HBC-Peter's Particular Stout

[Joeyriles]

Since moving to all grain brewing I haven't brewed a stout (instead I have mostly focussed on blonde and pale ales with lots of hops.) I fancied a crack at this one, seeing as it is well within my mash tun's limits of ABV and the stout and porter beers are favourites of mine in the cooler months so they would have ample time to condition.
I waited until I was on half term and had my trusty squire come round for lunch and a bit of brewing. I had the mash water steaming away and the grains all ready and waiting when he knocked on the door and it wasn't long before we had mashed in at a temperature of 65C and chucked a sleeping bag over the M.T while we cracked open a few beers and listened to a 90's playlist (don't judge us.)
Batch-sparging is the recommended method on the given instructions but I have a makeshift sparge arm, made from a hose and a watering-can rose, and I wanted to stick to what I knew. Sparging is always so much easier with two people, and the smell of the sweet wort filled the room with a smell like inky Ovaltine. We had ourselves a little taste and it was stunning.
A few moments of error (which may or may not be the result of us trying Nigerian Guinness for the first time) occurred: We siphoned the sweet wort back into the boiler, which didn't actually have the tap turned off, resulting in the kitchen floor looking like we had been kicking the **** out of a squid. We only lost about half a litre but the darkness of it made it looks far worse than it was.
I added the hops at the start of the boil and the other packet at the end, along with the whirlfloc tablet. Previous comments on the forum about the lack of clarity with the instructions were well-founded; I wasn't entirely sure I which hops went in at the start and which ones were supposed to be thrown in at the end (one said 60 mins and the other said 0 mins.)
We cooled it and pitched it with some rehydrated US-05 and it is now glugging away in the F.V.

Happy days! A really nice kit with some really good quality malt and hops; thanks to the HBC for the free kit and to the guys at the forum (especially Clibit) for putting on the raffle. I will review more when it has finished fermenting!
:drink:

 

[clibit]

Good write up joey, cheers. Making AG stouts is a real eye-opener, was for me anyway. They are usually absolutely fantastic - so good choice you made there, IMO.

 

[Covrich]

Great one, l am interested to see how it turns out.

Like yourself never done a stout so after a little brewing break now while all the ones I have condition and stocks dwindle I will look at doing one probably next. Clibit highly recommended them.

 

[Joeyriles]

https://bigpigbrewing.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/the-home-brew-company-a-stout-review/

I've written a slightly different review (more irreverent) on my blog.

 

[MyQul]

Will be good to see what you think of it as I plumped for that kit as my raffle prize too.

I notice you though the trail jar sample was "stunning," I thought so as well. I bottled mine last week and drank about 200ml that was left in the bottling bucket cuz it was so nice.

I cracked one open yesterday (it's only had 6 days in the FV) and it's way too green at the mo but you can definately see how it will develop. I think it will only start to come to it's best after about 6 weeks conditioning.

SteveJ has also recently bought the kit so it will also be interesting to see if he is as impressed as we are with it so far. I plan on attempting to clone it. Shouldn't be too hard as the ingredients are listed on the website just not the amounts and Steve kindly weighed his hops for me, as I forgot to do it with my kit, so I can work out what the approx IBU is ( I think it's about 45 at a guess)

My reveiw is here

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=53260

 

[clibit]

There are loads of good AG stout recipes. They take longer to condition than paler AG brews but I start enjoying them pretty quickly nonetheless. 6 weeks is probably a good estimate as to when they really start to hit the groove.

The stout recipes I've put on the Completed and Brewed recipes forum are all really good.

 

[clibit]

BTW, the hops are all Herkules (German) according to the HBC website:

Grain: Maris Otter, Roast Barley, Flaked Barley, Chocolate
Hops: Herkules

And the whirfloc goes in 15 mins from the end of the boil, ish. But you hardly need it in a stout.

 

[Joeyriles]

This has been bottled after a record (for me) 4 weeks in the FV. I bottled it straight from primary and ended up with 37 bottles as the trub was pretty substantial.

Now for the waiting game...I'm going to try and leave it until the summer holidays.

 

[Joeyriles]

Yeah, so I had to try this before the deadline. What a beer.

I have also let one of the Science boffins at my school have a bottle for 'research' purposes and he loved it.