2013 Brewday Number 2, what to do, what to do...

[TRXnMe]

I've just dragged in my malts and hops from the shed, along with my mash tun to allow them to warm up over night.

I've got plenty of pale malt, marris otter 5 EBC, plenty of Crystal malt 145 EBC, 1 kilo of black malt 1400 EBC, 250g of chocolate malt 1060 EBC and some torrified wheat (needs cracking).

Hops, 200g of Cascade, 113g of northern brewer, 80g of styrian goldings, and 150g of fuggles

So, what would you make out of that? My kit will brew up to 6 gallons in one go, so not going to use all the motter, or all the hops!

I'm thinking along the line of a hoppy stout like this: -

5kg motter
1kg black malt
250g crystal (145 EBC)
50g of torrifed to help with the head
454g of black treacle, for the hell of it.

Batch sparge in 4 stages, 90 minute mash followed by 3 15 minute sparge soaks

100g of fuggles at start of boil
50g of cascade for last 15 minutes
25g of cascade into a hop sock in the fermenter.

I'll probably go with Nottingham yeast, but have some Saffale S33 and also some Saffale T58 in the fridge recovered from other brews.

So, with my ingredients, how would you modify my base recipe to give me a nice hoppy black stout.

I'm planning on putting it into two fermenters, after my last stout blew the airlock apart and climbed out out the lid I thought I'd go with two just over half full, not one almost full one

Brewing shall commence tomorrow some time around 9 to 9:30 depending on how much of my house brown I get through tonight

 

[RobWalker]

if you go light, either all cascade with a healthy dose of crystal malt, or a combo of cascade, styrian and fuggles for an english ipa.

stouts i dont know, but I always wanna see chocolate in them when I do!

 

[TRXnMe]

if you go light, either all cascade with a healthy dose of crystal malt, or a combo of cascade, styrian and fuggles for an english ipa.

stouts i dont know, but I always wanna see chocolate in them when I do!

I'm horribly tempted to get a couple of bars of cheap dark chocolate and melt that into the boil, the cheap stuff is all cocoa bean and no milk fat so should just be maximum choccie flavour.

I've done the light beer bit, and love it, my house IPA is a motter based ale with a little 145 EBC crystal for colour and 100g of cascade in three stages, start of boil, then 10 mins from end and some into the fermenter, it's ruddy lovely. I made a variant with Calypso and that's good, but more bitter than I really like in a pale ale, I prefer fruity sweet hops to fruity bitter ones :) Thing is I've got close to two hundred bottles of those two stashed around the house ready for summer and am thinking something a little (OK, a LOT) darker for those chilly summer evenings and autumn nights.

FWIW,m if my bottle holds out and I do brew a stout, this will be my first AG stout, the prevous ones were from Cooper's kits and modified to give more vava voom.

 

[bunkerbrewer]

FWIW,m if my bottle holds out and I do brew a stout, this will be my first AG stout, the prevous ones were from Cooper's kits and modified to give more vava voom.

If you pop down the shops and get some porridge oats, you could make an oatmeal stout (subbing your black malt for roasted barley)?

Search the forum for "effin oatmeal" if that takes your fancy...

 

[carl_saint]

A kilo of black malt in 6 gallons is too much IMO! This was my stout recipe for a 5 gal brew

4750 Pale, 500 Flaked Barley, 340 Choc, 300 Crystal, 250 Amber, 100 Black

Turned out cracking. You could add about 150g dark cocoa powder for a nice chocolate aftertaste!

 

[TRXnMe]

OK, this is what I'm after :)

We eat porridge, so I've got porridge oats in the larder.

Reduce the black malt, OK, I can do that, I'll drop back to 500 grammes (give me enough to replicate it if it works out good).

Off to read up on effin oat meal stout now.

 

[TRXnMe]

OK, looked up porridge oats for brewing purposes to get the BeerSmith data and have the recipe below lined up for tomorrow.

5.5kg Motter
0.5kg Black malt
0.5kg Porridge oats
0.25kg Crystal
454g black treacle
200g of Tesco value dark chocolate, grated, with 25 minutes of boil remaining
0.05 terrified

100g fuggles with 60 minutes to go
50g of cascade with 20 minutes
25g of cascade at flame out

I'll pitch the notty when it's cool enough and keep my fingers crossed

When it goes into the keg I'll prime with some molasses I've got kicking about.

 

[TRXnMe]

OK, late start to the day My wife decided I had a list of chores to get through this morning, finally done and got the HLT on.

While out and about keeping SWMBO happy I picked up 500g of porridge oats and 250g of pure cocoa powder (Tesco value for both, so cheap), I didn't fancy grinding my finger ends off on the grater so swapped from chocolate to powder, I'll reduce the amount by about 20% to allow for the other 'stuff' that goes into chocolate to turn cocoa powder into a lovely tasty brick :)

I'm going in, wish me luck

 

[RobWalker]

make sure it goes through a hop filter - i lost a batch of chocolate stout to that, and it would've been easily remedied! if it helps, here was the grain bill for my last stout...

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
3.15 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 78.8 %
0.30 kg Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 7.5 %
0.20 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
0.20 kg Wheat, Torrified (1.7 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
0.15 kg Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 3.8 %
35.00 gm Cluster [7.00%] (60 min) Hops 25.2 IBU

good luck, looking forward to see what you come up with :

 

[bunkerbrewer]

OK, late start to the day My wife decided I had a list of chores to get through this morning, finally done and got the HLT on.

While out and about keeping SWMBO happy I picked up 500g of porridge oats and 250g of pure cocoa powder (Tesco value for both, so cheap), I didn't fancy grinding my finger ends off on the grater so swapped from chocolate to powder, I'll reduce the amount by about 20% to allow for the other 'stuff' that goes into chocolate to turn cocoa powder into a lovely tasty brick :)

I'm going in, wish me luck

Good luck :)

I reckon you're better off with cocoa powder anyway - most chocolate is fatty gunge, and your recipe should have plenty of sweetness to balance the more bitter cocoa :)

 

[TRXnMe]

make sure it goes through a hop filter - i lost a batch of chocolate stout to that, and it would've been easily remedied! if it helps, here was the grain bill for my last stout...

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
3.15 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 78.8 %
0.30 kg Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 7.5 %
0.20 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
0.20 kg Wheat, Torrified (1.7 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
0.15 kg Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 3.8 %
35.00 gm Cluster [7.00%] (60 min) Hops 25.2 IBU

good luck, looking forward to see what you come up with :

I think I saw your problems with the chocolate stout, it was one of the deccisions to add the chocolate at the boil, not during fermentation.

I'll post pics later, taking them as I get on.

Almost forgot to put the porridge oats into the mash :) had to whip the lid off and chuck them in quick.

 

[TRXnMe]

Here's the pics, as promised :)

One minor disaster during the brew, When I lifted the boiler onto the stool after draining the wort from the mash tun into it one of the elements turned out to have a pretty major leak So a quick Mr Mainwaring moment and I drained the boiler into the HLT. Having done that it dawned on me there isn't a hop filter in the HLT.....

Anyway, fixed the leak, got the wort back into the boiler and boiled it for a good 90 minutes, didn't addd the cascade beacuse I can't find them, but the wort tastes rather good anyway so fingers crossed :)

Grain Bill, rather a lot of it compared to my normal brews.

Getting the wort into the, leaky boiler, by eck, it's black!

Chilling the wort before transfer to the FV

Now That's an FV

I went for the 55 litre bucket on the theory that 35 litres of stout wort would climb out of any of the other FVs I've got, that and I've been wanting to give one of these big pots a go as a fermenter for a while now :)

Wort has a hint of chocolate, OG came in at 1.057, so all in all a good day's brewing, hope the brew turns out good now.

 

[TRXnMe]

Well, it all went pete tong

I suspect the yeast was infected, it had was recovered Nottingham from an earlier brew and had been in the fridge for a while, whatever it was, my stout ended up with a horrible green overcoat on top of it, not vinegary to taste, but slightly vinegary by aroma

SOB SOB SOB.

This is the first brew I've lost to contamination of any kind and I'm gutted.

All the ingredients are on order to have another go at it, not sure I'll make it next, feel more like making one of my pale ales, but I'm definitely going to try and get some of this sorted for christmas.

 

[RobWalker]

doh! sorry to hear mate. these things happen sometimes, but it's all a learning experience! next time :thumb:

 

[fbsf]

Gutted for you - I think for a packet yeast like notty, I'd be tempted to just use a fresh packet instead of using reclaimed.

Different for harder-to-get yeasts I suppose. Fingers x'd your next one goes without issue!

 

[TRXnMe]

Gutted for you - I think for a packet yeast like notty, I'd be tempted to just use a fresh packet instead of using reclaimed.

Different for harder-to-get yeasts I suppose. Fingers x'd your next one goes without issue!

I got into this partly to save cash, partly to headd down the self sufficiency route, the idea of using yeast recovered from a previous brew was very tempting, and I've had four brews from the firstt paccket of notty, I think my error was keeping it in the fridge too long, not reclaiming yeast.

Still lesson learnt, I've ordered a new batch of grain (30+ kilos of them :) ) so I'll be trying the chocolate stout again in a few weeks, but with fresh yeast :)