"Black is Beautiful" beer project

[Skyler]

In case anyone is unfamiliar, "Black is Beautiful" is a beer project where lots of craft brewers are essentially brewing minor variants on the same beer to support Black Lives Matter. My club was considering a "virtual group brew-along" and decided that "Black is Beautiful" was going to be our group beer. It helps that, as an Imperial Stout, it will likely age well enough to share with each other when we eventually are able to meet again in person (possibly Christmas). The base recipe is in the link I shared, but some ingredients were unavailable, so here's what our group is brewing (apologies for using degrees Lovibond; I am not great with EBC):

Parameters:

1. The game is, "we all got the same brew kit from the LHBS and brewed it at home how we wanted it."
2. Any post-boil change is acceptable.
3. Water chemistry and brewing process are 100% up to brewers' discretion.
4. Any additional non-malt flavor/adjunct in the boil is acceptable (e.g., brown sugar, orange peel).
5. No hop substitutions, but changing hopping rate/schedule is okay and adding or removing hops is okay (but if you add, you have to use ALL the hops in the kit).
6. Malt substitutions are acceptable only when necessary (e.g., different C-120L, different pale malt base are fine), but not when unnecessary (e.g., replacing C-120L with Munich malt). If the sub ain't great (e.g., torrified wheat in lieu of flaked barley), but you don't want to have to put in a new order just for one malt, that's okay. But it isn't really the same if someone pops in with a 35 SRM 1.055 porter when everyone else has an imperial stout base.
7. Corn sugar may be removed, reduced, augmented or replaced with a different sugar.
8. Extract brewers can use the same specialty grains and just sub pale malt extract for all of the base malt and flaked grains.

Malts
12 lbs Maris Otter (Crisp)
2 lbs Flaked Oats
1.5 lbs Chocolate Malt (Crisp 450L)
12 oz Flaked Barley
12 oz Crystal 115L (Simpsons DRC)
12 oz Roasted Barley
4 oz Carafa Special III
1 lb corn sugar (dextrose)

Hops
1 oz CTZ Hops 15.5% AA 60 mins
2 oz Cascade Hops 6%AA 40 mins
2 oz Cascade Hops 6%AA 20 mins

Yeast
Brewer's choice.

Target SG 1.083

It appeared as though several of my contemporaries are planning on doing sours (personally I do not care for sour stouts) and others are planning on brewing it standard, then adding flavors later (vanilla, coffee, cherry, etc.). I was thinking about tackling it differently, and thought I would share my plan:

• Mash the MO, flaked grains and crystal together at ~149F for 60 mins (no mashout, batch sparged)
• Cold steep all the dark malt overnight, then add the steeped water to my sparge water (thereby reducing the roastiness of the brew, while extracting all the color).
• Reducing the hopping to just .75 oz CTZ as FWH for the full 60 min boil
• Add 1 lb Belgian Candy Syrup (amber - 45L)
• Ferment with an Abbey yeast (WLP545 -- purportedly the "Corsendonk" strain) at around 66-68F (19-20C)
• Bottle condition in 1L flip-top bottles with a high level of carbonation.
• "Zwart is Mooi, Abbey Stout"
• ~10.5% abv

 

[samale]

This sounds great, why are you going for a high carbonation

 

[Linalmeemow]

This sounds great, why are you going for a high carbonation

Yeah, I accidentally overcarbed the first imperial stout I ever made. It was a bad mistake.

 

[Skyler]

The high carbonation is because it is not really an Imperial Stout at this point, but a Belgian Abbey-style beer. In my experience, those beers are always quite highly-carbonated. Corsendonk Bruin, for example, is a dark ale using this same yeast strain (spicy, not too fruity) and it is dry and very highly carbonated. It has been my observation that Belgian ales with lower "American" levels of carbonation come across as overly sweet. I have never had a Belgian ale that was carbonated to ultra-low "British Ale" levels like a bottle-conditioned Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout.

That said, as I plan to carbonate with "carbonation drops," I can probably selectively carbonate the bottles with high (4 drops), medium (3 drops) or low (2 drops) carbonation and see what works best.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

14 off topic posts removed some of which didn't make great reading , I have also edited the title this is not about your thoughts on BLM it's about what the member posted in the OP, please stay on topic.

 

[Brianbrewed]

I have the Black is Beautiful currently on the go.

Stuck as close as I could to the original recipe and used a 'chico' yeast.
It tastes great from the sampling jar.
My OG seems stuck at 1022 though, hoping it will go a bit lower.

I listened to an interview with the brewer on Basic Brewing Radio, liked his ethos and the idea behind the beer.

 

[samale]

What was you starting gravity. 1.022 sounds about right for an imperial stout

 

[Brianbrewed]

Haven't got my notes here but the OG was about 1091 from memory.

 

[Skyler]

Yeah, at around 1.080, I think the standard recipe was meant to end around 1.016 or 1.017. 1.091 would be a fair bit bigger, so 1.022 doesn't seem too unusual, particularly if you mashed at the recommended 154F/68C (my club opted to drop that to 151F/66C).