The Bleeding Hop Bucket Will Probably Kill You

I'm one big stupid idiot. Just completely irresponsible in every way possible.

I moved the Bleeding Hop Bucket to secondary today, and pitched a WYeast 1084 Irish Ale I had chilling out, just for the hell of it (OK, not really for the hell of it...), and dry hopped with 11 oz of mixed leaf hops that have been hanging out in the fridge for a while.

So here's the deal. This beer has FORTY-FIVE OUNCES of hops in it. That's it. I'm going to OD on hops. Who's with me??

I am officially making a new qualification for brews; that being, the Triple IPA. Why the hell not? Sure, we could go with Imperial, but nah.

Fuck it, dude, let's go for the Triple.


(Pics up soon)

Spiced Chai Rice Extract Milk Stout

To Honor a Fool, when Caspito comes to town this coming week/end, we are making a brew unlike any seen before! The next addition to the Davedave lineup will be a Spiced Chai Rice Extract Tea Beer, currently unnamed. I have done some researching and a small bit of looking around the internet and have decided on the following as a starting batch:


1/4 lb. chocolate extract
4 lbs. rice extract syrup
2 lbs. honey
2 lb. dry wheat malt extract
1 lb. dry x-lite malt extract
1 c dark brown sugar
1.5 oz. summit (60 min)
1 oz. golding (15 min)
1 oz. cascade (3 min)
1 package star anise
1 package cardamom seed
2 T freshly chopped ginger
5-6 cinnamon sticks
a good handshakes worth of peppercorn twists
15-20 cloves
darjeeling tea base
1 or 2 packages lactose


most of the spices will be brewed with the tea up front and then the rest of the boiling process will go as usual for a brew of this kind. the question is, when do we put everything in the brew, what do we add at primary, what kinds of yeast should we use (WYeast Labs Yeast List) should we substitute in any other hops? I have heard that adding a few bay leaves to the beginning of the tea brewing adds a nice flavor.

thoughts?

more beer than your mom can handle

a couple of quick updates on some brews that have been created in the past few weeks here at davedave. first, we had a double brew day in the end of january - man.2 and the spicy orange witbier. after three weeks of hard work, man.2 was bottled and set aside for conditioning this past sunday, the 17th with a record setting 62 bottles capped. we also took an immediate post-primary taste of man, and it is to the best knowledge of this brewery that the finished brew will be even better than the original - which was pretty damn good in itself. man.2 will be ready to drink around the first week of march, and will continue to age well long after that.

the spicy orange witbier is currently still in the primary stage, and may be moved to secondary this week with more spices added and then let sit for a few more weeks.

surprisingly, god is NOT FINISHED. can you believe it? after around two months of aging with whiskey soaked oak chips, the gravity readings on god were not low enough. in fact, they were still higher than most original gravities of beers that i've brewed. over a month ago we did a partial reboil of god, added more and more malt and hops, created a "starter" carboy (approx 1 gallon) into which we pitched another round of the super high gravity yeast, and then after 4-5 days, added the rest of the remaining batch. that was 3 weeks ago, and it's still going strong. the carboy has been bubbling at around 8 sec. apart consistently for the past week and hasn't slowed. so maybe we'll see god sometime by 2009...

the chocolate raspberry porter has been bottled for around 16 days now and is getting pretty good. i realize now that it was a mistake to add the additional semi and bittersweet chocolate to the boil, and should have relied on the chocolate malts to bring in the chocolate flavor. this is definitely a correction necessary for the future. the raspberry flavor has rounded out and is lost a little in the beer - hopefully a few more weeks and the flavors may re-emerge

also, emma and i attended the stone brewery beer tasting at jungle jims last friday and were able to come away with 6 boxes of the bottles used at the event. since we've only got around 30 left on the shelf, this couldn't have come at a better time. now the capacity is back up, to around 150 beers worth, which works well considering the three brews that are currently in primary: as mentioned, the spicy orange witbier, god, and BLEEDING HOP BUCKET.


THAT'S RIGHT - WE NAMED A BEER, 'BLEEDING HOP BUCKET.' As i've mentioned in the past, we've been looking for an IPA to knock us on our asses for some time. we want something that will make us bleed hops when we drink it. we've attempted before, with The Hop, and Batch 11, but neither of those will compete with what we've done over the weekend. Bleeding Hop Bucket (what i would like to call a TRIPLE, or rather - imperial...) IPA was brewed with not 5, not 10, not 15, not even 20, 25 or 30 ounces of hops. we used 33, that's right THIRTY THREE OUNCES of hops in one 5-gallon batch. on top of that, there are 7 ounces of fresh hop leaves on reserve waiting to be dry-hopped in secondary come a few weeks from now. this was one of the most intense brews ever attempted by davedave, and it was a valiant success. look for more updates on this brew in the future.


dave