Tuesday, December 21, 2010

American Stout

This past weekend I brewed up an Amerian Stout. I wanted to push the limits of my all grain system to see how big of a beer I could mash in my current 10 gallon cooler system. Well it looks like 27 lbs is about the max. That adds up to around a 6% abv all grain beer. I recently upgraded to a 14 gallon conical fermentor (will post more on that in another blog post) so I'm going to be focused more on doing 10-11 gallon batches. Wishing my mash tun was just a littler larger, guess it might be time to work on perfecting the lower ABV session beers. I made a few changes to my brew stand as well. Basically raised the two horizontal pieces so I can go directly from my mash tun into my boil kettle while it's on the burner (lifting 13-14 gallones of wort from the floor onto a burner didn't sound fun).

11 Gallon Batch
60 Minute Boil

Grain
20 lbs of American 2 Row
2 lbs of Roasted Barley
1.5 lbs of Pale Chocolate Malt
1.5 lbs of Crystal 40
2 lbs of Flaked Oats

Hops
2 oz of Simcoe for 60 Minutes
2 oz of Centennial for 30 Minutes
2 oz of Amarillo at KO

Yeast
Wyeast 1056 American Ale – 2 packs with large starter

Targets
Pre-Boil Gravity = 1.050
OG = 1.061
FG = 1.014
ABV = 6.1%
IBU = 57

Mash
8.5 gallons @ 152 for 60 minutes

Sparge
Fly sparge with 10 gallons of water

I plan to keg 5 gallons of this beer. I may even try out dry hopping it in the keg depending on how the hop aroma is. I like my stouts to have a bit of a citrusy hop aroma to them. The other 5 gallons I plan to transfer into a secondary fermentor no cocoa nibs. I may even try to incorporate some Dogfish Head Peanut Butter Vodka into a few of the chocolate stout bottles. We shall see...


Monday, December 6, 2010

The Barrel Has Arrived

The Jack Daniel bourbon barrel has arrived. Just need to wait out the fermentation of everyones Russian Imperial Stout and then it will be time to head back over to Vince to fill this sucker up!

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Bourbon Barrel Russian Imperial Stout



My friend and neighbor Vince is on a barrel kick lately. A few months back we got together with a group of brewers and brewed Belgian Blonde that went into a 60 or so gallon wine barrel. This time around Vince acquired a Jack Daniels Bourbon barrel which we brewed up a nice big Russian Imperial Stout to throw in it. Here is the recipe and photos from the brew day.

6 Gallons
90 Minute Boil

Grains
17.5 lbs of American 2 Row
3 lbs of Flaked Oats
1 lb of Black Patent
1 lb of Crystal 120
1 lb of Chocolate
1 lb of Roasted Barley

Hops
3 oz of Columbus - 60 minutes
1 oz of Williamette - 30 Minutes
1 oz of Williamette - KO

Mash
7 gallons of water, mash at 153 for 60 minutes and fly sparge with 5 gallons of water for 60 minutes.

Yeast
American Ale Yeast (Wyeast 1056 or White Labs 001)

Targets
Pre-Boil Gravity - 1.073
OG - 1.100
FG - 1.020
ABV - 10.5%