Go big or go home ...

While at Tellico this year, a buddy of mine handed me a beer as a present for my birthday. It was a barleywine. I have heard of this style of beer before but never had the desire to brew one as it is supposed to be on the insane end of hoppiness. I like a hoppy beer but if that is all that can be tasted, I would rather pursue other, more balanced styles.

Anyway, the beer he handed me was a Sierra Nevada Bigfoot. These are brewed every year and many folks will allow theirs to age for a year or so prior to trying them. This was the 2011 version and it was ... just … well, awesome!   ; )

Ever since then, I was convinced I was going to ttry and brew a batch of this once I found the recipe. Heh, well, upon finding a recipe kit for it, I found that it carried a price tag appropriate for such a high alcohol, hoppy, malt-based beer. In spite of the high price, I went ahead and ordered a kit. 

The kit came with 3 pounds of grain, 12 pounds of malt extract, and 7 oz. of hops. Yup, it’s gonna be a BIG beer!

I brewed it Friday evening, but I was apprehensive at best. This is my first “big” beer – and at that cost that if I screwed it up, it’d be an expensive mistake!

This recipe called for first wort hopping which is typically done during the first runoff in an all-grain mash, which I am not setup to do just yet. I went ahead and threw the hops dedicated for this into the 4 gallons of water as it came to a boil and figured that would have to work. What else could I do?

So while that was coming to a boil, I steeped my grains (all 3 pounds worth!) at 155* for 45 minutes. At the end of steeping I managed to break my strainer as the weight of that 3 pounds of grain, plus all the water they were retaining, was too heavy for that mesh. Yippee!

I added the grain tea to the hoppy water that had been boiling. Then added the 12 pounds of extract and my bittering hops. After 45 minutes I added the aroma hops, some Irish Moss, and yeast nutrient.

Then it was ready for the ice bath and I was able to get it down to pitching temperature (about 80*) in about 20 minutes as usual. I racked it into my fermenter, aerated, and pitched my TWO packets of rehydrated yeast (after all it is a high alcohol beer, gonna need a lotta yeast!).

Within 12 hours that thing was bubbling rapidly and had a nice thick head of krausen on it. Yaaay … it’s beer!    ; )