Rochester Mills Big Brew Day

Anybody else going?

I'm signed up even though I don't have the equipment for an outdoor brew day. Whoever is in charge set me up to brew on somebody else's rig. A big thank you to whoever volunteered to share equipment.

I'll have a corny of my Rye Bitter as well as a cooler full of some other brews to share.

I'm planning on brewing a belgian dubbel.

Winner gets their beer brewed on the Mills' big rig and distributed to bars/restaurants around the state. :rockin: Should be fun.

I'll be brewing there, but doubtful I'll be entering the competition. I'm brewing an english barleywine not sure it will be ready in 5 weeks...

Yeah, 5 weeks might be a little too quick for that one. But hey, free base malt. Good timing for a barley wine. :rockin:

Should be a really quick brew day. You're using water that is already roughly 180F, chilling with water that is near freezing, etc... The free malts are limited so I'm having to 'simulate' my marris otter.... but I'll take it since all I have to do is bring about 1lb of specialty malts.

I just got my confirmation email. I had a few questions for anyone that has done this before. Is the provided grain already milled, and is the hot water provided filtered or tap?

Either way it should be a fun day!

I didn't do it last year....but I'm assuming it is milled. There was no specification for people to bring mills so I wouldn't worry about that. The hot water provided is from their main tank... it's the same water they use for brewing so it is filtered. They also will be providing cold water for cooling (near freezing).

Looking forward to this!! I converted to electric and have been brewing in my basement so it will be a nice opportunity to pull out the old rig and brew outside. Hope I can find everything!

I went last year and it was a blast! !! Can't wait for Saturday. ..

I got my yeast starter going today (not using their house yeast). I'm hoping to step it up tomorrow.

Super excited to meet some more local homebrewers. We should come up with a way to ID fellow HBTers. What do you all think?

OK we go into the bathroom and tap our feet under the stall door.... Wait that's already used..

I'll be wearing a grey CRAFT button up with 'Dan' on the front

Stepped up my starter today, although that ended up in an overflow when I tried swirling it at one point.

I'm thinking I'll be wearing a NB mash-paddle t-shirt. I just got the email that said 120 batches are being brewed on about 100 different systems. So if we don't connect, I'm sure we'll still all meet plenty of other local homebrewers.

I had a blast today!! Hope you guys had as much fun as I did. Fantastic event!

That was awesome! I got hooked up with some Pontiac Brew Tribe guys and brewed on one of their '3'-tier systems.

Great to meet some homebrewers and have a good time with some beautiful weather. I took some video of the scene, I'll try and get some of it on youtube tonight or tomorrow, and then I'll share it here.

It was crazy seeing a setup with a 55 gal. mash tun. Or were they using that for the boil? I can't remember. Anyway, it was a blast.

My barleywine seems pretty happy... huge krausen at 54F and rising.

My sun burn is less happy... lol

122 batches of beer made. A total of 1012 gallons of Homebrew.

Doh! I put together my various video clips and then forgot to post it here.



Again, it was a blast!

Anybody know if this is happening this year? Seems like they announced around this time last year. Definitely want to do it again.

I saw an ad for it in the Michigan Beer Guide that said it will be April 26th. They don't have anything on their website yet, though. I seem to remember one of the homebrew clubs did most of the organizing for the event. Maybe they are just a little slower this time around.

I'm looking forward to it though. Can't decide yet what I want to try brewing. I'm thinking about maybe doing a partigyle. Who knows.

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For anyone interested, registration details have been posted to the website.


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I'll be there.

I just sent in my registration email. I'm claiming Chop & Brew as my club.

Sent registration yesterday any word on how long they take to confirm?

I'm guessing they'll wait until they fill up the 120 spots they are accepting. Then send out confirmation emails and ask everybody to submit their recipes, so they can divvy up ingredients.

Well, I got the confirmation email this morning. Unfortunately, the list of ingredients they are providing is pretty limited.


Grains:
Pilsner malt (20 lb. limit)

Hops (8 oz. limit):
Ahtanum
Amarillo
Comet
Falconer's Flight 7 Cs
Experimental 429

Yeast:
Wyeast 1272 American Ale II - fresh from one of their fermenters


I had planned on brewing a Barley Wine, but that's obviously not going to happen. I'm not really sure what to go for with this particular selection of ingredients.

Anybody know anything about that experimental hop variety? Or have any suggestions of what kind of hop schedule/combinations would go well with a 100% pilsner beer?

I do have some crystal 20 and 80 laying around that I could add in, but I'd kind of rather brew with just the ingredients I can get for free from them. The one thing I might use that they don't provide is a different yeast. I have some Wyeast Belgian Ardennes 3522 that does really well with pilsner malt, but I'm not sure how the hops they have will work with that yeast. I also have some BRY-97, Wyeast 2565 Kolsch, and 1469 West Yorkshire Ale.

Thoughts?

I'll be doing an american barleywine. I'll be adding in a small amount of vienna, munich, and wheat malt. Doesn't seem to be much info about Experimental Hop 429 out there... Seems Victory has a Red IPA they made with it.

http://www.victorybeer.com/beers/429-red-ipa/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/victory-dtown-429-red-ipa/238599/

So from that I only really get 'citrus' and one person said floral... Possibly dark fruit but that is likely coming from the malt.

I'm afraid if you want to use 100% their ingredients with nothing additional you're going to be disappointed with the beer. All of those hops are aggressive american hops... So you would be looking at something like an IPA or Pale ale with only pilsner malt. I think it's not going to have much of a malt backbone...

So, I'm thinking an IIPA. I'll maybe add a little Crystal malt and mash high, so it doesn't dry out too much. Then do a heavy dry hop.

Oh yeah, I'm also considering doing a decoction mash just for the fun of it.

And mors, I'm actually in Berkley, too. Small world. (yeah, my profile says Waterford, but I'm really in Berkley)

I don't know if I would do a decoction. It's very busy... I was one of the last ones finished last year. I did a longer boil because I did an english barleywine... I guess it really depends on where your 'spot' is and what your equipment is like. Last year people were all leaving right around the time I needed to start chilling... so I lost the daisychain of power cords... I had to go around hunting for extra cords and stuff... kind of a pain...

Berkley FTW! ;-)

I don't use pumps or anything, so the only thing I'll need to connect to is the cold water supply. I'm planning on having a nice long hose to do that, and it shouldn't be too hard to move my kettle a little closer if the hose won't reach to my wort chiller.

I was there a little late in the afternoon last year, and that just made it easy to pull my car in to load up my crap when I was finally finished.

Anyway, I'm planning on having plenty of homebrew with me to 'sample', so it should be a fun day.

Well, today was the big day. I had a blast and came away with two fermenters full of wort.

I did a parti-gyle with a big beer at 1.085 and a small beer at 1.042 OGs. They both ended up at about 4.5 gallons, due to a high boil off rate, because of the wind.

I hope everybody else had a good brew today.

My day started off horrible with a pump breaking in the process of moving a 100 feet because there was no power near my set up. Had some group of guys chuckling near by but it is said he who laughs last laughs the longest. Had to batch sparge when all i have ever done is fly sparge and my canopy wanted to take flight most of the day.

However I had some awesome people nearby help to hold down the canopy,supply power and were even willing to let me borrow a propane burner if i ran out. If it were not for the most part an awesome homebrew community things would have been insanely difficult

signpost said:

Well, today was the big day. I had a blast and came away with two fermenters full of wort.

I did a parti-gyle with a big beer at 1.085 and a small beer at 1.042 OGs. They both ended up at about 4.5 gallons, due to a high boil off rate, because of the wind.

I hope everybody else had a good brew today.

Click to expand...

Were you set up by the first bay door? saw someone doing something along the lines of a decoction.

I was the 2nd to last to finish brewing lol. Made an American Barleywine with a 2 hour mash and a 2.5 hour boil. There was still someone boiling when I was leaving though... Maybe it was that decoction folks you were talking about... decoction at an event like this is a silly idea ;D

JBOGAN said:

Were you set up by the first bay door? saw someone doing something along the lines of a decoction.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I was straight out from the big bay, near the concession stand. No decoction, although I thought about it. With the hot water getting my mash to 155 right off the bat, it wound have taken too long to get the water cool enough to start at the right temp for a decoction.

Anyway, I was happy with how it all turned out. This is really a great event for the homebrew community.

I was there also. We brewed a DIPA and a English Mild w/Lemongrass for the 2nd running. Ended up with a bit more boil off than expected due to the wind, but everything went smooth. 90 min boils due to the Pilsner malt made for a rather long day, but we were in good company. A whole bunch of nice dudes and a great event! Thanks to RMBC and the clubs who hosted!

I was there as well. Brewed up a variation of a Gumballhead clone I've been working on.

Any good pictures from the event? I only have a few.

Looks like I was the third tent down from you Just out of view in that first pic

Oh, Hey Josh! I was set up right next to you. My friend liked a mix of your stout and pale ale. I didn't think to ask everybody I talked to if they were on HBT.

I took a bunch of pics and video last year, but didn't get any this time around. Too busy with the parti-gyle brew.

[YOUTUBE]dA2RgMJ821Q[/YOUTUBE][/url]



My Pops was there to help but he helped himself to drinking more than actual brewing.

Well my canopy survived Rochester Mill Big Brew Day but not the National Big Brewday... Wind ended up taking my canopy for a ride and destroyed it... It also managed to get the leg to catch on my propane line before going sailing and spilling my hot (180F+) sparge water all over someone's leg and feet... Damn wind.