Welton's Wild Cow Wiezenbock

At the beginning of the month, I traveled to Midland to brew with Satan. I saw that the Big Batch Brew Off (whose site appears to be down now) was holding a wiezenbock brewing contest. So we came up with a recipe. Satan, however, asked me not to share the recipe in case we won. So, sorry, I can't tell you anything, except that it is a wiezenbock.

I ordered the grains and forgot to include the Crystal malt that would darken the beer and help us avoid a decoction mash. Satan and I got to his lab at work at 7:30 am, we had to re-calculate everything. Unfortunately, Satan works in the oil industry and he actually had to work while I did the math and mixed the grains. By 11 am, Satan helped me set up the equipment and we were ready to brew. We used a triple decoction mash, and soon realized we were in for a long day.

At 8 pm we started the 90 minute boil. At 10:30 pm, we had everything cleaned up and went back to Satan's house via Domino's Pizza. We were in bed by 11:30.

Our numbers were a little low. Even though Satan told me we would have a 6 gallon batch, I calculated everything for 5 gallons. D'oh!

We learned several things:

If we can't start brewing before noon, wait a day.

On Satan's system, figure a 6 gallon batch.

It would have been worth the $30 for overnight shipping for the Crystal malt.

Macht's nicht, baby. Macht's nicht.