Surly AHA Rally

I've been brewing now for somewhere around 4 years. I started in Boise, ID as a simple extract brewer and slowly worked my way up from there. Now that I'm finally brewing good beers I decided it was time to take the plunge and join the American Homebrewers Association. Upon doing some research about joining I discovered that the AHA was throwing a huge rally at Surly Brewing. Score! Even better, Surly was giving all the homebrewers a free 5 gal batch of a Imperial Brown Ale that they brewed up. Double score! Sun shines on a dogs ass every now and again huh?

The day was a great time. My girlfriend and I showed up fairly early in order to 'beat the crowd' but we weren't the only ones with this bright idea. I'd say we were at least 75-100 back in the line by the time we arrived. Everything was extremely well organized though and luckily we only had to stand outside for 15 minutes or so before we got into the brewery.

Upon entering we were given a free AHA/Surly pint glasses and all the homebrewers were allowed to walk around the brewery and explore at our leisure. Tons of cans on palates lined the walls as did rows and rows of huge stainless steal fermenters. If only I could swim in a giant batch of delicious Furious. After a bit of exploring we made our way down to the tasting room/gift shop for some free Surly brews and a T-shirt or two. If the free wort wasn't generous enough Surly had 5-6 brews on tap and another on cask. They had Furious, Bender, Coffee Bender, Wet, CynicAle and maybe SurlyFest (can't remember exactly). Plus they were pouring Oak Aged Cask Bender from a firkin.

After a few brewski's and hitting up the gift shop we made our way up to get the free wort. Omar (Surly's owner) and one of the AHA guys gave a nice speech about craft beers, thanked everyone for coming out AND gave away free schwag. Generous organization and generous brewery. I was impressed all around. We waited in line for about 2 hours before we got our wort but it was well worth the wait. Had a few more tasty brews and shot the shit with some other homebrewers that were next to us in line. Saw a couple guys drop 6.5 gallon glass carboys while waiting but luckily none were full of wort. Man I'm glad I brought my plastic fermenter bucket.

When I got home I immediately pitched my Wyeast 3533 - Belgian Ardennes activator pack. This is definitely a higher gravity wort but I totally spaced and didn't make a starter. I was just going to pitch and pray that the yeast did it's thing. The wort was also aerated so I didn't have to worry about that. I decided that I'd keep the wort around a medium temp of about 70 degrees. I didn't want to ferment it warmer because I didn't want a crazy amount of those Belgium phenols to dominate the beer. I just wanted enough to give it a slight fruitiness underneath what I'm guessing will be a nice nutty toast in the beer.

From Zymurgy (a free brewing magazine I received for joining AHA. Yet another great reason to join for anyone who may be waffling):

"AHA director Gary Glass developed the following recipe using the wort provided by Surly"

Recipe

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Batch Size - 5 Gallons

Boil Size - 6.4 Gallons

Total Grains - 15.67lbs

Anticipated OG - 1.084

Boil Time - 60 min

Grains
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13lbs Pale Ale Malt (38ppg, 3L) - 83.0%
1.67lbs Brown Malt (38ppg, 65L) - 10.7%
0.5lbs Liquid Dark Candi Syrup (32ppg, 80L) - 3.2%
0.25lbs Crystal 120L (33ppg, 120L) - 4.8%
0.25lbs Crystal 80L (34ppg, 80L) - 3.2%

Hops
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1.25oz Columbus (15% Pellet) - 60 min

0.50oz Willamette (5% Pellet) - 0 min

Yeast
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Wyeast 3522 - Belgian Ardennes (72-76%, 65-85F)

Extras
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30z Hungarian Oak Cubes - Medium Toast (soaked in Gentleman's Jack for roughly a day)

11/01/09
Transferred to the secondary the same day I bottled the Chinook and Simcoe Single Hops. My final gravity came in at 1.016 after some ridiculously aggressive fermentation. I started out with a airlock on the bucket but after it filled with krausen a couple times I had to plug the lid hole with some plastic tubing for a makeshift blowoff tube. This thing fermented HARD for at least a week. I had constant bubbles for at least 2 weeks.

Since the whole idea of this brew was to be original and use whatever yeast/aging process you wanted, I decided to age this brew for a few months on 3oz of Hungarian Oak Cubes that I soaked in approximately 4-5 shots of Gentleman Jack. I racked the beer on all 3oz of the oak cubes and all 4-5oz of the Jack. I'm hoping it doesn't overpower the beer, but I want it to be fairly noticeable. Should definitely be interesting.

When I tasted the sample that I took the gravity from it was EXACTLY what I was hoping it would be. The yeast was barely noticeable at this point and the beer was nicely toasted and beautifully nutty. I really hope the oak and Jack don't overpower the beer. At almost 9.0% ABV though it was a little too hot for the overall beer and a bit of time is definitely needed