First State Brewers' Blog

As my post over on the Google group indicated, I brewed more belgian style beer on Sunday morning... 10 gallons of what was supposed to be a somewhat mild brew that could support 3 or 4 in an evening without dropping the hammer... and it didn't turn out that way. Instead I'm probably looking at a 7-8% beer...

It is using a yeast cake from the Heretic Strong Dark Ale I brewed back in early January, meaning the Unibroue strain from Wyeast (3864). It smells absolutely divine as it is fermenting, and once again I am hoping that it tastes as good as it smells.

Check out that monster fermenter - a 12 gallon pyrex solution bottle, loaned to me by Oliver Weatherbee (Thanks, man!!). It weighs a freakin' ton, especially full! I've got it fitted with a BBBOT. I do wonder how accurate that stick-on thermometer is with all that glass - isn't glass an insulator? It might be like 3 or 4 degrees higher inside the bottle than it is on the surface... But hey, this yeast is good to 80 degrees, so I should be fine.

Speaking of the Heretic, here it sits in the secondary, three weeks and many days after primary fermentation subsided... and as you can tell, the yeast is still flocculating. I thought about putting it out in the garage to make it fall faster, but I'm in no hurry, so the yeast can take their time. I just hope there is enough active yeast left to carbonate it - I may end up taking a small measure of the yeast from the 10 gallon batch and pitching it in with the priming sugar.