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Craziest/Longest Brewday Ever, 1/2BBL Oktoberfest

Who likes to spend ~12hrs on a beautiful Saturday decocting a 1/2BBL of all grain Oktoberfest?  Apparently me.  All that is left now is for the yeast to do their end of the deal. And as of this morning, about 18 hours after pitching, they are doing their end of the deal.

Oktoberfests, by tradition, are brewed in March.  So I'm a little late but I'm not expecting it to significantly impact the final product.

If you'll recall, I brewed a similar 5 gallon batch of Okto a little over two years ago.  With wedding activities last March (2013) I was unable to brew a batch and I feel my 2013 Okto party suffered because of it.  I had the time this year but it had to wait until this weekend.  I like my recipe so much that I did my best to maintain the same grist ratios and hop ratios, just scaled up.  One thing to note is that I'm not as obsessed over water chemistry right now.  I recently installed an 'under-the-sink' water filtration unit in our kitchen and the city water tastes pretty good.  This is my third brew with the water and each time my pH during mash is OK so I'm just letting it ride.  No extra brewing salts or dilutions with distilled water.  Here's the recipe:

10# Weyermann German Pils (1.6L)
8# Weyermann Munich (5-7L)
8# Weyermann Vienna (3.5L)
1.25# Crystal 40L
1.25# Crystal 60L
1.0# Weyermann Munich Dark (8-10L)

Dough in to roughly 148F first Sacc rest for 30 minutes. Pull 15 qts of thick decoction and decoct (I don't think the details are necessary....comment if you disagree).  Return to main mash to raise temp to 158F for 30 minutes.  Pull roughly 12 qts (I seriously eyeballed this amount so I may be way off) of thin decoction and boil.  Return to mash to raise to mash-out temp of 170F.  Sparge.

90 minute boil
2.4oz of 6.9%AA Tradition (mainly Hallertau I think) at 60 minutes
0.8oz of 6.9%AA Tradition at 20 minutes

Target OG of 1.055 on roughly 16 gallons (I hit the target!)

Chill to 56F (took about 30 minutes to get the 16 gallons to around 80F on ground water and then another 30 minutes using an ice bath pump to get down to 56F...that was as good as it was going to get on this fine day).

Hit with O2 and WY2487 Hella Bock yeast (repitch off the Zwickel).

I will ferment this at around 52F for 2 or 3 weeks and then keg and lager at 33F for 6 weeks before carbonating and storing at 45F, for the rest of summer, until Oktoberfest 2014 arrives.

Pictures now:

To brew a 1/2BBL I had to make a couple upgrades.  Added another Blichmann burner (these burners are awesome), and the ~22 gallon frankenstein kettle on the right.  My usual 15 gallon boil kettle (on left) became my mash tun.

The original Zwillingsbrudder copper manifold is always ready for a mash.  Here I've used a piece of food grade silicone hose to connect the manifold to a stainless barb connected to the ball valve on the kettle.

Brew shoes. White Socks.  The Dude abides.

Dough-in.  My favorite picture from the day.

So the frankenstein kettle had a hairline crack (probably not visible in the photo but its at the bottom corner of the spout) on one of the welds and it had a slow leak.  I tried  to flow some solder into the joint but it wouldn't take.  Had to use liquid nails on the outside to temporarily seal the leak.  Hopefully not to the detriment of the beer.

First Sacc Rest.  About to pull a the first decoction.

THICK decoction about to boil.

I was grateful for my beautiful wife's help on this hectic brew day.  She was a huge help.  Here she is stirring that mash!

Sparging.  I connected the ball valves on each kettle through a march pump and another ball valve (outlet side).   This allowed me to restrict the output flow of the pump and fill the boil kettle at roughly 2qts/min.  Worked great.

19 gallons on the way to a boil.

Spent grain.  Extra spent from the decoction.  85% brewhouse efficiency baby!

Towards the end of boil, copper coil ready for work.

Hit my gravity.  I like the color too. It might be a little more pale than my last Oktoberfest.  Whatevs.  In case you care, it's because the Munich Malt on this batch was Weyermann brand and roughly 6L where the munich from my last batch was Briess and was 10L.

Chillaxin while the fermentors fill.