Damn Heavy

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In an exploration of some of the stupidest things we’ve ever done – we present Drew’s “Damn Heavy” with a 19 hour boil!

Recipe Author: Drew Beechum, Mick Deering
Beer Style: Wee Heavy
Batch Size: 16
Boil Time: 19 hours
Original Gravity: 1.106
Est Final Gravity: ~1.035
IBUs: 27
SRM: 18
ABV: 9.3%

Malt/Grain/Sugar/Extract:

55 lbs Crisp Maris Otter 94.8%
2.5 lbs Biscuit 4.3%
0.25 lbs Bairds Chocolate 0.4%
0.25 lbs Roasted Barley 0.4%

Water Profile

Filtered LA DWP

Mashing

Main Rest – 150°F for 60 minutes

Hops:

Fuggles 5.1% 4.0 oz 60 minutes
East Kent Goldings 5.1% 2.25 oz 20 minutes

Yeast:

WLP028 Edinburgh ale yeast

Misc:

N/A

Notes:

From the original notes:

“The original recipe is based around the ideas of an old Wee Heavy recipe from Westwood Brewing Company. The original Deering-Beechum attempt met with a serious error on the use of Peat Smoked Malt. See the above recipe? No smoked malt! The beer is boiled for a period between 12-18 hours. The endr esult of the long boil is tons of kettle caramelization and deep ruby highlights.

Okay, we brewed it. Brew day started at 9AM on Saturday, serious brewery reconstruction followed with a straight mash up. Fire applied to the kettle at 2:30PM with a boil roiling by 4:00PM. Dinner was served up with a giant slab of baby back ribs. The beer was finished and in the kegs right around noon on Sunday. Big ole caramel and dark ruby fruit and color. That’s why we do it.

Fermentation Notes: 1.5 Months into the primary ferment with the Edinburgh yeast. Both vessels were down to 1.048. The beer has been re-pitched, but seems to have hit rock bottom at 1.040.”
The beer did eventually after nearly a year of fermentation settle into the 1.030’s. What wasn’t noted in the writeup was the screwup that happened over night. Mick and I kept “watch” over the brew, which mostly involved sipping pints of beer. Eventually, we passed out and missed topping up the kettle with extra sparged wort that we had collected for that purpose. The beer ended up reducing drastically before we woke up and diluted it down. That was probably a big source of our fermentation problems.
Was the extended boil necessary? Maybe? Could we have achieved the same results by taking the first runnings and reducing them for a shorter period of time? “ish”. What it really was – a great excuse to smoke ribs, drink beer and do something legendarily stupid!