Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Brewday: Harvest Wee Heavy (2012)

 

 Last year, I brewed a pumpkin scotch ale that ended in disaster as I lost almost the entire batch to bottle bombs.
A year later, and now I primarily keg my beers, partly due to this beer. In hindsight I think the culprit was a faulty kitchen scale (since replaced), but since I never really got to try this beer when it was finished, I set out to rectify some of last year's mistakes as well as re-brew it with better equipment, techniques, and - most importantly - not botching the priming sugar.
 
I used the same recipe as last year, with a couple of tweaks - British pale malt instead of Golden Promise, as the LHBS was out - and adding a pound of Munich for some added maltiness. The hop bill, yeast strain, and everything else remained the same. The biggest change this year was using canned pumpkin instead of buying and roasting my own pie pumpkin, but this was simply because fresh pumpkins aren't yet available at the grocery store.


I didn't get started with the brew day until nearly 4PM, but I didn't let that stop me. My dad was visiting from out of town, so I decided to take the opportunity to give him a crash-course in all-grain brewing (and get some free help with the brewing to boot).
 
The entire brewday took about 6 hours, which wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't also kegging my double IPA and hosting a barbeque at the same time. Oh well.
 
Here's some photos from the day:
 
4 pounds of canned pumpkin right into the mash.
 
In go the spices.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment