Big Beer

I've been talking about it for a while now, I'm sure the people around me are sick of hearing about it while salivating wildly about the possibility of drinking some of it.  I believe this weekend is the weekend of the big beer.  Vanilla Bourbon Porter time.  I need to work on the particulars, and I'm marginally working on loosing my mind in my devious and weird ways I want to fracture and experiment with multiple strains of the same beer from one brewing.

The huge kettle lets me be a little more creative, I can take 13 gallons to boil and end with 10 gallons at the final strength.  If I make it huge and potent with an OG of 1.1 I could do 5 gallons full barley wine strength and dilute the remaining 5 down to a more reasonable 1.085.  The trouble here is that I now have 3 fermenting vessels and the ambient temperature is low enough that I could have all 3 vessels going with a total batch of 13 gallons to start cellaring with.  None of this means anything to several of the readers but for general reference if you start at an OG of 1.1 depending on the final gravity I'm talking about an almost 11% ABV beer, 1.085 is closer to 9%.  This is a big in your face beer to start with and I'm talking about giving it complex additives like raw vanilla bean, and bourbon soaked oak chips.  Based on the rough math I'm working on it's going to take 40lbs of grain to get this bad boy done.

I'm actually kind of giddy about the prospect of what I'm doing here and I think that tells me all I need to know about if this hobby is for me, I'm looking forward to hours of work, and months of worrying over this stuff.  I believe I will have to con someone into loaning me a carboy for a period of time so I can rack off of the yeast that won't be able to take the higher OG beer all the way to the higher alcohol percentage.