a nearly flat beer with a creamy head. Not quite the same texture, but similar to a nitro pour. We tried this for years before finally adding a real CO2/Nitrogen serving setup to our basement bar.