Wedding Small Stout

So, Abby and I are getting married, and I thought that a batch of homebrew would be great for the reception.    I wanted to do something more on the malty end, because I know several of the attendees are not big fans of hops.   So I arrived at a dry stout, because it's a fairly accessible style, and I could put in some extra stuff that would complement those flavors nicely.   I got the base recipe from Brewing Classic Styles, and then slightly modified the grain bill, because too much of the black barley will make a beer taste like an ashtray, and I added a little Victory malt to my recipe, to add some toasty, biscuity flavors that the extract wouldn't have.

Originally, I was thinking that I could do an extract  batch and save myself a couple of hours.  This seemed like a good idea, because we've got so much going on with moving and combining households and such.   I looked into cold steeping the roasted grain the night before brewing, which seemed like it would work nicely.  Then I realized that the flaked barley really needed to be mashed to extract all the good stuff from it, so I would have to at least do a partial mash.   At that point, I decided that I may as well do a full-on all-grain batch.

I found a bucket of Maris Otter pale malt in the basement, which I hadn't realised that I had, so that was settled.   I removed the Victory malt from the recipe, because this base malt has some nice flavors to it (aside from it probably getting lost in the other flavors).    I spotted the cherry syrup that was left over from a couple of other brews, and decided to add that, to make mine a little more unique, and get rid of the bottle.

Friday rolled around and I skipped out of work a little early and got going.   There were a few problems along the way.   I overheated both the strike water and the sparge water.  I also forgot which direction I needed to hook things up with the pump, so I spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out why the sweet liquor wouldn't flow when the pump was on, but would when it was off.   Other than those relatively small things, and a swarm of mosquitoes, things went pretty smoothly, though.

My current plan is to rack this into a keg in a couple of weeks, and add the oak cubes from Old Funkulator (an old ale with a bunch of Brett. Lambicus added, which has been warm aging for 7 months).   I'll let it sit warm after that, and hopefully the brett will have just enough time to add some interestingness to the stout before it's time to drink it.


Wedding Small Stout

Batch Size (Gal): 5.5
Total Grain (Lbs): 9.00
Adjunct Sugar (Lbs): 1.00
Anticipated OG: 1.047
Anticipated SRM: 36.9
Anticipated IBU: 29.1
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70%
Wort Boil Time (min): 70

Grain
60.0% -- 6.00 lbs. Maris Otter
20.0% -- 2.00 lbs. Flaked Barley
5.0% -- 0.50 lbs. Roasted Barley
5.0% -- 0.50 lbs. Black Barley

Sugar
10.0% -- 1.00 lbs. Fruit Fast Montmorency Tart Cherry Concentrate

Hops
1.25 oz Styrian Goldings (Pellet, 5.20% AA) 60 min.

Yeast
Lallemand (Danstar) Nottingham (rehydrated in 90F distilled water)

Water Profile
Clearview, degassed overnight
1/8 teaspoon Calcium Carbonate
1/4 teaspoon Calcium Chloride 

Mash Schedule
Sacch. Rest: 60 min. @ 156F
Batch Sparge:  15 min. @ 166F

Notes

• Brewed on Friday, September 2, 2011
• Added Roasted Barley and Black Barley before adding the sparge water, to hopefully prevent getting too much astringency from the dark malts.
• Actual OG: 1.048:  volume was a little low.
• Pitched yeast slurry at ~11AM Saturday, September 3, 2011, wort was at 56F.   Capped with foil.
• Monday, September 5, 2011 @8AM, still no activity.   Wort is now at 58F.  I'm guessing that the cold shocked the yeast, at this point.   I'll probably stir the wort up a little bit if I don't see any activity by this afternoon.
• Monday, September 5, 2011 @11AM, finally some kraeusen starting to form.  59F.
• Tuesday, September 6, 2011 @8AM, 54F:   should have backed off on the ice additions to the cooler.
• Wednesday, September 7, 2011 @7AM, 60F: perfect.   Added less ice back, to counter the temperature rise that the yeast are trying to make happen.
• Wednesday, September 7, 2011 @4:30PM, 62F.   Replaced ice.
• Thursday, September 8, 2011 @8AM, 61F.   Replaced ice.
• Thursday, September 8, 2011 @7PM, 62F.  Measured 1.020, so I decided to stop switching out the ice packs and just let it slowly rise.
• Saturday, September 10, 2011 @2PM, 64F, most activity appears to have stopped.

Milksick Stout: Tremetol B

I have been brewing variations on stout pretty much since my first solo brews.   It's still one of my favorite styles of beer.   There's nothing quite like a nice thick, rich chocolatey stout to warm you up on a cool winter night.  Not to mention the flavor combinations of  a roasty, coffeeish stout with a rich dessert (especially one with dark fruit, caramel, or chocolate).

If you look around on just about any homebrewing forum online, and just about any of the good brewing books, you'll eventually run across assorted discussions on water.   Water is the primary ingredient in beer, and has all sorts of impacts on just about every aspect of brewing, from mash chemistry to off flavors.    The water at my parents' house is really tasty and really hard.   I've still yet to get it tested, though I am tempted to do that now, since I have some extra around today.   I do know that it's from a deep well on a mountain where the majority of the rock is limestone.   I also know that it makes excellent stouts.   I try to use their water for as many of my dark beers as possible.

Milk sickness is caused by cows eating White Snakeroot, and then nursing their young, who then get sick and sometimes die from the milk.  The active chemical that causes milksickness is Tremetol.  White County, TN was apparently pretty rough on cattle back in the day, between Milksick Mountain and the Calfkiller River.   So, as a sort of tribute to the place where the water is coming from, I'm working on a series of stouts brewed with water from Milksick Mountain.   I brewed the first one earlier this year, and it's currently cold-conditioning in the keg.   My goal was to use the same grain bill with each of them and vary the yeast, adjunct sugars, and aging process.

Unfortunately, for this one, I forgot to check on my flaked (i.e. old fashioned) oat supply, so I've replaced half of the oats with flaked barley, as that should help with the thick/slick mouthfeel.   I found sour cherry concentrate at Kroger a few weeks ago, so I thought I would alter this recipe somewhat and go for a cherry stout.   The amount of cherry concentrate that I'm using should work out to the equivalent of a little more than 3lbs/gallon of cherries.  The cherry may be overpowering...  I'm also decreasing the hops a bit, to make up for the fact that I'm adding sour cherries, as the sour and bitter may not go very well together.   I'm using the Wyeast 3787 Belgian Trappist yeast (Westmalle, Westvleteren, etc.), which I've done in a stout-like beer before and it turned out really tasty, hopefully the flavors from it don't conflict with the cherry.  I'm also pitching a little bit of Fermentis Safbrew T-58, because I forgot to make a starter for the 3787 last night, and I only need half a pack for the Berliner Weisse from Saturday.

Milksick Stout:  Tremetol B

Batch Size (Gal): 5.5
Total Grain (Lbs): 19.00
Anticipated OG: 1.086
Anticipated SRM: 61.5
Anticipated IBU: 50
Wort Boil Time (min): 60

Grain
68.4% -- 13.00 lbs. Canada Malting Pale Malt
5.3% -- 1.00 lbs. Flaked Barley
5.3% -- 1.00 lbs. Flaked Oats
5.3% -- 1.00 lbs. Roasted Barley
3.9% -- 0.75 lbs. Chocolate Malt
3.9% -- 0.75 lbs. Pale Chocolate Malt
7.9% -- 1.50 lbs. Fruit Fast Montmorency Tart Cherry Concentrate

Hops
1.50 oz. Centennial (Pellet, 8.80% AA) @ 60 min.

Yeast
Wyeast 3787 - Trappist High Gravity
Fermentis Safbrew T-58

Water Profile
Milksick

Extras
11 drops Fermcap-S

Notes

• Brewed on Saturday, May 2, 2011
• Actual OG: 1.074
• 6:00 PM, 68F pitched full pack of 3787 and ~6g of T-58
• Fermentor is wrapped in a blanket, and the temperature controller is attached, but the intention is o let it go to whatever temperature it wants to go to, and I'll just hold it at that final temperature for a few days after the fermentation is finished.
• May 3, 7:00 AM, still 68F, 1.5 inch kraeusen on top.  replaced airlock with blowoff tube, just in case
• May 3, 5:00PM, 72F.   Apparently Fermcap is no match for WY3787.    Blowoff tube was a good choice.
• May 4, 6:00AM, 80F.
• I never actually applied heat to this beer until it started cooling off.   The beer peaked at 81F on May 4.   Since then, I have held it steady at 80F, so that the yeast can finish out.   This is a similar temperature to where Westvleteren ferments with this yeast, and around where I did my Dubble-Weizen last year, so it should be just fine. 
• I killed the heat after the beer had been in the fermentor for 10 days or so.
• Thursday, May 26, I heated 1.5oz Medium toast Hungarian Oak cubes in 1/2 cup distilled water in the microwave for 3 minutes.   Then added them to a secondary fermentor and racked the beer onto them.   This will sit in the cellar for at least a month.