Hazelwood’s Brewday Part 2

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I brewed that DIPA version of my Butterfly Effect IPA. For obvious reasons (I hope) this one is called Butterfly Effect 2 and will be about 8%. I’m not taking chances on a small bubble trap with this one after the imperial stout.

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Tomorrow I’ll get another brew on but it looks like it will be another beautiful warm and sunny day. Because of that I plan to brew a bitter tomorrow, it’s a simple and relatively quick brew giving me the afternoon to enjoy the weather and have a beer in the sun.

Tuesday is looking less sunny so that’s the day for brewing another batch of Imperial Stout. This baby needs a double mash because my little Cygnet boiler can’t take the full payload of grain. I also need to cold steep the roasted grains overnight and I want to build up a couple of starters for it as it’s a big beer.
 
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I’m not brewing the imperial stout today, in part because the weather is nice but we also have our nephew coming up for a few days today. It can wait, I have plenty to drink.

I am just trying a drop of cider though that I brewed some weeks back. It’s been conditioning in a King Keg to settle out and clear before I bottle it. It’s looking crystal clear and tastes pretty good - medium sweet and with a fresh apple flavour. I can think about bottling this now.

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Busy morning today. I cleaned my beer lines, cleaned and sanitised my barrel and refilled it with boiling water for storage, bottled some beers (bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout), and I tasted some beers.

First to be tasted was my oaked cherry brandy sour. I can taste the oak, the cherry, the brandy and it’s sour (actually more tart) but it’s still a bit underwhelming. Shame.
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Next up was Summer Breeze. Just not ready yet, tasted more yeasty than anything else. I’ll leave that one for a bit longer.
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Finally the bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout. This was only kegged a couple of days ago so is barely carbonated at all but interestingly the bourbon (which I thought might be a bit strong) seems to have mellowed already - amazing. Winner!
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So, half a dozen of those bottled for now.
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On Tuesday I will be brewing that Imperial stout so today I’m making the yeast starters. Two two-litre bottles rinsed, soaked in sodium percarbonate, sanitised with Starsan and rinsed with fresh tap water.

Stage 1 - made up a little under 2 litres of wort using light DME to a gravity of about 1030 and temperature (once cooled) of 25C. Split the wort between the two bottles and one pack of Nottingham yeast in each. Give them a shake and then loosen the lid to allow CO2 to escape. I’ll be back later…

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It’s 18 hours later and the starter has finished the first stage. It looks like this and now has about 50% more yeast cells than in the initial dose.
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Stage 2 - I first drained off the spent wort leaving the yeast in the bottle and then added some more prepared wort. This time I’ve added a touch under two litres of room temperature wort with a gravity of 1040.
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Today I will prepare the treated water, mill the grain, and get the roasted grains cold-steeping for tomorrow.

…I think the yeast has noticed there’s more food!

 
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Stage 2 is complete and I should now have around 500 billion yeast cells which is what I need for this imperial stout. This will just sit at room temperature now until I need it and then I’ll drain off almost all the spent wort, swirling what’s left to pitch my yeast slurry.
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The cold steeped grain has produced a nice dark creamy liquor over the last 18 hours or so. This will go into the boil for the last 30 minutes.
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The mash for the first batch of wort is almost done and I’ll then get the second mash on. The wort from the two will be combined for the boil.
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Catching up on the brew day…

This is what the yeast slurry looked like after draining off the spent wort.
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During the boil I added the “black gold” from cold steeping the roast grains (roast barley, chocolate, carafe III).
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I had intended to brew a 14% imperial stout but I bottled it - the yeast tops out at 14% and I’m keen to not stress out the yeast by taking it to the limit. In the end I put 26 litres of what will probably be 12% imperial stout into the fermenter. Gravity was 1112.
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Like last time I’ve split the batch across two fermenting buckets but this time I’m also using blow offs.
 
Catching up on the brew day…

This is what the yeast slurry looked like after draining off the spent wort.
View attachment 76505

During the boil I added the “black gold” from cold steeping the roast grains (roast barley, chocolate, carafe III).
View attachment 76504 View attachment 76507

I had intended to brew a 14% imperial stout but I bottled it - the yeast tops out at 14% and I’m keen to not stress out the yeast by taking it to the limit. In the end I put 26 litres of what will probably be 12% imperial stout into the fermenter. Gravity was 1112.
View attachment 76506View attachment 76508

Like last time I’ve split the batch across two fermenting buckets but this time I’m also using blow offs.
Wow 1.112 how long was the boil?
 
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