A few years back my friend Jim did a great Founders Breakfast Stout clone. I still remember it fondly and decided to brew one myself. I pretty much stuck to Jim's recipe. I brewed this last a week ago, but just got around to posting. It was racked to secondary this afternoon and is tasting great even before the additional coffee and chocolate additions were made!
Choco-Coffee Imperial Stout (Founder's Breakfast Stout clone)
brewed on: 10/30/11
OG: 1.080
IBUs: 34 IBUs
SRM: 47
mash temp: 155F
mash:
10 lbs US 2-row
7 lbs Marris Otter
1.5 lbs Flaked Oats (Quaker quick oats)
1 lb Chocolate Malt
12 oz Roasted Barley (300 SRM)
8 oz Special B
4 oz Black Patent
4 oz Carafa II
3 gm chalk
Hops (all loose pellets):
33 gm Nugget @ 13% AA - 60 minutes
14.17 gm Williamette @ 5.1% - 5 minutes
14.17 gm Williamette @ 5.1% - flameout
Adjuncts:
3 oz Bittersweet Chocolate - boil, 5 minutes
2 oz roughly ground coffee beans (medium roast) - flameout
2 oz Bitter baking chocolate - secondary (14 days)
1 oz roughly ground coffee beans (medium roast) - secondary (14 days)
Yeast:
2 packs US-05, rehydrated
Showing posts with label stout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stout. Show all posts
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Brandy Barrel Imperial Stout
As I posted awhile back, I recently acquired a 10 gallon Peach Brandy barrel from the owner of Aeppeltreow Winery & Distillery. While aging a Rhubarb-Berry Melomel, I wanted to plan ahead for the next batch to barrel age. Upon the suggestion of a few friends, and with their offers to help, I decided on an Imperial Stout.
Last year I helped start BOMB (Barrel of Monkeys Brewers), a group of friends, all wonderfully talented homebrewers/vintners on their own. We have 2 large barrels that we collectively brew for, with each person contributing 5 or 10 gallons. So far we have a 23 year old brandy barrel, and a Door County Zinfandel barrel from Stone's Throw Winery. The brandy barrel has a sour stout aging in it. The wine barrel had a batch of relatively low strength English Barleywine and now is holding a Rye Porter. Unfortunately, the barleywine, now kegged, is exhibiting signs of brettanomyces. The upside is that I find the flavors complementary so far, and if nothing else, it exhibits Old Ale-like qualities. My hope is that both barrels will soon be used for lambic fermentation. We're meeting this weekend, so ideas for what to do with them will be discussed.
The best thing to come out of the BOMB group is not the beer, but the friendship and camaraderie. It has been a blast getting together with the guys and sharing homebrew as well as great commercial beer. I'm amazed by the things some of the guys pull out of their cellars for our get-togethers. When we did the barleywine filling, we had flights of beer such as J.W. Lees barleywine, aged in Calvados, Sherry, and Port barrels going back to 2004, just as an example.
So, now with a smaller 10 gallon barrel of my own, I definitely want to get a few friends to brew batches with me here and there. With 5 gallons being my standard brew size, it'll be nice to share the brewing load and the results with friends.
For now, my friend Jim and I decided do use one of the Imperial Stout recipes from Zainasheff & Palmer's Brewing Classic Styles book. I intend to start brewing certain "beers to be aged" annually including an Imperial Stout, Old Ale, and barleywine. Thus, this recipe seemed like a good starting place with options to vary the recipe in years to come, whether or not it is oak aged. Here is what we ended up with:
Brandy Barrel Imperial Stout
brewed on: 4/25/2011
efficiency: 75%
expected OG: 1.100
Expected IBUs: 50.3 IBUs
mash temp: 150F
mash:
19 lbs Marris Otter
1.5 lbs Roasted Barley (300 SRM)
1 lb Special B
8 oz Caramunich
8 oz Chocolate malt
8 oz Pale Chocolate malt
Hops:
1.5 oz Magnum @ 14.1% - 60 minutes
2 oz Willamette @ 4.8% - 10 minutes
2 oz Willamette @ 4.8% - 1 minute
Yeast:
US-05 (2 packets)
5/17/11 FG 1.032. (Jim's batch @ 1.031) Filling barrel tonight.
Last year I helped start BOMB (Barrel of Monkeys Brewers), a group of friends, all wonderfully talented homebrewers/vintners on their own. We have 2 large barrels that we collectively brew for, with each person contributing 5 or 10 gallons. So far we have a 23 year old brandy barrel, and a Door County Zinfandel barrel from Stone's Throw Winery. The brandy barrel has a sour stout aging in it. The wine barrel had a batch of relatively low strength English Barleywine and now is holding a Rye Porter. Unfortunately, the barleywine, now kegged, is exhibiting signs of brettanomyces. The upside is that I find the flavors complementary so far, and if nothing else, it exhibits Old Ale-like qualities. My hope is that both barrels will soon be used for lambic fermentation. We're meeting this weekend, so ideas for what to do with them will be discussed.
The best thing to come out of the BOMB group is not the beer, but the friendship and camaraderie. It has been a blast getting together with the guys and sharing homebrew as well as great commercial beer. I'm amazed by the things some of the guys pull out of their cellars for our get-togethers. When we did the barleywine filling, we had flights of beer such as J.W. Lees barleywine, aged in Calvados, Sherry, and Port barrels going back to 2004, just as an example.
So, now with a smaller 10 gallon barrel of my own, I definitely want to get a few friends to brew batches with me here and there. With 5 gallons being my standard brew size, it'll be nice to share the brewing load and the results with friends.
For now, my friend Jim and I decided do use one of the Imperial Stout recipes from Zainasheff & Palmer's Brewing Classic Styles book. I intend to start brewing certain "beers to be aged" annually including an Imperial Stout, Old Ale, and barleywine. Thus, this recipe seemed like a good starting place with options to vary the recipe in years to come, whether or not it is oak aged. Here is what we ended up with:
Brandy Barrel Imperial Stout
brewed on: 4/25/2011
efficiency: 75%
expected OG: 1.100
Expected IBUs: 50.3 IBUs
mash temp: 150F
mash:
19 lbs Marris Otter
1.5 lbs Roasted Barley (300 SRM)
1 lb Special B
8 oz Caramunich
8 oz Chocolate malt
8 oz Pale Chocolate malt
Hops:
1.5 oz Magnum @ 14.1% - 60 minutes
2 oz Willamette @ 4.8% - 10 minutes
2 oz Willamette @ 4.8% - 1 minute
Yeast:
US-05 (2 packets)
5/17/11 FG 1.032. (Jim's batch @ 1.031) Filling barrel tonight.
Monday, February 28, 2011
American Stout 2
With a lot of carboys of sours aging, 2 more planned in the near future (to make use of Bugfarm 5 and Flemish Ale blend from ECY,) I've been on a bit of a clean beer kick lately. I just brewed a Munich Helles awhile ago, and now it was time to revisit my American Stout recipe. Last time I brewed this the keg was tapped out faster than any other beer I've brewed. It turned out really well, and was quite delicious! So, it was time to revisit the recipe. I made a few basic changes, just due to what I had on hand. I was happy enough otherwise that I didn't want to make more changes than necessary. Awhile back I ordered some ECY Old Newark lager yeast strain, but received the ale strain instead. Ah well. I figured I'd use it for something anyway, so kept it. So I had some Old Newark Ale yeast on hand, so I pitched that along with one pack of US-05 yeast, vs just 2 US-05 packs last time. Although I listed Chocolate Malt in the last recipe, I've had this nagging feeling that I used half Pale Chocolate since I have a lot of that on hand. I split up the chocolate malt into 2 halves to do that (again?) this time. My LHBS was out of Yakima Magnum, so I subbed in Columbus at the same exact AA% for bittering. Also, I didn't have black barley on hand, but I had a bunch of Roasted Barley, so I swapped in the roasted stuff. 300L vs 500L wasn't a big deal for a few ounces since the recipe was already darker than BJCP guidelines for a stout (which I find funny because either way it's BLACK), but seeing as I don't really care what the BJCP tells me a stout needs to be anyway, that's not a big deal. The 2 grains definitely have different character to them, but I think it'll still be complimentary. Here's the recipe!:
American Stout
brewed on: 2/27/2011
expected OG: 1.069 (I ended up with 1.074. Still getting used to Beer Smith rather than Beer Alchemy, so I was a bit off on the efficiency.)
FG: 1.022
Expected IBUs: 54.1 IBUs
mash temp: 155F
6 gallon batch
mash:
15 lbs US 2-row
0.5 lb Black malt
0.5 lb Roasted barley
12 oz Crystal 40L
12 oz Coffee malt
6 oz Chocolate malt
6 oz Pale Chocolate malt
Hops:
1.5 oz Columbus @ 14.4% (60 minutes)
1 oz Centennial @ 9% (5 minutes)
~ 1 oz homegrown Cascade (flameout)
Yeast:
1 pack - Safale US-05 1 vial - ECY Old Newark Ale
3/6/11 - FG 1.022, kegged
American Stout
brewed on: 2/27/2011
expected OG: 1.069 (I ended up with 1.074. Still getting used to Beer Smith rather than Beer Alchemy, so I was a bit off on the efficiency.)
FG: 1.022
Expected IBUs: 54.1 IBUs
mash temp: 155F
6 gallon batch
mash:
15 lbs US 2-row
0.5 lb Black malt
0.5 lb Roasted barley
12 oz Crystal 40L
12 oz Coffee malt
6 oz Chocolate malt
6 oz Pale Chocolate malt
Hops:
1.5 oz Columbus @ 14.4% (60 minutes)
1 oz Centennial @ 9% (5 minutes)
~ 1 oz homegrown Cascade (flameout)
Yeast:
1 pack - Safale US-05 1 vial - ECY Old Newark Ale
3/6/11 - FG 1.022, kegged
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
B.O.M.B. Barrel Fill!
I recently posted a recipe as part of a barrel project I started with ten other brewers. We all brewed similar imperial stouts and then filled a 23-year old, 52 gallon brandy barrel this past Saturday. Everything went pretty smoothly, although once it was full we went upstairs for a delicious dinner and returned to find beer leaking out the top!It turns out that the staves swelled and pushed some beer back out. Not a big deal. We siphoned 1/3 gallon back out to make a little headspace and let the wood do its thing. Luckily, we ended up with an extra gallon or so of beer, so that is being stored in sanitized growlers (although he may have bottled it uncarbed by now to preserve it) and that will be used to top off the barrel shortly.
Aside from that, we had a great time! People brought lots of great beer to share including a BIG bottle of 2004 Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard, Jolly Pumpkin Bam, Southern Tier's Cuvee series of oak aged beers, Lakefront Rosie Kreik
and others.Unlike most of my posts, this one doesn't have a recipe to archive. Here are a few of the pictures from our night though. Hopefully the Barrel of Monkeys Brewers will procure another barrel or two in the future and keep exploring barrel-aging homebrewed beer!
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Barrel of Monkeys Brewers (B.O.M.B!)
Sometime last year, the availability of used bourbon barrels from Sprecher Brewery's beers was brought up at one of our local homebrew club meetings. It was suggested that we put together a recipe and do a group brew to age in the barrel. Then we went on to the next order of business.
A month later, it was mentioned that there were barrels available if anyone was interested in doing a barrel brew still. A few people thought it was a good idea. Then we went on to the next order of business.
A month later. . . you get the idea. Eventually the idea just died.
However, it was in the back of my head and I decided to eventually do something about it. So, I went to people individually who I thought might be interested in brewing a sour beer to put into a barrel. We got a nice group of good brewers together.
We were hoping for a wine barrel, but couldn't find one available in our area. We settled on an easier to obtain bourbon barrel since that's what we could get. That being the case, I suggested we do a strong, dark beer to stand up to the still relatively fresh oak character and any residual bourbon alcohol. Last winter I brewed an Imperial Stout recipe using the Bugfarm3 blend I had gotten via AlB from the babblebelt.com web forum. It is still aging, but is shaping up to be among my best beers. We eventually decided on that recipe, although we scaled the OG down a bit from my 1.105. We've all been shooting for 1.085, although a few people overshot that. No big deal in this case.
Over the last few months of planning we've added a few people, including one or 2 guys I hadn't met before that some of the other guys knew. We also found out that one of the main suppliers of used barrels to micros all over the US is within 2 hours of us here in Wisconsin! He has wine barrels, brandy barrels, and all sorts of good stuff available! Since we'd settled on a recipe already, we stuck with that and went with a brandy barrel. Apparently it is a 23 year old barrel. It shouldn't have much oak character left at this point, but we're really using it more as a vessel to inoculate with bugs for future brews.
My hope is that we'll put a couple long term batches through it, and then start using it solera style, where we draw off a portion of the beer every 6-12 months and replace it with new beer. After awhile it settles into an average age of a couple years or so, depending on the frequency and amount of beer pulled out & replaced.
One of the guys supposedly picked up the barrel yesterday and our fill date is coming up soon! Things are shaping up with this fun project and I'm happy I could get some people together to share ideas, homebrew, and have a good time playing mad scientists!
It is my hope that we can get a wine barrel this spring to house in my basement (or elsewhere if someone really wants to.) That way we could have a couple projects going at once. One with darker beers, and one with farmhouse type stuff and maybe eventually a lambic-inspired beer or sour ale like a Flanders.
Our recipe was based off of the Jolly Pumpkin Dark Dawn clone done on the BN awhile back. We raised our gravity to around 1.085, as mentioned above.
B.O.M.B. Sour Imperial Stout
brewed on: 10/11/10
OG: 1.086
IBUs: 34 IBUs
mash temp: 152F
mash:
7 lb 4 oz Belgian Pils malt
1 lb 10 oz Roasted Barley
1 lb 10 oz US 2-row
1 lb 3 oz German Munich
1 lb Wheat malt
8 oz Crystal 80L
4 oz Black malt
boil:
10 oz Turbinado sugar
8 oz Table Sugar
6 oz Honey
Hops:
.5 oz US Nugget @ 13.7% - 60 minutes
1 oz Fuggle @ 5% - 30 minutes
Yeast/bugs:
Split batch -
1) 3rd generation Roselare cake
2) Dirty Dozen bug blend
The rest of the guys brewing for this fermented their batches with the Wyeast Ardennes strain. I'll be adding my 5 gallons shortly thereafter to provide the bugs to inoculate this batch and the barrel.
For sugar, we decided that, rather than getting super picky, we would go with 3 different additions. One would be corn sugar or table sugar, one would be an unrefined sugar, whether it be turbinado, jaggery, piloncillo, etc. The third would be honey. While most of the guys went with table sugar, I think there was a bit of variation in the unrefined sugar used. I know several batches were done with jaggery, but I also saw bags of turbinado and piloncillo around at various brew sessions as well.
A month later, it was mentioned that there were barrels available if anyone was interested in doing a barrel brew still. A few people thought it was a good idea. Then we went on to the next order of business.
A month later. . . you get the idea. Eventually the idea just died.
However, it was in the back of my head and I decided to eventually do something about it. So, I went to people individually who I thought might be interested in brewing a sour beer to put into a barrel. We got a nice group of good brewers together.
We were hoping for a wine barrel, but couldn't find one available in our area. We settled on an easier to obtain bourbon barrel since that's what we could get. That being the case, I suggested we do a strong, dark beer to stand up to the still relatively fresh oak character and any residual bourbon alcohol. Last winter I brewed an Imperial Stout recipe using the Bugfarm3 blend I had gotten via AlB from the babblebelt.com web forum. It is still aging, but is shaping up to be among my best beers. We eventually decided on that recipe, although we scaled the OG down a bit from my 1.105. We've all been shooting for 1.085, although a few people overshot that. No big deal in this case.
Over the last few months of planning we've added a few people, including one or 2 guys I hadn't met before that some of the other guys knew. We also found out that one of the main suppliers of used barrels to micros all over the US is within 2 hours of us here in Wisconsin! He has wine barrels, brandy barrels, and all sorts of good stuff available! Since we'd settled on a recipe already, we stuck with that and went with a brandy barrel. Apparently it is a 23 year old barrel. It shouldn't have much oak character left at this point, but we're really using it more as a vessel to inoculate with bugs for future brews.
My hope is that we'll put a couple long term batches through it, and then start using it solera style, where we draw off a portion of the beer every 6-12 months and replace it with new beer. After awhile it settles into an average age of a couple years or so, depending on the frequency and amount of beer pulled out & replaced.
One of the guys supposedly picked up the barrel yesterday and our fill date is coming up soon! Things are shaping up with this fun project and I'm happy I could get some people together to share ideas, homebrew, and have a good time playing mad scientists!
It is my hope that we can get a wine barrel this spring to house in my basement (or elsewhere if someone really wants to.) That way we could have a couple projects going at once. One with darker beers, and one with farmhouse type stuff and maybe eventually a lambic-inspired beer or sour ale like a Flanders.
Our recipe was based off of the Jolly Pumpkin Dark Dawn clone done on the BN awhile back. We raised our gravity to around 1.085, as mentioned above.
B.O.M.B. Sour Imperial Stout
brewed on: 10/11/10
OG: 1.086
IBUs: 34 IBUs
mash temp: 152F
mash:
7 lb 4 oz Belgian Pils malt
1 lb 10 oz Roasted Barley
1 lb 10 oz US 2-row
1 lb 3 oz German Munich
1 lb Wheat malt
8 oz Crystal 80L
4 oz Black malt
boil:
10 oz Turbinado sugar
8 oz Table Sugar
6 oz Honey
Hops:
.5 oz US Nugget @ 13.7% - 60 minutes
1 oz Fuggle @ 5% - 30 minutes
Yeast/bugs:
Split batch -
1) 3rd generation Roselare cake
2) Dirty Dozen bug blend
The rest of the guys brewing for this fermented their batches with the Wyeast Ardennes strain. I'll be adding my 5 gallons shortly thereafter to provide the bugs to inoculate this batch and the barrel.
For sugar, we decided that, rather than getting super picky, we would go with 3 different additions. One would be corn sugar or table sugar, one would be an unrefined sugar, whether it be turbinado, jaggery, piloncillo, etc. The third would be honey. While most of the guys went with table sugar, I think there was a bit of variation in the unrefined sugar used. I know several batches were done with jaggery, but I also saw bags of turbinado and piloncillo around at various brew sessions as well.
Kegerator!
It's been a busy few weeks, both brewing and otherwise. Top on my list of brewing news is my new kegerator! I kegged the American Stout and the Habanero APA I brewed recently and both are now on tap and delicious. The body can hold 5 kegs, or 3-4 and a carboy. I plan to install a total of 4 taps, but started with just 2 for now. Perlicks are a bit pricey!
The actual construction was pretty easy. The entire project so far took maybe 2 hours total, not including time spent running to stores for the tap hardware & wood.
As of yet I haven't sealed the wood onto the body, but I've got some clear silicone caulk to do the job when the time comes. Gravity is holding it in place fine and there seems to be no real loss of temperature as is anyway. I'm waiting until the other two taps get intalled so the collar is still easily removable when I do that job. Aside from that, I plan to mount the temp control on the side of the collar and then it'll be done!
For now, the most exciting part (besides being able to tap a glass of really good stout anytime I want) is the fact that every day I don't spent bottling is potentially another day spent brewing! And I've got plans for several brews in the works! A few high gravity batches (barley wine & old ale) should be particularly fun.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
American Stout
Over the weekend, I decided spur of the moment to brew on Labor Day since we had no plans. I wanted to stick with something straight forward as I've done a ton of sour/brett beers that are aging in the basement. I have some bottles left of my saison and cherrywood smoked porter, but that's about it. There's already 10 gallons more of saison on the way in carboys, and the smoked porter is delicious, but a bit of an acquired taste for my less adventurous friends. I narrowed it down to an IPA to use up last year's leftover hops (I just harvested this year's hops last weekend,) or a stout. Since I have a lot of lighter beer in the saison, I went with the stout.
While buying my ingredients, I took the opportunity to pick up a grain mill from Northern Brewer. It's something I've wanted for awhile, but with an order of over 100 lbs of grain on the way it was time. Can't wait to get brewing some more Belgian inspired beers. I've got a bag each of Franco-Belge pils & pale malt on they way as well as splitting bags of German wheat, crystal 40, and pale chocolate!
Once the weather cools down a bit more I intend to brew a barley wine and a strong Old Ale. Rather than bother building up big starters, I've been considering using dry yeast. I've heard good things about Safale US-05 and -04. This American stout seemed like as good a time as any to try out the -05 dry yeast and see how I like it! Here's the recipe:
American Stout
brewed on: 9/6/2010
expected OG: 1.069
Expected IBUs: 55 IBUs
mash temp: 155F
6-7 gallon batch (I ended up with around 6 in the primary, but left a bit behind in the kettle with the sludge.)
mash:
15 lbs US 2-row
0.5 lb Black malt
0.5 lb Black roasted barley
0.75 Crystal 40L
0.75 Chocolate malt
0.75 Coffee malt
Hops:
1.5 oz Yakima Magnum @ 14.4% (60 minutes)
1 oz Centennial @ 9% (5 minutes)
~ 1 oz homegrown Cascade (flameout)
Yeast:
2 packs - Safale US-05
9/15/10 - Transferred to secondary. Roasted coffee & chocolate aroma. Flavor: intensely bitter dark chocolate & roasted coffee. Gravity: 1.023
10/11/10 - kegged. FG 1.023 Chocolate & coffee. bitterness has lowered to an appropriate level.
While buying my ingredients, I took the opportunity to pick up a grain mill from Northern Brewer. It's something I've wanted for awhile, but with an order of over 100 lbs of grain on the way it was time. Can't wait to get brewing some more Belgian inspired beers. I've got a bag each of Franco-Belge pils & pale malt on they way as well as splitting bags of German wheat, crystal 40, and pale chocolate!
Once the weather cools down a bit more I intend to brew a barley wine and a strong Old Ale. Rather than bother building up big starters, I've been considering using dry yeast. I've heard good things about Safale US-05 and -04. This American stout seemed like as good a time as any to try out the -05 dry yeast and see how I like it! Here's the recipe:
American Stout
brewed on: 9/6/2010
expected OG: 1.069
Expected IBUs: 55 IBUs
mash temp: 155F
6-7 gallon batch (I ended up with around 6 in the primary, but left a bit behind in the kettle with the sludge.)
mash:
15 lbs US 2-row
0.5 lb Black malt
0.5 lb Black roasted barley
0.75 Crystal 40L
0.75 Chocolate malt
0.75 Coffee malt
Hops:
1.5 oz Yakima Magnum @ 14.4% (60 minutes)
1 oz Centennial @ 9% (5 minutes)
~ 1 oz homegrown Cascade (flameout)
Yeast:
2 packs - Safale US-05
9/15/10 - Transferred to secondary. Roasted coffee & chocolate aroma. Flavor: intensely bitter dark chocolate & roasted coffee. Gravity: 1.023
10/11/10 - kegged. FG 1.023 Chocolate & coffee. bitterness has lowered to an appropriate level.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Dark Night
I set out this morning to brew my third (and most likely final) batch of beer to be fermented on my Bugfarm III yeast cake from Al B of the Burgundian Babblebelt forums. After doing a Flanders Red inspired brew and a Sour English Brown, I wanted to do something REALLY DARK, and REALLY STRONG. Having had crappy luck with the efficiency on my mash tun since I built it, I generally haven't set out to do anything over about 1.060. Even a couple of the 1.060 beers had to have a shot of dry extract to up the gravity a bit before I got a handle on just how poor my efficiency had been. Well, that's all changed now. I fixed my mash tun before my last brew day (under a week ago!) Nonetheless, I didn't set out to do anything super crazy like a barleywine or anything.
If I had to pick a favorite brewery out of everything I've tried from the US, it'd have to be Jolly Pumpkin, hands down. (For the record, we don't get Russian River distributed here. Nor have I gotten my hands on any Lost Abbey yet, among others. This, of course, needs to change, but that's for another day and another post. . .) I started with a recipe based off of JP's Madrugada Obscura, which is a Belgian inspired stout w/ brett clocking in at just over 8% abv. From there, I upped things a bit, shooting for closer to 10%. With all my recent mash tun issues, I wasn't holding my breath on actually hitting anywhere near the mid-1.080s.
After giving my mash a good 90 minutes, I had sparge water heating up and got ready to drain the mash tun, I opened the ball valve and. . . nothing. The grist was ground a little finer than usual, and something gummy had gotten through the false bottom and actually plugged up the ball valve. In the end it wasn't as big a deal as I was worried it'd be. With my wife's help we poured the entire mash into the kettle, unstuck and rinsed out the tun/valve, and dumped everything back in. A bit of vorlauf and everything went fine. I *did* have to heat up new sparge water since we dumped it to free up the big kettle, but it wasn't a problem. That said, I'm going to see if I can fine some appropriate screen at the hardware store to cut to match the false bottom to give it a finer mesh in the future.
Everything went smoothly from there out, although the boil was longer than usual since I used a higher water/grain ratio than usual (1.4qts/lb.) In the end, my final gravity reading really surprised me! I ended up with a 1.105 batch of beer!
I racked my Sour English Brown into a secondary carboy and pitched this new (and taste, I might add) wort onto the Bugfarm yeastcake. I've gotta admit though, I'm still debating boiling a bit more water to dilute it a bit. Between the 20+ sacch, brett, lacto, pedios, and even kombucha, I don't doubt that it has the capability to take this one down relatively low, but I'm still just floored it ended up this much higher than I expected! Jolly Pumpkin's Madrugada Obscura is 8.1% abv, I was shooting for around 10% and now my expected abv is in the 11.5-12% range! I'm going to sleep on this decision. I don't think it'll hurt it too much, should I decide to boil/add more water if I wait until tomorrow at this point. In the meantime, here's the recipe:
Dark Night
brewed on: 2/14/10
expected OG: 1.085
actual OG: 1.105
IBUs: 34
mash temp: 150F
mash:
9 lbs Belgian pilsener malt
2 lbs UK roasted barley
2 lbs US 2-row malt
1.5 lbs german Munich malt
1.25 lbs Belgian pale wheat malt
9 oz US Crystal 80L malt
5 oz debittered black malt
2oz German melanoidin malt
in boil (diluted in a bit of boiling water on stove, then added to boil):
12 oz turbinado sugar
7 oz honey
5 oz table sugar
5 oz brown sugar
Hops:
0.6oz US Nugget @ 13.5%
1.5oz UK Fuggles @ 4%
Yeast:
Al B's Bugfarm III
Ferment at ambient temp (mid-60s F)
2/16 - Craziest primary ferment I've had. The airlock is going crazy, even in a bucket that I'm pretty sure normally has little leaks in the lid seal. The temp is 6-8F higher than the ambient room temperature in our living room as well, whereas most buckets I have going out there get maybe a couple degrees higher tops! The difference is great enough that the bucket actually feels warm to the touch.
2/17 - Temp up to 74F. Moved to basement (Ambient temp 62F.)
2/22 - SG @ 1.040. Sample has a slight sourness bordering on fruity that is offset by the flavor & mouthfeel of chocolate syrup.
3/23 - SG @ 1.32. Sample is *very* sour, but the thick body and sweetness balances it. There is an intense chocolate taste that feels completely separate from the sourness to me, but I think the added oak (later) and time will bring these competing elements together while it ages.
5/1 Topped off with a little under a gallon of wort for the 'Archaic' dark strong I brewed.
5/18 1.033 aroma: chocolate, sour, hints of roasted coffee; taste: dark fruit, tart, chocolate, roasted coffee
8/22/10 - SG: 1.017 aroma: roasted coffee. flavor: roast, tart, chocolate, coffee
add French & Hungarian oak?
If I had to pick a favorite brewery out of everything I've tried from the US, it'd have to be Jolly Pumpkin, hands down. (For the record, we don't get Russian River distributed here. Nor have I gotten my hands on any Lost Abbey yet, among others. This, of course, needs to change, but that's for another day and another post. . .) I started with a recipe based off of JP's Madrugada Obscura, which is a Belgian inspired stout w/ brett clocking in at just over 8% abv. From there, I upped things a bit, shooting for closer to 10%. With all my recent mash tun issues, I wasn't holding my breath on actually hitting anywhere near the mid-1.080s.
After giving my mash a good 90 minutes, I had sparge water heating up and got ready to drain the mash tun, I opened the ball valve and. . . nothing. The grist was ground a little finer than usual, and something gummy had gotten through the false bottom and actually plugged up the ball valve. In the end it wasn't as big a deal as I was worried it'd be. With my wife's help we poured the entire mash into the kettle, unstuck and rinsed out the tun/valve, and dumped everything back in. A bit of vorlauf and everything went fine. I *did* have to heat up new sparge water since we dumped it to free up the big kettle, but it wasn't a problem. That said, I'm going to see if I can fine some appropriate screen at the hardware store to cut to match the false bottom to give it a finer mesh in the future.
Everything went smoothly from there out, although the boil was longer than usual since I used a higher water/grain ratio than usual (1.4qts/lb.) In the end, my final gravity reading really surprised me! I ended up with a 1.105 batch of beer!
I racked my Sour English Brown into a secondary carboy and pitched this new (and taste, I might add) wort onto the Bugfarm yeastcake. I've gotta admit though, I'm still debating boiling a bit more water to dilute it a bit. Between the 20+ sacch, brett, lacto, pedios, and even kombucha, I don't doubt that it has the capability to take this one down relatively low, but I'm still just floored it ended up this much higher than I expected! Jolly Pumpkin's Madrugada Obscura is 8.1% abv, I was shooting for around 10% and now my expected abv is in the 11.5-12% range! I'm going to sleep on this decision. I don't think it'll hurt it too much, should I decide to boil/add more water if I wait until tomorrow at this point. In the meantime, here's the recipe:
Dark Night
brewed on: 2/14/10
expected OG: 1.085
actual OG: 1.105
IBUs: 34
mash temp: 150F
mash:
9 lbs Belgian pilsener malt
2 lbs UK roasted barley
2 lbs US 2-row malt
1.5 lbs german Munich malt
1.25 lbs Belgian pale wheat malt
9 oz US Crystal 80L malt
5 oz debittered black malt
2oz German melanoidin malt
in boil (diluted in a bit of boiling water on stove, then added to boil):
12 oz turbinado sugar
7 oz honey
5 oz table sugar
5 oz brown sugar
Hops:
0.6oz US Nugget @ 13.5%
1.5oz UK Fuggles @ 4%
Yeast:
Al B's Bugfarm III
Ferment at ambient temp (mid-60s F)
2/16 - Craziest primary ferment I've had. The airlock is going crazy, even in a bucket that I'm pretty sure normally has little leaks in the lid seal. The temp is 6-8F higher than the ambient room temperature in our living room as well, whereas most buckets I have going out there get maybe a couple degrees higher tops! The difference is great enough that the bucket actually feels warm to the touch.
2/17 - Temp up to 74F. Moved to basement (Ambient temp 62F.)
2/22 - SG @ 1.040. Sample has a slight sourness bordering on fruity that is offset by the flavor & mouthfeel of chocolate syrup.
3/23 - SG @ 1.32. Sample is *very* sour, but the thick body and sweetness balances it. There is an intense chocolate taste that feels completely separate from the sourness to me, but I think the added oak (later) and time will bring these competing elements together while it ages.
5/1 Topped off with a little under a gallon of wort for the 'Archaic' dark strong I brewed.
5/18 1.033 aroma: chocolate, sour, hints of roasted coffee; taste: dark fruit, tart, chocolate, roasted coffee
8/22/10 - SG: 1.017 aroma: roasted coffee. flavor: roast, tart, chocolate, coffee
add French & Hungarian oak?
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