We're Not Running Second To Anyone!

Here is "E" holding the Iowa State Fair entries. I am confident that our beers will do well.

Yesterday we brewed another batch of our high gravity I.P.A. As you know, we have been experimenting with our second runnings. No longer do we throw out our second runnings. What we have been doing is, save them, add some DME, boil it, add some hops and, off we go.

The I.P.A. that we brewed yesterday came in at 1.076. We took the second runnings (about 4 gallons) , added 2 gallons of water, 3 lbs. of light DME, one ounce of cascade hops, boiled it for 1 hour and, it came in at 1.064. That just blew my mind! I had no idea that it would come in that high. This was the third time we tried this (the 2nd time that we added DME). This has inspired us to try some really radical stuff. Not with the main batch but, with the second runnings. In fact, we decided to go old school. We put the second batch in a plastic bucket and, we are doing open fermentation. The cool thing about brewing this way is that it gives you 5 gallons to screw around with. You can experiment with it. Even if you are doing a 5 or 10 gallon batch, you should try this. You can take that last gallon or two and goof around with it. You still have your primary batch and, all you have to loose is a bit of DME and a bit of hops. Give it a try and, stay tuned to The Freak Brothers blog. If you don't want to try it yourself, we will try it for you. Cheers!