On Mother’s Day 2020 we brewed a Russian Imperial Stout in the new brew pot system in Phil’s garage hoping it would work for this year’s holiday brew. It came out great! And now that we had a 20 gallon brewing system we knew we could make a double batch for even more beer to give to friends (and drink ourselves, of course).
So Phil set about doing the work to figure out what was required for a double recipe and in mid-September we got together for a day of brewing.
We soon learned that we started from the wrong end of things, which was the idea that we’d have about 11 gallons of brew for the fermenters, which would be no problem for a 20 gallon system. Then we looked at the grain bill and quickly realized that there was no way we would be able to get all that in the pot with the necessary water. It was decided that we’d divide the batch in half and do a pair of mashes and then combine the results for the boil.
The first batch seemed to contain most or all of the darker malts, so it was as dark as Jake’s soul. The second batch looked more like a dark amber ale.
Thankfully when combined they came together as expected, and in the end all of our measurements matched almost exactly with our test batch. We credit our new brewery mascot and the fact that we didn’t start drinking until we got to the boil stage when we celebrated with last year’s holiday brew, because it takes beer to make beer.
