Homebrewing Big Beers

Our homebrew club recently used club dues to buy a 30 gallon used whiskey barrel. We talked about the purchase as a club and also the brews that would go in the barrel. We decided the first brew would be a nice big, heavy and dark beer that could handle the strong whiskey flavor that's likely to come from a freshly used barrel.

We discussed putting a second clean beer through the barrel, an option I was in favor of, but some of our more experienced members have had bad experiences trying to use a barrel more than once for cleans beers so we're going to use the barrel for sours after this initial batch. If you've had success using a barrel multiple times for clean beers I'd be interested in hearing about the experience in the comments.

Our club president loves his big, rich, club you over the head with a hammer imperial stouts so he provided the recipe for this brew. We served the same beer in Baltimore on club night at this years Homebrewcon only it wasn't barrel aged. I personally thought it was the best beer on tap but it didn't win the popular vote.

We had 4 club members get together and brew their portions together yesterday and three others who are brewing at home and bringing the beer in for transfer. All together we had 7 members at the brew session to help with handling of such a large beer which brings me to the gist of this post.

Big Beer Gotchas and Tips

Cost - Brewing a 5 gallon batch of Russian Imperial Stout can be a surprisingly expensive undertaking. Instead of 10-15 lbs of grain you're likely buying around 30 lbs of grain. Even if you make yeast starters you're likely looking at $50-$75 for all the ingredients. This beer cost $59 with the 15% discount  we get at our LHBS. That means we spent $420 to fill the 30 gallon barrel.

Equipment - You can pretty much figure on needing two of everything when you're brewing a 12% beer. 2 Yeast Starters, 2 mash tuns, 2 buckets for milled grain and two brewers ;-). The yeast starters are a must. A beer this big (1.126) needs a lot of happy yeast so you need two 1.5 liter starters. You might be able to get away with 1 mash tun if you have at least a 12 gallon tun and keep your water to grain ratio at 1 qt / 1 lb of grain. This is a pretty thick mash but it will convert. I brewed an 8.5 gallon batch this time around with a 17.5 gallon tun and at 1 qt / 1 lb grain it was overflowing when I tried to stir. Tip: with a thick mash like this I found it helps efficiency to stir every 15 minutes. 

Helpers - You probably can brew a big beer by yourself but having help makes the day much more pleasant. Lifting, mashing in, boil over watching and being able to grab a bite to eat are all good reasons to have some help. If you are brewing alone a pump is the next best option!

Efficiency - Maybe this is just me but this is my second RIS and it's the second time I came nowhere close to hitting my preboil estimate. If you normally have 72% effciency you might be able to count on 60% efficiency but 55% is more likely in my experience. The first one was way off and I needed to add 3 lbs dme to hit my numbers. This time around wasn't that bad I was only off by about 9 GU but it was still around 14% off my normal efficiency. If you don't know how to adjust your gravity based on your preboil SG measurement, byo has a good article here.

Time - A longer mash and sparge are not required but help a little with hitting your numbers. You also get the most bang for your buck if you take a second runnings and produce another beer after the Imperial. I do this with any beer over 1.070 because it really only takes an extra hour to get another 5 gallons of beer if you plan the day out.

Fermentation - Big beers bring big fermentation. This means blow off tubes, blow off tubes, blow off tubes! Don't use a standard airlock, you'll regret it.

I'm sure there's more and if I think of anything I'll do a follow up post. If you have any advice I'd love to hear it in the comments.

Belgian Pale & Hefeweizen & Coffee Stout Tasting, Beer & Campfires

I posted about brewing these beers a couple weeks ago here and I had the chance to enjoy them recently so I thought I would go over some tasting notes.

Belgian Pale

Appearance - Fairly clear beer, especially for a Belgian. Nice orange-amber-rusty color with a white 1/2 head that dissipates pretty quickly and doesn't leave much lacing on the glass. I'm very happy with the color.

Aroma - Not much for aroma on this beer. Even though it includes ingredients like coriander, bitter orange peel and grains of paradise it most smells of malt with a very small hint of orange citrus.

Mouthfeel - Light-Medium Light body and mouth feel. Not crisp and dry but just what you would expect for a pale ale. Almost slick/oily like a good oatmeal stout, not sure what's causing this.

Taste - There's a definite orange citrus flavor coming through on the front and back of my tongue which leads me to believe that both the coriander and bitter orange peel are in play here. There's a spicy note but not really peppery so like this is from the yeast rather than grains of paradise.

Future Changes - This beer is pretty good the way it is but I think it needs more spicy/phenolic/yeast character than it has. Ramp the temperature up to encourage yeast character. Fermented at 65 this time around, 75-80 should improve this beer.

Hefeweizen

Appearance - Hazy yellow color that reminds me of a banana Popsicle. Large foamy head that laces sticks around a moderate amount of time and leaves a nice lacing.

Aroma - Smells of banana. Not like a real banana but like a banana Popsicle, there's a theme forming.

Mouthfeel - Light body but not thin. Supports the beer perfectly.

Taste -  Very banana forward Hefe! There are some nice phenolic notes behind the banana but they're hard to put your finger on. This beer is so good but overwhelmingly banana so I assume it would not do well in competition. I would have said you wouldn't want to drink pint after pint of this beer but I've already proven that wrong.

Future Changes - None. I've brewed this recipe before with the Fermentis Wheat yeast and it came out much more balanced between phenol and fruity esters but just as good. I would not make this beer to have on tap all the time but it's a wonderful beer every now and again.

This beer is also great around a campfire:

Chocolate Coffee Stout

I brewed the bertusbrewery Chocolate Coffe Stout about a month ago for our annual memorial day party. My father-in-law loves the stouts and a strong cup of coffee so I thought I'd give this one a go.

I pretty much followed the instructions are recipe on bertusbrewery blog so have a look there if you're curious about any of that. Here are some pictures of the brew day.

Appearance - Moonless midnight black. You can't see through this beer even on the edges, very nice for a stout. Beautiful tan thick head that sticks around forever.

Aroma - Coffee! A tiny whiff of chocolate that eludes most of the time.

Mouthfeel - Medium-Medium Light and dry. This is definitely an american stout. It finished at 1.013 and with the roast and other dark malts + Coffee it finishes very dry on the tongue.

Taste - Great! I can't keep my hands off this beer which is a problem since it's earmarked for a party. It went over pretty well when I took it to our clubs big-brew-day as well. There is no chocolate taste in this beer at this point. There was a tiny amount when it was fresh out of the fermenter but the coffee has completely taken over at this point. It's still a great beer, amazing coffee flavor from the cold steeped kona and roast malt. 

Future Changes - First I would change the name to just Coffee Stout. The chocolate is barely noticeable. I would skip the cocoa nibs entirely, they're too expensive to waste on a beer where they're barely noticeable, I would split this beer into two. Leave the recipe as is for the stout removing the nibs and designing a chocolate porter minus the roast malts and coffee so the nibs can shine. I would also switch the yeast to WLP013 London Ale. This is a clean fermenting yeast that will leave a little more body in the beer which is how I prefer my stouts.

Milk Stout Plus Roeselare and Belgian Sour Mix 1

Last week in Western N.Y. was a cold one. I had planned to brew on Saturday but when I woke up it was -10 degrees Fahrenheit according to my trusty kitchen window thermometer.

Being a completely obsessed brewer with a heat source in the Horse Barn Brewer I gave it the good ole college try but it just wasn't meant to be. I ruined a potable hose that provides water to the Horse Barn Brewery from the house. Then the hose spigot was frozen up and I nearly gave myself frost bite trying to thaw it with a propane torch. I went to change the tank and started cross threading the nozzle, when I backed it off gases leak onto and through my gloved hands. I followed the recommend procedures and saved my pinky finger! :)

So I decided to make up for an entire weekends loss of brewing by brewing triple the amount this weekend. I needed something to top off the Bourbon County Stout sitting in my basement. There's far too much head-space in that barrel and the barrel's not mine. I also wanted to start fermenting two new sours to fill a new barrel I was getting third hand for free.

I received a new 15 gallon kettle for my Christmas 2015 and a new 70qt converted cooler mash tun for my birthday 2016 so I had enough equipment to brew the beers side by side. As it turns out this didn't save me any time over pipe-lining the brews, mostly because I forgot to put the bazooka screen in the new mash tun, Doh!

I also found out that I was low on roasted barley and a few other ingredients for my milk stout so had to make some last minute substitutions. I'm far to over confident in my memory which I know isn't great.

All things considered the brew day was a success. I have 12 gallons of sour wort fermenting away and 7 gallons of Milk Stout all of which hit their numbers.

Here are a few photos of this "epic" brew day.

Bourbon County Stout Clone - Barrel Time!

Around the second week of December 2015 a couple of the brew club members and myself got together and brewed a Bourbon County Stout Clone. You can view the recipe here.

This was a mammoth brew day. We ran into all sorts of problems from not enough room in two 10 gallon mash tuns, not enough room in a 15 gallon kettle to not being able to get the barrel to seal. All in all I was in the brew room for about 9 hours.

The O.G. ended up being 1.129 after adding 3lbs of dry malt extract to the boil kettle. It was obvious we weren't going to hit our numbers when we took the preboil gravity so we added the extract. F.G. was 1.039, a little higher than expected (1.035) but after tasting the hydrometer sample I'm not a all worried. This beer is going to be fantastic with some age on it.

We eventually got the used apple brandy barrel to seal (we used apple brandy) and transferred the fermented brew into it. Here are some pics.

Rogue Chocolate Stout Clone

For our January meeting our brew club has decided to brew stouts for comparison and feedback from the club. I decided to brew a Rogue Chocolate Stout Clone with my own brewers signature in the mix.

This article from homebrewers association is what prompted my decision to brew the clone. http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/rogue-chocolate-stout-clone/

This was a pretty typical brew day and I follow the instructions in the link above except for a few aspects.

First I input the recipe in beersmith and used my equipment profile which adjusted the OG, ABV, efficiency etc... So I used beersmith to recalculate these values based on my equipment in order for  the base recipe to end up as intended.

The second thing I did is mash at 160 degrees instead of 152. The Rogue stout finishes at 1.017 and it's a good stout but I like my stouts to have significant mouth feel especially one with chocolate in the name. The recipe includes oats which will help in with mouth feel but I wanted more. The increased mash temp allowed my beer to finish at 1.020 which is closer to what I wanted. I usually shoot for a 1.025-1.028 F.G. in my stouts.

The third and final adjustment I was forced to make because I used a natural chocolate flavoring instead of an extract. I wasn't sure what the difference would be but the recipe called for 1.5oz of extract. The bottle of flavoring I purchased called for 4oz / 5 gallons so I used the entire bottle.

Lastly I used a lower attenuating yeast WLP013 London Ale yeast. I chose this yeast because it will still ferment very clean like a CHICO yeast but should have left the beer with some more body.

while the beer was fermenting the entire first floor of my home smelled of cascade hops. I've never used American style hops in my stouts before and this was a pleasant byproduct of the Rogue recipe. I didn't taste the hops in the beer when I sampled while moving to the secondary.

This beer is currently sitting in the secondary on the chocolate flavoring and will be kegged and conditioned this weekend. I'll follow up with the results.