Stout Brew Day - 1/6/18

Last summer, my homebrew club hosted a competition and the winner was a really nice stout. The brewer described it as an Irish stout. I reached out to him for the recipe and he was kind enough to reveal most of it, though remained coy about certain aspects, such as the starting gravity and water treatment. On top of that, the beer is actually from the second runnings of a bigger beer, adding even more variability. But I had the grains and their respective percentages for the beer and adjusted the amounts according to the gravity that I wanted to achieve.

I thought a beer in the 4.5-5% range would be good. I've been aiming to brew beers that are more drinkable lately, which means less alcohol and less intense flavors (which really just means less hoppy).  So I designed a beer with about 8.25 lbs of grain total and a starting gravity of 1.046.

I started brewing around 11:30 AM and was finished by about 5:15. During that time I also kegged another beer and really took my time in general. I could have been finished earlier if I was really efficient. But either way, this was a fairly short brew day by my standards. It also helped that it has been really cold lately, so the ground water was extra cold, so chilling the wort took less time. So cold in fact that my hose seemed to be clogged with ice, which was concerning at first, but it cleared up after a few minutes.

Total brew time was also reduced since I had the brew shop mix and crush everything together, something I normally don't do. So I didn't have to spend time measuring grains at home. They mixed and crushed 7 lbs Avangard pale ale, 8 ounces chocolate, 6 ounces carafa ii, 3 ounces roast barley, and 3 ounces flaked wheat.

Into the mash tun it went. This time I was much more careful with the mash temperature. It mashed at 152 for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. I added 2 ounces of 4.5% AA Fuggles for about 33 IBUs total. Perhaps too much? The wort was less chocolatey than I thought it might be. Maybe even fruity, from the hops I'm guessing. But fermentation usually rounds those flavors out, so I'm expecting more malt in the finished beer. And hopefully this one turns out to my liking. The original beer was fantastic. Really smooth. No acrid flavors. I don't like acrid flavors in stouts. I prefer a smooth, chocolate flavor.

OG was around 1.046 with about 5 gallons of wort. I kegged my Styrian bitter and noticed some bubbles on top seemed to have a slight film. The beer tasted fine, but I didn't want to take any chances. So I bought a fresh 1469 smack pack. Fermentation had taken off by morning on January 7.