Iron Fist Renegade Blonde distracts me from a rediculous night of brewing my Savory Caramel Sea Salt Ale

Tonight I'm brewing my 6th home brew in 7 months. The recipe is incredibly experimental and is inspired by a particular sweet I can't pass by, which are caramel on the inside with sea salt on top. The combination of sweetness and the salt creates a supernova of flavors. It's wild if you haven't tried it, you can probably find them in wine shops or Whole Foods.

I've never seen a beer like this and there is only style brewed with salt that I'm aware of, the German Gose. This beer is packed with caramel malts and dark brown sugar, then I'm adding sea salt at the end of the boil and crossing my fingers that it's the correct amount. I chose a Scottish pale malt as my base grain and I'm using a Scottish yeast, which will accentuate the malty flavors. Since smelling a beer will greatly influence the taste your beer, I threw in a gregarious amount of aromatic malt to bring out the salt and caramel aroma. Finally, the hop count is real low, which will exacerbate the caramel malt presence.

To be honest, those who have tasted all my homebrews agree that they would buy them again if it was sold in store, which is the ultimate litmus test. However, I'm nervous about this one. I haven't really screwed a brew up yet but this one could be the one. Welp, here's to being bold:

UNTITLED SAVORY CARAMEL SEA SALT

Malt Extract:  Pale Malt Extract   3 lbs
                       

Grain Bill:         Marris Otter 3 lbs 6 oz
                        Munich Malt 2 lbs
                        Caramel/Crystal Malt 1 lb                       

                        Special B 14 oz
                        Aromatic Malt 10 oz            

Sugar:             Dark Brown Sugar 1 lb

Hops:             Kent Goldings (5.0%) 1 oz at 60 mins
                       Willamette (5.5%) .5 oz at 45 mins
                      
Yeast:            Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale

Misc:              9 tsp of Sea Salt at 5 mins.

Instructions: Boil 1 gallon of the first runnings and add brown sugar. Add with the rest of the wort to cool in the fermenter.

Mash Efficiency set at 70%
Potential Alcohol 6.3%
19.4 IBU's 
Color is 26 SRM (Dark Brown to Black).
*Keep reading and you'll discover why I don't have a starting Original Gravity, grrrr.

Three tiered brewing in action. You can see David in the background manning the caramelization pot on our open flame stove

The major difference between this partial mash brew and the last, is that the grain bill is 2.5 lbs more, around 8 lbs. This requires 4 gallons of water to mash at 158 degrees and another 7.5 gallons of water at 182 degrees to sparge. We use a 4 gallon pot for all of our boils. After the first gallon was taken out to boil to caramelize the wort, I filled up the 4 gallon pot really quickly. Suddenly I'm scrambling for pots.

This is when the circus came to town and this music started playing in my head:

So I'm running around the apartment, flipping open cabinets, the dishwasher and scrubbing off bowls from the Sunday bbq. I'm scrambling for pots and pans, anything that resembles a bowl. I literally use every pot we own and one of the bowls to catch the run off. I look ridiculous, David is shaking his head at me. Actually, he does it so often that I'm wondering when he'll start charging for chiropractic appointments. THEN, guess what happens? I have to boil all each and every pot.

I'm boiling on every heat inducing platform in our apartment. I'm pretty stressed here, but I also can't stop laughing at my naivety. I thought earlier today about getting a larger boil kettle, but my ADD mind shifted gears after I watched this entire video David sent me (start at 2 minutes):

So, I'm stuck boiling wort on 5 different pots in two different locations. At this point in the brewing process, I usually play video games for an hour, but instead I'm going back and forth checking for boil overs. Boo. We're going to have a huge electric bill from running four electric coils for over an hour and a half.

To shift gears, David suggests we pop open a small bottle of my Belgian Blonde, pictured above, which has only been in the bottles for a week. Usually I wouldn't even consider to open a beer this early, but I need something and at this silly point in my second partial mash, curious to try how my first partial mash finished.

Even though at a week early it's great! Citrus and apple flavors with a hint of sweetness and a dry bite belgian blonde bite. David says its better than my honey wheat, which is the highest compliment he could give it. I really appreciate that and it couldn't have come at a better time, as I rush to check on my pots.

Afterward, we uncapped our beer of the day from Iron Fist, which was brewed by a 21 year old kid. His Imperial Oatmeal Stout is phenomenal. I bought the Renegade Blonde at the brewery whilst we visited. It's a blonde ale that's created using Kolsch yeast. When I sampled it at the brewery, I thought he really nailed the malt. Tasting it here after my blonde, it's not nearly as scrumptious. It's crisp but also quite tart. ARMAGEDDON rating.

Long story short, the 5 gallons of boiling wort that I poured into my fermenting bucket took me two hours to cool down. Usually it takes less than half an hour. 6 hours after I started, I went to bed at 2AM. I was to tired to take the OG. This marks the first and last time I brew during the week. Also, the last time I brew without a 10 gallon kettle. I feel like most home brewers have stories from their rookie mistakes, and finally after my 6th beer I have something to share. Hopefully the brew will still turn out great!