Vertical Epic 12-12-12

Grain Bill Pale Malt - 58% Light Crystal (15°L) - 13.5% Medium Crystal (60°L) - 11.5% Vienna Malt - 9.5% Midnight Wheat Malt - 7.5% Dark Candi Sugar - 3.5% of total grain weight NOTE: As always, I am only providing the all grain version of the recipe, and just percentages so that you can figure out the weights based on the size of your brewing system and your normal efficiencies. Spices added to mash: Cinnamon Stick, broken/ground - 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon) Ground Allspice - 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon) Ground Cloves - 0.0125 oz per gallon (0.36 grams/gallon) Sweet Orange Peel - 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon) Rosehips - 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon) Make the spice additions on the basis of brew length (gallons wort recovered). Note that the orange peel is sweet orange peel, not Curacao or bitter orange peel. Rosehips should be purchased ground, not whole, as whole rosehips are very difficult to crush (we had to use a fork-truck to do it)! Target OG: 22°P (1.088 SG).

Mashing Use a 60-minute conversion rest at 154°F. This is a fairly high conversion rest temperature that should provide enough body to balance the spices, hops and roasted malt characters in the finished beer. If you can, raise your mash temperature up to 165°F after conversion rest to stop the enzymatic conversion of starches to sugars before lautering. If you cannot raise the temperature in your mash, reduce the conversion rest from 60 to 30-45 minutes. Lautering Recirculate your wort gently from the bottom over the top of the mash to deposit the fine particles of malt on the top of the grain and to “set” your bed. Avoid splashing the wort. Recirculate for 5-15 minutes, depending on your system, before diverting wort flow to your kettle/boiling vessel. You should remove almost all the malt particles from the wort flow, but some haze is OK. Start sparging in the lauter when the wort level is about a ½-inch above the grain bed. Starting earlier will decrease your efficiency because the water will dilute your first wort. Sparge water should be between 165°F and 170°F to maximize extraction, but avoid going over 170°F or you’ll extract harsh compounds from the malt husks. Sparge until you hit your target boil volume or until the wort gravity being drawn off reaches 3°P (1.012 SG), whichever comes first. Don’t lauter past 3°P, because when the sparged wort coming off the lauter is that low in sugar content, you risk extracting tannins and other harsh character from the malt husks. Be careful not to rush the mashing and lautering step or your brewing efficiency will go down. These steps should be done with care. A good music selection will assist in keeping things relaxed and gentle during lautering.

Boil Hop Bill: 0.15 oz per gallon (4.2 grams/gallon) Simcoe Hop Pellets (13% alpha) at the start of the boil. 0.20 oz per gallon (5.6 grams/gallon) EACH Tettnang (4.5% Alpha acid) and Willamette (5.5% alpha acid). Added 30 minutes prior to end of boil. Spice additions (hung in a weighted down mesh bag): Cinnamon - 0.009 oz per gallon (0.24 grams/gallon) Nutmeg - 0.009 oz per gallon (0.24 grams/gallon) Clove - 0.0045 oz per gallon (0/12 grams/gallon) Boil for 90 minutes.

Whirlpool Spice additions-add at the start of the whirlpool process: Cinnamon - 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon) Clove - 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon) Sweet Orange Peel - 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon) Allspice - 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon) Admittedly somewhat unusual for Stone, we did not hop this brew in the whirlpool. With the influence of the spices, we wanted to keep the hop presence well blended. Massive flavor hopping in the whirlpool may have clashed with the aromatic spice flavors. The whirlpool step is where you separate out your proteinaceous trub. It’s going to be a large trub pile with all these spices, though the lack of hops should help enhance your wort recovery.

Fermentation Yeast Addition Pitch a Belgian yeast strain, enough to get 20-25 million cells per milliliter (requires a starter). We used the Wyeast High Gravity Trappist yeast for this brew, the first time we’ve ever used this yeast. This yeast produced a lot of banana character, especially at a 68°F fermentation temperature. The banana esters combined well with the dark malt and dark candy sugar flavors, giving the beer a bit of a chocolate-banana dessert flavor. After the trub has been separated from the wort, chill the wort using an immersion chiller or a heat exchanger to about 65 °F. Add enough yeast to get a cell count of about 20-25 million cells per milliliter. We like to use a higher pitching rate (yeast addition rate) here, because we wanted to ferment at a lower temperature but still ensure the beer ferments out completely. This means that you will most likely have to build up your yeast culture at home using a starter.