A much-needed reprieve from sitting on my butt typing words came on Wednesday. A quick look at the calendar and insight into the concept of “tank time” dictated that a certain beer was itching to spring to life.
Flashback to a few weeks ago:
Me: “Hey, Eric, you gonna brew Illuminator again this year?”
Eric: “Heck yeah, they’d cut my head off if I didn’t make that beer again.”
Fast Forward to Wednesday:
Eric (Sorensen of Rock Bottom-West Des Moines) had invited me to come up and once again be a part of bringing my doppelbock recipe to life for a wider audience than those who happen to stop by my house and share a pint. So, away I went and away we brewed.
There will be a couple of changes for this year’s Illuminator Doppelbock. In an effort to hit a lower terminal gravity, we mashed a couple degrees cooler. We also bumped up the melanoidin malt, ditched the Carapils and added some dark Munich. No Sinimar for color adjustment this time.
The original gravity was 19 Plato, or 1.079 for those more fluent in the specific gravity-type language.
Oh, yeah. And we made a double batch this year. I’m sure it won’t be the media-induced madness we saw last year, but there will be plenty to go around—14 barrels.
When? You can’t fast forward. You’re just going to have to wait. Fat Tuesday is February 21 this year, and this beer looks to be a new part of the Lenten tradition at RB in Des Moines. As I recall, it tasted right yummy with crawfish last year, but maybe that’s because I was savoring every last morsel at that point.
To learn more about this “bold, unfiltered monk’s Lenten session beer,” check out my book, Diary of a Part-Time Monk.
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