I don’t put much stock in numerology: as far as I’m concerned it’s on par with Kabbalah or reading bones or Catholicism. But when it turned out that I would be brewing my 25th batch in the month of my 25th birthday, I couldn’t resist. Hence the absolutely absurd notion of brewing a 25% ABV batch.
Essentially I kept the grain bill from my 10.8% American Barley Wine, which is great and will probably be going to the AHA Club-Only Competition next month. I did a four hour boil, though, to reduce the volume by a little over half. The result was 2.5 gallons of ~1.23 wort, which once the water and sugar (3 lb total) contributions are factored in comes out to a 3.5 gallon batch at almost exactly 1.200. I won’t say too much more about the specifics, just link to the recipe and a thread at the Northern Brewer forum about my struggles with brewing this beast.
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[…] done something similar: http://seanterrill.com/2009/02/19/batch-25/ The NB forum topic I link there has some suggestions, and also links to other resources. […]