I’ll be pitching this on top of the Safale-05 beer from two weeks ago since this big ole beer will need one heck of a starter.  The original recipe called for a big hit of WLP001 so this should do just fine.

Update 11/8/2013 

Brew day went not so smooth.  Using Beersmith for the first time in brewing was a little confusing and took some getting used to.   Had a boil over, had pump issues, had some strange issue with hitting mash temperature and the thing was all over the place at first.   So a perfect storm for a great impossible to reproduce beer.  The original gravity was. 1.110 although I had to add 2 pounds of DME due to continued efficiency issues.   The wort tasted amazing though so this thing should be pretty fantastic.   Pitched it on that yeast cake and it was fermenting hard n heavy in less than 4 hours.

 Update 11/9/2013

airlock on bottom of the chest freezer, wild out of control fermentation.   Looks good!  Blow off tube rigged and a mess to clean up when it’s done.

Update 11/20/2013

This beer finished just fine at 1.025ish and a very healthy 11-12% ABV.  All the flavors are certainly present and it’s a fine beer carbonated.   Given a few months the complexity will certainly develop as it refines but I think this beer would win medals today.  Very happy given this is one of the more expensive beers I’ve  brewed.

Update 3/10/2014

After getting score sheets and results back from a couple of competitions this beer was deemed to be slightly lacking in body.  The scores were high 30’s and a 40 which while ver good aren’t winners.   I believe  a nice dose of flaked barley would put this beer right on the money.   I apparently lapsed in my judgement on carbonation.  I shot for lower intentionally but the judges didn’t like it.   Perhaps this was a result of the need for more dextrin or flaked barley?(thanks for the suggestion Toby)