So this is my attempt at a more "monks beer" version of the Holy Roman Empire style Gruit. I used some different herbs, and the grain bill has a good bit of oats, as I used a bit more then 3/4ths a gallon of the "Monks Juice" I mashed up the other day as a PM base. If you search "Monks Juice" or look in the what are you brewing thread you will see what that is but basically 42% oats (1/3rd of which was unmalted and slightly toasted), 29% wheat (half of which was oak smoked), and 29% barley (half of which was unmalted). I boiled that mash for around 90 minutes to concentrate it a bit more then normal and ended up with a bit under 2 gallons of 1.070 wort. My efficiency wasn't great, but I didn't figure it would be as that was a pretty gummy mash with lots of adjunct. During the boil, I actually pre-hopped that stuff, so I could short boil this beer. So it had enough Northern Brewer added during it's boil to give me about 8 AAUs per 3 gallons of dilution. Yes, I basically made my own HME, except it's not evaporated as much. I'll use the other half in something else.
So added to that for 3 gallons was:
2# MoreBeer Extra Light LME
extra water to bring to volume
1.5 grams Mugwort
1.5 grams Culinary Lavender
1.5 grams Marjoram (this will give me piney/citrusy bits instead of the Juniper that I used in the other beer, which I am out of)
1.0 grams Rosemary
0.75 grams Sage
0.75 grams Wormwood
1 rock salt rock, crushed
I pulverized all of that and it all that @5
Dry Abbaye yeast.
This gave me a 1.046 wort.
The herbs before I pulverized them.
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So back to sanitizer. Get my Mini Cooper pour some sanitizer into the fermenter, put lid on shake the crap out of it, damn thing goes flying out of my hands and splatters all over the floor, lid covered with cat and dog hair inside and out... so wash it off... try again. Success. So now you have to sanitize the outside of the "krausen collar" before you put it in to make sure the sanitizer gets to that surface everywhere, so I do that, then insert it into fermenter, add rest of sanitizer, shake the crap out of it... goes flying out of my hands, krausen collar and lid go flying into various corners of the room, covered with cat and dog hair again. HUUURAY! (the word I actually uttered starts with F and rhymes with muck).
So now I'm out of sanitizer, so I mix up another jug of it... pick up the jug and it goes flying out of my hands and crashes into the floor and the jug explodes and splashes sanitizer all over my entire lower body and feet. Word as above, but with 'ing and A added to the end.
So I mix up yet another jug of it and go jump in a cold shower to wash off that stuff.
So then finally I manage to sanitize everything without disaster, wort is cool, so I bring the mini cooper upstairs and start to rack the wort to the fermenter, and about half way into it the visiting dog starts to chase cat who for no particular reason decided that at that very instant it would try to sneak past... cat then jumps over the baby gate I put up to keep dogs out of the kitchen, up on the counter from where I'm racking and waves its tail over the edge (directly over the open fermenter), then jumps down onto the ledge below where I have fermenter, puts his paws on top of the lip of the open fermenter and looks inside to see what I'm doing...
I made cat butt ale once some folks might remember, but this is taking it to another level.
So, this beer is so infected. Hopefully with just a giant glob of my brett, but only the ghost of the Holy Roman Emperor or whichever of his spectral merry monk minions are messing with me knows for sure.
Hopefully the full pack of very fresh Abbaye I pitched into it out competes most of it, or some compound in the herbs makes it very sad.
Maybe they just wanted me to make it more authentic LOL.
