Some people who are on the 'outside' of the hobby think that home brewers are obsessive. Of course they are right. Take for example the Tribe home brewing club out of Colorado. Last year they set the World record for brewing at the highest altitude when they brewed an extract batch of Barleywine atop 14,433' Mt. Elbert. They called their endeavor "Operation: Hypoxia". That is a safe record you are thinking to yourself, for who in their right mind would want to do that? Well, us.

It all started in January of 1998 when Scott Kaczorowski posted a note on the Internet's Home Brewers Digest stating that if he could find other people as stupid as he we could break this record on the peak of Mt. Whitney at 14,497 feet. Well his comrades in stupidity signed up and we started to plan our covert attack through email correspondence. The group started out strong with numbers growing fast. First four people, then eight people, then maybe twelve.

At first the email correspondence between the group members was fast and furious and everyone had ideas. Imagine a bunch of brewers with ideas? I know, hard to believe. One idea was to do an extract batch like the tribe did in Colorado. Another idea concocted by Olin was to do a stone fired steinbier all-grain double decoction brew. The group, consisting of all-grain brewers, met somewhere in the middle but still decided that if we were going to do this we wanted to do it the best we could. All Grain on top.

Well talk is talk until someone walks the walk. After months of virtual silence within the group as the initial enthusiasm waned, Scott stepped up and got a permit for eight people. Getting a permit to climb Mt. Whitney is no easy task as it must be done six month in advance and requires repeated calling.

As reality set in and conversations turned to the dangers of Hypoxia (A condition of low oxygen in your blood that is a serious concern at high altitudes) and the unpredictable weather at 14,497' many of those brewers who were signed up to go backed out. Ultimately we were left with the five brewers with the least brain cells, Scott Kaczorowski and Mike Cullen of Long Beach, Mike Rose of Riverside, Olin Schultz of Walnut Creek, and Regan Dillon of Clayton.

Sea level preparations included the assemblage of the brewing system, which was designed and donated by Regan and Olin from Beer, Beer & More Beer. The system consisted of two, two-gallon food grade insulated buckets which were used for the mash/lauter tun and the hot liquor tank. The mash screen was a Phil's Phalse bottom that we modified to fit. Sparging was done by hand with a cup.

Recipe calculations had included the figuring of the boiling point of water at 14,497'. This was determined to be about 186F and, given this, hop utilization was calculated to be about one third that at sea level. We used one whisperlite stove and about 11 ounces of white gas. To save time on top, where the weather can turn without notice, several timesaving measures were adopted. These included a 30-minute mash, 30-minute sparge, and a 30-minute boil. Because of the shortened boil and lower boil temperatures, a single first wort hop addition was used. Three test batches were brewed at sea level following these procedures, and the resulting beer was deemed to be quite good.