60 gallons sounds like a lot of beer. 60 gallons is a lot of beer. No matter how many times you say that you're making 60 gallons of home brew, however, you aren't prepared for how much beer it FEELs like you're making. For the last couple of months here are SUDSY Brewing central we've been moving steadily from the planning stage, through the purchasing and transporting stages to arrive squarely at the production stage of our latest project. A used 60 gallon oak Cabernet(?) cask has been purchased from the folks at Mondavi Family Vineyards in St. Helena, CA and driven out to Bozeman Montana where our brewing efforts have been bumped up to record levels. (Ignore the fact that the previous record was set by four drunk guys sitting around and waiting for a barley wine to boil down).
Even as the cask was on en route to Bozeman, debate continued concerning the style of beer to brew. While a head brewer over at Blackfoot Brewery in Helena suggested a sour brown, none of us had brewed a sour style beer before, and I'm a person who shed more than one tear when a recent 5 gallon batch of IPA became infected beyond my ability to repair. None of us were willing to risk the integrity of our 60 gallons. Eventually we decided upon a Belgian Tripel. We felt that a tripel was complex enough to positively absorb some of the oak and wine characteristics and that it was a beer worthy of a project this grand.
So the brewing has commenced and carboys are lined up at Dan’s house being filled, fermented and drained as quickly as we can grind grain and get the yeast going. Stay tuned for updates, along with monthly flavor profiles during the aging process.
