Brews and Blues Beer and Smokin’ Blues

Six Pack Brewery Round Two

I fired up the Six Pack Brewery again on Sunday afternoon to work on my first Hop Bomb since I have gotten back into the hobby.  Out of the hoppy beers I have sampled in the last year, one of my very favorites has been Stone Brewing's Arrogant Bastard.  After a little research, I found out some of what makes Arrogant Bastard what it is and attempted to brew a variety of this beer.  My original recipe for this beer is called HopShop 120² because I intended to do a 120 minute boil and have a calculated 120 IBUs to make this a real hop bomb.  The 120 minute boil couldn't be performed effectively on my Six Pack Brewery setup so I shortened the boil to 75 minutes, but the hop calculator indicates 167 IBU on this recipe, which is logistically impossible, but it looks good anyway!  The grain bill for this recipe consists mainly of american two-row and crystal 80 malts with a dash of carapils. 

The 1-gallon glass growler that I'm using as a primary fermenter for my six pack brewery isn't really large enough to ferment 1 gallon of beer.  I always have to set up a blow-off rig as you can see here.  I went to Home Depot this morning and purchased two 2-gallon plastic buckets for future brewing in this quantity.  I'll have enough head space in those where a blow-off won't be an issue. 

The good news with round two on the Six Pack Brewery is that my water volume issues were dialed in a LOT more precisely than on my first venture.  I was still a little off, but not enough to worry about.  I ended up with a little more than one gallon of wort and my gravity was 1.078 instead of the targeted 1.088 (yes, this is a big beer.) 

Round #3 on the Six Pack Brewery will be another attempt at the original Helles Bock that I tried on the first round...  I hope to brew that soon, but I need to get a 5-gallon batch of red ale brewed before that...