Moany the Elder

Let it be known that today was brew day. A brew day much like any other except completely different. I recently purchased the Best of Brew Your Own - 250 Classic Clone Recipes and I was quickly able to choose my next brew...Pliny the Elder. Now, I have not had this beer before, but it is often listed as the best of the best in Imperial IPAs, so I figured it was worth a shot.

I ordered all the ingredients, including the nearly impossible to find Simcoe hop pellets (found them at Rebel Brewer in Tennessee), and planned my brew day. As I was getting the logistics sorted out, I took another look at the recipe and noticed it didn't list the boil volume. A quick internet search led me to believe the boil volume should be roughly 7.5 gallons. I had never done a full volume boil, nor do I own the equipment to do such things. After the initial panic subsided, I asked my co-worker and fellow homebrewer if I could borrow his 10 gallon boil kettle. He offered up the entire setup, 10 gallon kettle, 10 gallon mash tun, propane burner, wort chiller, and oxygen stone. Aside from the mash tun, I had never brewed using any of this equipment before. Here was the scene in the garage...


This brew calls for copious amounts of delicious hops and the whole garage smelled fantastic! Here's just a fraction of the total hops...these were added at flameout.


Here's the stats:

Batch Volume: 5 Gallons, All-grain
Predicted OG: 1.073 (at 65% Efficiency)
Actual OG: 1.068 (calculated efficiency = 63.8%)

Pitched 2 vials of White Labs California Ale yeast about an hour ago. Wish me luck!