A Wonderful Screw-Up

So I went to the LHBS today to pick up the grain for the Amber Alt I'm going to do. The grain bill was supposed to be:

9 lbs 2-row
1 lb Munich
0.5 lb Crystal 75
0.5 lb Crystal 120

Instead, the guy weighing out the grain had the scale on kilograms instead of pounds. I now have 24.2 lbs of grain instead of 11! :rockin:

It is all crushed in a paper bag, so I can't seperate ingredients out. I'm still going to do the Alt as planned with 11 lbs of grain, but what to do with the 13.2 lbs? It will have to be soon because it's already crushed. My other grain bill is basically this:

10.8 lbs 2 row
1.2 lbs Munich
0.6 lb Crystal 75
0.6 lb Crystal 120

I now have several yeast and hop options in the fridge. Yeast include (all White Labs):
001 CA Ale
002 English Ale
008 East Coast Ale
011 European Ale
013 London Ale
028 Edinburgh Ale
029 German Ale/Kolsch
051 California V
300 Hefeweizen

Hop choices include: Amarillo, Cascade, Chinook, Cluster, Columbus, EK Goldings, Galena, Hallertauer, Liberty, Magnum, Nugget, Saaz, and Tettnanger.

The OG looks about 1.065 and an SRM of 15.

I'm thinking of doing maybe an Old Ale and use a yeast I have never used before: 008 East Coast, 011 European Ale or 028 Edinburgh.

Good choice. Nothing like a twofer.

I think I'll go with the "Old Ale", but a west coast interpretation, (using the 002 English yeast) If I use the Chinook, Cascade and a few others, I can use up a few packets of pellets that I have kicking around the fridge.

IMHO I say screw the alt and make one huge ass OG beer with the whole 24lbs. You're never really going to know exactly how much of each grain is going to be in 2 batches if you try to break that grain into 2 parts so have some fun and go nuts with one BIG beer

I thought about it, but I have neither the mash tun or kettle space to do it. My mash tun maxes out at around 14 lbs. I'm just going to mix the grain well, and then weigh out 11 lbs. The rest will be the other brew. If the Alt wasn't for some friends, I might actually try it, but the brew wasn't really mine to begin with. I'll see if I can share some of this brew with the LHBS, since they basically donated the grain.

Can I get some? seeing as how I might've helped distract the guy milling the grain?

Sure, I'll bring some in sometime, at least a sixer, probably a 12er. I'm debating on doing it tomorrow. It wasn't really on my schedule, but now that I have over 13 pounds of extra grain...

Sounds fun to me. Even if you don't get a complete mix on the grains you are going to make 2 interesting brews!

So I just transfered my Old Ale over to secondary. The OG started at 1.069 and the White Labs 002 English Ale yeast said it had an attenuation of about 70%, so I was expecting it to have some sweetness to it, even for the 40 IBU's of hops. I checked the FG and it came to 1.014 giving an attenuation of 79%! The taste only had a little sweetness to it, or at least less than what I was expecting, and the flavor is awesome. Malty, just a little sweet, enough bitterness to balance it out and a nice orange amber color. That must have been a good starter that I made. I can't wait till this one's in bottles.

What did you do with the xtra 13#'s ?

The extra 13.2 lbs is the Old Ale. The original 11 lbs is the Amber Alt. That one looks great too. The color is a dead on match for Alaskan's Amber.

I'm excited to see how the old ale turns out. It was such a fortuitous blunder, fate must have a great end in mind.

I'll send you a message before I send it in so that you can get some.

I bottled it last night. It's a nice amber color with some hints of red. The taste is malty, a little sweet, but there is enough bitterness to balance it out (now looking at my previous post I realize I said the same thing as before ). You get hints of the bitterness on the back end, but still some residual sweetness. It has smoothed out some from when I tasted it at racking to secondary. A teriffic brew, especially for being practically free.

I cracked open the tester bottle today and I think it's about ready. It's all carbed up and ready to go. It seems to have more bitterness than I thought, but it's not a bad thing. It definately balances out all the malt.