Bachelor Party Postmortem

5 lbs of Gummy Bears and 5 Gallons of Hoppy Huskie hombrew later, everyone spent the day of his arrival home recovering from the weekend - unpacking, sleeping, and pooping. Twice. I'm led to believe that pictures from BDfest will be done and available online in the next 24 hours. I'll be sure to post as soon as I get them.

For those of you who may be interested, here's the recipe I used for the batch of beer we spent most of our time drinking (credit to BD for the basis of this recipe) -

1lb Crystal 20 (crushed)
8lbs Montmellick Light Syrup Extract
4oz Amarillo Hops Plugs (bittering)
2oz Amarillo Whole Hops (dryhopping)
WhiteLabs London Ale yeast

Steeped crushed grain at 155° for 30 mins; sparged. Added water to make 3.5 gallons, boiled, added extract, brought to boil again, added 4oz hop plugs, and boiled 60 minutes. Cooled and strained to plastic fermentor. Increased volume to 5 gallons, pitched yeast, aerated, and fermented 10 days.

I didn’t have an available secondary carboy, so I dryhopped in the keg. I tied a grainbag full of the whole hops to the diptube before I racked over to the keg, sealed, pressurized, and left the keg at room temperature for about 18 days before I moved it to the kegerator for carbonation.

It was a doggone tasty beer, if you ask me. If I were to modify it, I may either add more hops at different points during the boil, or spread that 4oz over a more diverse schedule.

Also, I’m afraid I may not have gotten full fermentation, which I suspect may explain the vociferous volleys of man-scent mortars that set the tone for much of the weekend’s conversation. I’ll be sure to pay better attention to the gravity readings next time I make it – which I suspect will be soon.