Epic Porter vs Mt Taranaki and Mikes Maniacally Mad Mixture of Malted Meal Featuring the 4 C hops.

So first of all, thanks to Tyler and Mike for making this weekend possible. Tyler (Reviled) was good enough to take the photos of our monumental brew. But lets get back to the start... I arrive home from work on friday after a session of drinkies with my work mates. I get a text message from Tyler letting me know he has arrived. It's 6pm. I greet him at the top of my driveway, and we have a Dubbel. It all goes downhill from there - infact I can not honestly say that I remember in order what we were drinking! Mike arrives at 7:30 and we have a pint of Pliny the Elder. This stuff was unbelievable - we do a side by side with my IIPA - and discover that mine is way more hoppy and way more bitter. I guess I failed in cloning this beer... oh well, it wasn't really the intention. Homebrew after homebrew after homebrew. We didn't even have a bad one. 1am later it was bed time. After a decent sleep in, I got my ass out of bed to cook eggs on toast for the misses. The boys get out of bed, we play some Street Fighter 4... then onto the task at hand. Scaling Mt Taranaki to drink Epic Porter up there. We set off relatively late compared to the planed departure time... which is understandable, we needed a sleep in!

The day was nice - no clouds, no wind. The temperature at 1100 meters was 11 degrees celcius.

We walked for quite some time, but we reached out point where we would drink our Epic Beer. The wind started to blow, and I could see clouds forming from the west. We needed to make the most of where we were currently on our ascent: 1800 Meters.

We were all satisfied with our acheivement, so we cherished the prize - and toasted our company.

Se we headed back, as the temperature dropped so that we could get onto the next matter of business... Brewing beer.

Mikes Maniacally Mad Mixture of Malted Meal Featuring the 4 C Hops... OG: 1095 FG: 1.018ish ABV: 10.2% IBU: 120ish 4.16kg Maris Otter 4.16kg Light Munich 1kg Good old fashioned plain white table sugar. 250g CaraAroma 250g Pale Chocolate Malt 220g Light British Crystal 170g CaraMunich II 170g Melanoidin Malt 20g Chinook 11.1% 90min 20g Colombus 13.7% 90min 45g Centennial 7.2% 15min 45g Cascade 5.8% 15min 35g Chinook 11.1% 7.5min 35g Colombus 13.7% 7.5 min 45g Centennial 7.2% 0min 45g Cascade 5.8% 0min 35g Chinook 11.1% 0min 35g Colombus 13.7% 0min I have added an Album of our brewday. She was pretty cramped in the little JoKing brewery, but the 3 of us managed to pull of this massive US Style Barleywine. It was a long day, as the recipe called for a 90min mash and a 2 hour boil - including caramelising the first 5 Liter run of wort down to 1 liter with a couple of pinches of citric acid. The flavour was outstanding. We welcomed the arrival of Autumn when cooling this batch down. It took 5 mins to get the wort down to below 50 degrees, and onother 5 to get it down to 25. I love it when the supply water is this cold. We drank plenty of good beer while brewing this including mostly Belgian beers. Full credit to Tyler and Mike for bringing a massive selection of beers with them! To Mike who had the knackers to drive 4 hours to a complete strangers house with the sole intent to brew and drink good beer. To Tyler for taking all the photos, and opening his mind to conventional brewing! It was great!