Shorts Anniversary Ale 2006/2007 Part One

Commercial Description:
Actually this one is our second Double IPA, brewed to celebrate the survival of our second year in business. It was brewed on March 7th 2005. I remember it being what I call a ¾ high gravity batch. A ¾ batch is simply using the first three quarters of the wort extracted from the mash. This was the bulk of the beer recipe. We used four different malts at a weight of our regular IPA (the Huma) for our base and boiled the wort for two hours, instead of one hour (to further strengthen the recipe by evaporation). Throughout the boil, we added two different high alpha hop varieties, and lots of them. It was only appropriate to hop the hell out of this beer. Hoppy beers are our trademark. The original gravity stuck around 20.8 plato and finished around 3.4 plato, resulting in a beer in the high 8% ABV range. Hop bitterness was calculated at 240.72 IBU’s. This beer still exists and is apart of our growing vintage beer collection. Anniversary Ale 2006 My first real example of being “crazy” really coming into play. The Start of this 4 part beer was initiated on March 20th 2006. This is hard to follow so stay with me. It began as a triple brewed, triple hopped, and triple boiled Imperial IPA. What I was trying to achieve was a super high gravity full batch of beer. Since my mash tun could not accommodate the amount of grain required to get the original gravity I wanted, I used multiple mashes. These mashes start at regular brew weight, 450 lbs. I take the first half of the most concentrated runnings and save them in a holding tank. The gravity of the final (last of the first runnings) stops at 8 plato. The final runnings of the first half (8 plato and less) gets saved in a different tank. So we have just split the worts from the first mash. This is done a second time, with the exact same mash ingredients. The first half (down to 8 plato) is saved with the first half of the first mash. And the second half of the second mash is saved with the last half of the first mash. So now we have 2 tanks full of wort. One is super high gravity and the other is low gravity. The low gravity batch of wort is transferred into the kettle to heat for a third mash. Yes, the third mash was made with all wort, resulting in a super high gravity 3rd mash runnings. Ultimately, we ended filling the kettle full of super high gravity wort. This was the bulk of the Anniversary Ale 2006. The reason I say it was a four part is because the fourth part I tried to push with the left over worts I had from the final runnings of the third mash (The mash which was mashed in with wort and not water). This was foiled however due to the lag time the wort sat idle. So we scrapped the 4th mash due to potential infection. So now we have a kettle full of super high gravity wort. I boiled that basterd for over three hours, and put a total of 62# of high alpha hops. I put a stand pipe in the kettle to accommodate all the hop trub for knock out. It was about a foot too short. The K.O. was a bitch because the entire hop kept clogging the heat exchanger. This resulted in poor aeration of the wort, resulting in a struggled fermentation. However after a struggled 2 month fermentation the beer turned out amazing. Most of it is being aged in bourbon barrels. There is one control ½ barrel. The public will see this released on our 3rd birthday party. April 28th 2007. This beer was scheduled to be released on our 2006 anniversary, but it was not done in time. So I brewed the Anniversary Ale Part Duex.