The Monster

Well, the day got off to a great start. The brew session started last night when I started the mash. With help from a couple friends (Mike and Devin) we managed to get 9 gal of water and 31# of grain into my mash tun. There was, strangely, enough room for probably 3-5 more pounds of grain (I'll keep that in mind for next time, yeah, right). I hit my mash temp on the low side, 143, but said screw it and topped up the cooler for the night. This morning (~8hrs later), it had dropped to 136. I wasn't overly concerned about proper conversion given the extended time so I heated up my sparge water (a wimpy 3.5 gallons) higher then normal since I wasn't going to do a mash out.
Once I started running this beer off into the pot I knew it was going to be interesting. It had this strong, rich, caramel, candy sweet aroma; it was just wild. I got about 9 gallons of wort into the pot with a gravity of 1.093! After pumping the numbers into BeerSmith, it looks like I nailed my pre boil, and hopefully post boil gravities, with a 60% efficiency.
The plan from here is to can ~3 gallons of wort into 12x1L jars and get the rest into the fermenter. I'm pitching a big starter (2L to 4L build) and one pack of US05 for good luck. O2 for about 10minutes prior. Each can will be added once a day with them being oxygenated for 1-2 min. After that I'll be adding 5# of sugar (or up to 10#, whatever the yeast can handle), likely 1# per day until the yeast poops out. I have high hopes for this beer and it's certainly a learning process. I'll be sure to post plenty of pictures and updates.

Stats OG 1.208 FG IBU 104 ABV SRM 24

Specifics Boil Volume 9 gallons Batch Size 5 gallons Yeast 79% AA WLP099 US05

Fermentables

% Weight	Weight (lbs)	Grain	Gravity Points	Color
57.1 %	23.00	American Two-row Pale	110.6	8.3
12.4 %	5.00	American Munich (Light)	21.5	10.0
0.6 %	0.25	American Crystal 20L	1.1	1.0
0.6 %	0.25	American Crystal 30L	1.1	1.5
0.6 %	0.25	American Crystal 60L	1.1	3.0
0.6 %	0.25	Belgian CaraMunich	1.1	3.8
0.2 %	0.10	German Carafa Special	0.4	12.0
0.5 %	0.20	American Chocolate	0.8	14.0
2.5 %	1.00	Rye	3.9	0.7
19.2 %	7.22	Cane sugar	64.8	2.0
	40.30		201.4

Hops

% Wt	Weight (oz)	Hop	Form	AA%	AAU	Boil Time	Utilization	IBU
25.0 %	1.00	Chinook	Pellet	11.5	11.5	90	0.156	26.9
25.0 %	1.00	Summit	Pellet	18.5	18.5	90	0.156	43.2
25.0 %	1.00	Chinook	Pellet	11.5	11.5	30	0.112	19.3
25.0 %	1.00	Summit	Pellet	18.5	18.5	10	0.053	14.6
	4.00							104.0

7/8/09: Started mash previous night and went about 8 hours before sparge. Started with about 9 gallons into the pot at 1.093 preboil gravity. Boiled for approx. 2.5 hours with hop additions as noted (though I added some leftover Chinook and Simcoe hops at 90 min, less than .5oz combined). Ended up with too much volume, about 5 gallons. I also added 6ea crushed Beano tablets at the beginning of chilling. Canned 12x1L cans of wort and ran the rest off into the fermenter (about 1.5-2gal). Oxygenated for 10min with O2, then pitched my 099 and one packet of rehydrated US05. I'll wait until Friday to start adding wort, one can a day thoroughly oxygenated. Once all the additions have been made, I'll start adding the sugar. Wish me luck!
7/11/09: Things are going well. I've added 3L of wort so far at 24hr intervals giving each 2 min of oxygen. Still at high krausen.
7/16/09: Out of curiosity I took the first sample. Gravity is only down to 1.070 so it's roughly 9% abv. I might add some additional nutrients tomorrow with the 9th wort addition. I bought 10# of sugar today which I will cook up with some lemon juice to convert and boil down to a thick syrup and can to add daily.
7/21/09: Added the first jar of sugar syrup today, 1# 11oz. This should bring the gravity to around 1.157. I'll take a sample tomorrow night and see where it has fermented down to. Second sugar addition will be added on Thursday (7/23) morning.
7/22/09: Took another sample, gravity down 1.050ish (we didn't wait for the sample to really settle out). Looks like it's close to 15% abv. I'll add a sizable sugar addition tomorrow morning and then we're off to NYC for a few days. Hopefully it'll be fine fermenting out and another addition will be added Saturday night.
7/27/09: After this mornings addition, I believe my theoretical original gravity is now hovering around 1.208! I had to make a couple changes calculations as the above one is incorrect. First, the sugar syrup I'm adding is only 85% sugar, so I had to account for that, and second, the TB calculation for the gravity contribution of cane sugar is quite low. It's closer to 9-9.5 points per pound that the 6.5 that this one gives. All and all, I have one more addition to make but I think I might hold off a couple days and see if I've killed this thing or if it can take it.
8/01/09: Well I moved the fermenter upstairs so it's at about 79-80 degrees to I can eek out the last 10-20 points. Gravity sample this morning was at 1.062, with an OG of 1.208 gives me 19.1% abv. I'm really hoping it can get down to at least 1.050, but it certainly looks like it's slowing down. I hope the higher temps will help it move along.
8/8/09: Well, things are starting to look a little dire. Gravity is steady at 1.062 for nearly a week now. I stirred things up, added 5 tablets of Beano, crushed, and 1tsp of Yeast Energizer. I hope I can at least get 5 more points out of this because it tastes like alcoholic syrup. It is thick!
8/15/09: Racked to secondary on top of 1.5oz medium toast Hungarian oak cubes. No gravity taken. After racking and cleaning out the carboy, I noticed a lot of crystallized sugar at the bottom; it must have recrystallized at some point. Alas, I've no idea where the gravity is at this point.