Kemosabe Quad (Batch 372)

Fat Tuesday / Mardi Gras was last Tuesday. Even though this year is as late as Easter can be, it blows my mind that we've already entered Lent.

Time flies.

If you've been following along, you might have caught that I've been picking beers to brew off my Roll-a-Style list rather than actually rolling to pick what to brew.

Part of the reason I've been doing this, is to use my harvested Belgium yeast to step up to a big Belgium Beer ... Roll-a-Style 9: 26D. Belgian Dark Strong Ale.

For quite awhile, I've been planning on using the whole yeast cake from Mardi Blonde (Batch 370) Birthday Brew to brew this big beer.

But, then when I kegged Mardi Blonde, I wasn't ready to brew yet. So, I kept putting off the brew day.

I finally got around to it last Tuesday on the same day I smoked a Chuck Roast for pulled-beef-sandwiches.

Kemosabe Quad

So ... Tuesday was a work day of course. But one of the beautiful things about brewing and smoking is that most of the time spent doing these activities is waiting so that it is easy to do other things the same time.

I got the chuck roast on the kettle early in the morning and let it cook for 3 or 4 hours.

Then I got it into a crock pot to finish getting tender enough to shred.

I got the water prepared early too, but didn't really get my brewing started until after 10am.

The Kemosabe Quad recipe calls for 17 lbs of malt, which is a bit more than the Anvil Foundry actually handles well.

So, for the first time in my brewing "career", I did a "Reiterated Mash". A "Reiterated Mash" is basically doing more than one mash for one batch of beer.

For Kemosabe Quad, I mashed a little over half the grains, and then used the resulting wort as the strike water for a second mash.

I wasn't sure how this process would go as far as mash efficiency, so I lowered the Brewhouse Efficiency for this batch compared to my usual recipes.

I figured if I didn't lower it enough and didn't get quite the extract I expected, I would simply boil down until I got close.

As it turned out, though, apparently my plan worked out pretty much perfectly.

If you're interested exactly what I did, read through the Recipe Notes on the Kemosabe Quad recipe.

My first mash used the grain bag. After draining, I left the bag in a pot where it drained some more.

And the 2nd mash went straight into the malt pipe, which is something I have not done for quite awhile.

But, once I got through the second mash, my pre-boil gravity was right on track.

Amazing.

The boil went well. There really wasn't much that needed my attention. Only one hop addition, and some whirlfloc.

The cooling was the only real part of the brew day that was overly extended due to my job distracting me, and I chilled much cooler than I was planning.

But, since I had a whole bunch of yeast, I figured it would be fine.

And .. it was. The beer was chugging before bedtime and was attenuated over 20 points by the next morning.

This will be a longer than usual fermentation, and I'm planning on letting this age awhile before I even tap this beer.

So, it will be awhile before I can tell you how it turns out, but eventually I promise I will sometime.

The beef on the other hand was great that night.

As always, stay tuned on the regular SheppyBrew Channels to see what is happening with beer, barbeque, biking and other things in my life: SheppyBrew's Facebook Page; Sheppy's Twitter Feed; SheppyBrew's Instagram Page; and SheppyBrew's Website.