It has been a long time coming, 7 years since filling our first keg, but we are finally upgrading our beer serving infrastructure.  Introducing the Big Beard Brewing Company kreezer outfitted with three faucets!  It is still under construction, but we expect it to be serving brand new Big Beard Brews by this Saturday! 

Special thanks to Stan for helping in its construction.

Volunteers like Kurt and Phil make bottling day happen

Kegging has become the way of packaging at beer at Big Beard.  It is easy, fast, and can be shared in multiple formats.  However, every once in a while there comes a beer special enough that it demands to be bottled.  This week, we had one such beer.  We have been trying to perfect 4-bearded Monk Belgian Quadruple for a few years.  The goal is to make a big 12%+ beer that tastes awesome.  We missed the first mark, coming closer to 10%, and we have a few ideas on how to further grow that number.  However, this stuff tastes great right out of the fermentor, uncarbonated .  But it will get better.

Bottle conditioning takes about 2-3 weeks for a normal beer to carbonate.  And I am sure this beer will be good then.  However, for this big Belgium to really shine, bottle conditioning and aging for about 6 months is going to be pretty spectacular.  We will try a bottle here and there in between though.

Special Thanks to Phil and Kurt who volunteered to help bottle 10 gallons of beer on their Saturday afternoon.  Bottling is really labor heavy.  Having these two gentlemen pitch in helped tremendously.

10 Gallons of 4 Bearded Monk

BIG BEARD  is pumped to start all grain brewing.  So far we have brewed up a Belgium Quadruple and an IPA we are hoping will take the name “Rebellion”!  Here are some pics of the equipment and process!

Pat building our boil kettle

Putting hot water in with the grains for the mash.

Stirring the water and grains for the mash.

Our spent grains after the mash.

Here we have our homemade kettle that Pat helped build.  It works great and doubles as Hot Liquor tank and and boil kettle.

Below is our Hop schedule for the IPA we brewed last weekend.  That’s a lot of hops!

Joel and Jon getting ready to add the flame out addition of hops.

And, filling the first BIG BEARD Keg.

By popular demand we have BIG BEARD BREWING tee shirts designed for the Ladies!

And of course we still have them for the fellows as well!   Contact Joe to order!

Brew Day today.  Starting around 5pm, we will be brewing up a new beer called Rye-Fighter, a “rye-P-A”.  The recipe:

Muntons LME – Light   Extract  6.000 lb  

 Rahr – 2 Row Malt Grain 2.000 lb

 Rye Malt Grain 2.000 lb

 Rye, Flaked Grain 1.000 lb

 Caramel/Crystal Malt – 40L Grain 8.000 oz.

Summit  1.000 oz Boil  60.000 mon.

 Palisade 1.000 oz Boil 15.000 min

 Palisade 1.000 oz Aroma 0.000 Min.

Palisade 1.000 oz Aroma Dry Hop

Muttons Ale Yeast  Dry

14 BEERS BREWED IN LESS THAN A YEAR!!! Here is a list:

1. Dunkelweisen
2. Oatmeal Stout
3. Coffee infused Oatmeal Stout
4. Red Ale
5. EVIL EMPIRE STOUT 
6. Jar Jar Red 
7. Barley Wine. 
8. HOBBITY BROWN
9. Rebellion IPA 
10. Hahn Dunkel
11. Burnt Chin Orange 
12. BALDFACE BITTER 
13. OKTOBERFEST
14. Henchman Edition Oktoberfest

Not to mention 3 different editions of Sinister Cider

Thanks to all who have supported us this past year! It has been fun and tasty! BEARD ON!

The Big beard Brewing shirts are designed.

http://www.customink.com/designs/browngreen/dgf0-000s-esj1/hotlink?pc=HL-76684&cm_mmc=hotlink-_-3-_-Body_img-_-designfront