Brewed 1/12/14. Used Giga yeast 001 which is their version of California Ale Yeast. Strike water was 176F and hit 156F. Decided to top off with a quart of strike water and recirculate 1.5gal. Hit 156F again. pH was 5.25 which is close to predicted. Might not be the pH meter, probably need to get a water test done again. I got exactly 8.25 gallons from the sparge and the runoff right before the sparge stopped was about 4 brix. Pre-boil gravity was 1.049 which puts the kettle efficiency at 85%. I got about 5.5gal from the kettle at the end of the boil and overshot the OG a little bit. Cooled the wort down to about 70F. When I checked on 1/13/14 it had dropped down to about 65F so I heated it up to about 72F with the aquarium heater because I want some esters in this beer. 1/14/14 beer dropped to about 69F so I heated it back up. Noticed mid day it had hit about 74F so I chilled it back down to about 72F. Beer heated up on accident to about 75F (about 4 hours) in the evening but I cooled it back down to 71F. 1/15/14 was at 71F whole day. 1/16/14 brew seems to be floating around 71/72F. Racked to barrel 2/13/14 with a FG of 1.014. That is a bit more attenuation than I expected with a mash temp that high. Puts the brew at about 6.1% alcohol. Pitched the Roeselare blend in the barrel. Barrel was full to the brim. 11/30 I decided to top off the barrel with a bit of the grand cru clone top off beer. It was a bit less alcoholic and had a brett and lacto strain. It was about 3 quarts of head space. We shall see if that helps get the brew more sour. The top off beer, with Brett Trios and lacto, and later a pint of slurry from the rare barrel group project gave it a nice mild sourness. Tasted on 9/20/15 and the gravity dropped to about 1.005.
