Exciting times and one frustrating ferment

First of all, it has been a full on couple of weeks in our personal lives. 3 weeks ago Monique and I got married on a beautiful day in the Marlborough Sounds and we are expecting our first child in September. Last week I successfully defended my title as New Zealand champion of one of my hobbies: Poker. The cash comes in handy as we are about to head overseas for a 5 week honeymoon (including 2 weeks in beer heaven, West Coast of the US), we need to do some renovations to our house and with a wee one on the way I'm sure the expenses will just keep piling up.

Beer-wise, ReWired was chosen for the Kiwi line up in the annual SpecTAPular at The Local Taphouse in St. Kilda, Melbourne. Quite an honour to get tap beer across the Tasman already.

Before we head overseas there are a few things we need to get done:

Hopefully NZ hops will deliver some freshly harvested Nelson Sauvin so we can brew another batch of HopWired.

The Big Smoke, our new smoked porter, is ready to bottle and we are just waiting on the labels. This should be on the shelves by mid May. My proudest moment yet as a brewer was when legendary Richard Emerson tasted this last month and later told me that he 'could not stop thinking about it' (in a good way!). I almost blushed.

Finally, there is iStout, the Imperial Stout that is turning into a bit of a problem child.... To get an idea of this beer we should probably start at the beginning:
If I had to name a favorite beer style I would have to go with imperial stout. It is a style that I have enjoyed and brewed for a few years and I think I am getting pretty good at it. Last year I took down the best in class award at the SOBA national homebrew competition, up until the Emerson episode mentioned above, that was my proudest moment as a brewer:)
The most grain we have ever had in the mashtun at Renaissance was 777 kg for the Double IPA Marlborough Pale Ale, or MPA. This is a lot of grain, in fact so much that the sparge arm in top of the tun was under water (or under mash!). The last time we made MPA we had a stuck mash as a result of all that grain. So I decided not to go quite that high and settled on a recipe with a mere 776 kg. Half a tonne of Canterbury grown Gladfield, topped up with British Marris Otter, oat malt, chocolate malts and roasted barley and a Belgian crystal malt (Hooray for Cryer Malt who have recently started importing these great malts from Dingemans).
Like all beers at Renaissance, we load the grain by hand into the mill and collect it by hand on the other side. We carry it by hand up to the mashtun and then mix the mash by hand using canoe paddles and rakes. After the brew we remove the spent grain, you guessed it, by hand. Trust me, brewing (especially a beer this size) is bloody hard work.
I was prepared for a stuck mash but luckily that never happened. In fact everything went smooth as, I collected more wort than expected and hit the calculated gravity of 1.108 (25.5 plato) spot on (to get an idea of the size, this gravity is almost twice as high as ReWired, our brown ale and about 3 times that of a mainstream beer). I boiled it for 2 hours and for good luck I added the last bottle of “1st Stout”, the very first imperial stout that I made as a homebrewer. For bittering I added a searing amount of Southern Cross hops and for flavour and aroma a large dose of Willamette. The theoretical IBUs are 110, in reality it will probably be less.
During transfer to the fermenter I made the mistake of thinking that everything was going really well: 2 minutes later the heat exchanger packed up. I was unable to unblock it and as a result I lost about 200 liters of precious wort.
The second and more serious problem arised 4 weeks later. I thought fermentation was complete, had dumped most of the yeast and was getting ready to transfer the beer to the cellar when I discovered something terrible that I don't know how I missed up until then: The beer was packed with acetaldehyde, a compound that has a strong smell of green apples and delivers severe headaches to the drinker. Aldehyde is a chemical that forms part of the yeast metabolism of sugar to alcohol. Simply speaking, the yeast transforms sugar into aldehyde and then the aldehyde into alcohol. The yeast usually cleans up after itself and removes the aldehyde from the beer. In this case it was still there, probably because the yeast had decided that the 10.5% alcohol was too harsh a working environment and went on strike before they had finished the job.
I gave it another 2 weeks to clear up, it didn't happen. I then added a good dose of fresh and powerful yeast, hoping that this would be strong enough to finish the job. A week later it still smelled and tasted like a black imperial cider! Finally, yesterday I tried it again, there is still a bit of apple there but it's getting alot better. Hopefully it will fully clear up and I wont have to pour it down the drain (actually, if it can't be saved it I think I will get it distilled at a local distillery, put it in a barrel and keep it in the garage for a decade, 8Wired whisky anyone?).
Anyways, it is not easy making big beers, so I hope people will enjoy it if it ever makes it to the market. Behind the apples, I think it's tasting really good and in 6-12 months time it will be stunning, fingers crossed.

That's all for this time, I'm not sure there will be time for another blog before we go overseas but I'll make sure to make some sort of trip report from our pilgrimage to the West Coast. Luckily pregnancy makes Monique the perfect sober driver:)