Bamf Beer

So, we’ve been on a bit of a tear lately. We brewed a follow-up, tweaked version of our Hacker’s Knuckle ESB, and that was just kegged today, and as soon as the carboys were empty, they had to be cleaned and sterilized to hold the Black Asphalt Stout we brewed today.

The astute reader will notice that I said “carboys”. Yes, that’s right folks, we’ve moved up to 10-gallon batches. We have broken through that point of resistance in every home brewer’s life that is the now-infamous 5-gallon batch. We can now do partigyle fermentations without splitting up and measuring yeast. We can each add our own adjuncts. One can dry hop while the other adds apricot. The possibilities are endless.

We are a danger to ourselves and others.

For those that are considering moving to a 10-gallon batch, I have a few words:

1. It’s not nearly as big of a change as I thought it would be. In fact, it’s just about zero change from a 5-gallon batch.
2. You really need two people to move things around if you don’t have a 100% pump-driven system or some other setup that means not moving 75+ pound kegs around.
3. Get a spray bottle, and fill it with water. Your kettle is going to have possibly 14 gallons of liquid in it (we do a 90-minute boil, so we have 14 gallons in our keggle at the start). If it looks like your boil is getting dangerously close to boiling over, spray it furiously 4 or 5 times, and it should settle down. I swear this works. Flawlessly.

We’ll get the recipe stuff up later this week. Hacker’s Knuckle and Black Asphalt are both loosely based on recipes from the book “Brewing Classic Styles”.