Home Brew Forum

After some refinement of the recipe with Garth, Scooby and others over on the recipe forum, plus conformation that I can half-inch a few kilos of pale malt ahead of tomorrow, I'm planning a nice relaxed brewday on Saturday with my new mashtun. Because I haven't sorted out the sparge manifold to my satisfaction just yet, I'm going to revert to batch sparging for this one - there's plenty of headroom in the thermobox after all!

The plan is to make a dry Irish stout, not a million miles away from Guinness in terms of overall bitterness, but with the added joy of using my own grown WGV hops in the copper. I'm also adding a small amount of wheat malt for head and feel. The only unknown quantity is the yeast. I've ordered liquid yeast especially for this brew, and Patsy at H&G said she'd try and get it to me in time, but I'm reliant on the postal service and hindered by my late order and her huge workload at present.

Anyway, here's the full recipe:


Boxshed Seasonal Stout

Brew Type: All Grain
Date: 08/11/2008
Style: Dry Stout (Irish)
Batch Size: 23.00 L
Boil Volume: 32.00 L
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.0 %

Ingredients
3.75 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC) 68.2%
0.8 kg Flaked Barley (3.3 EBC) 14.5%
0.75Kg Roasted Barley (591 EBC) 13.6%
0.2Kg Wheat Malt (3.9 EBC) 3.6%

65.00 gm Whitbread Golding Variety (WGV) [5% est.] (60 min) Hops 36.7 IBU

Whirlfloc Tablet (15 min)
1 Pkgs Irish Ale yeast (White Labs WLP004) or substitute Nottingham

Batch Sparge
Mash Grain Weight: 5.25kg Mash PH: 5.4 PH
Grain Temperature: 13.0 C
Mash In Add 13L of water at 69.3C (63C) 90 min
Step Add 11L of water at 67.7 (65C) 10 min
Step Add 17.5L of water at 80C (75C) 10 min *EDIT* Actually another 11L in the end

Beer Profile
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.050 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.014
Estimated Color: 62.6 EBC
Bitterness: 36.7 IBU
Alpha Acid Units: 1.9 AAU
Estimated Alcohol by Volume: 4.8%

Carbonation and Storage
Carbonation Type: Kegged (Forced CO2)
Kegging Temperature: 13.0 C
Age for: 4.0 Weeks
Storage Temperature: 11.0 C


I'll track the brewday on my website then update on here if all goes well! Now where's that yeast?

Nice mashtun - thinking about a tun upgrade myself... Sounds like a nice beer for the winter season - hope it turns out OK!

The yeast just arrived - thank you Patsy!

Better get a starter on then...

EDIT

On second thoughts there's probably no point at this stage. it's well within use by date, so I will pitch directly and keep it warm and my fingers crossed.

fivetide wrote: Because I haven't sorted out the sparge manifold to my satisfaction just yet, I'm going to revert to batch sparging for this one - there's plenty of headroom in the thermobox after all!

I was a confirmed spinny man but thought I'd give batch sparging a go
and have never gone back, I get the same efficiency with much less hassle

Good news regarding the yeast. Hope it goes well fivetide

coatesg wrote:Nice mashtun - thinking about a tun upgrade myself... Sounds like a nice beer for the winter season - hope it turns out OK!

Is that my old green one coatesg? It's done well and deserves a rest

An overnight starter with spraymalt isn't going to achieve much, is it?

Scooby wrote:Is that my old green one coatesg? It's done well and deserves a rest

Certainly is It's been great and still doing sterling work (though gonna push it to the limit tonight!) - when I eventually get round to getting a new one, I'll pass it onto another brewer as a freebee-intro-mash tun

Excellent stuff - I'll definitely be brewing in the morning - look what I just got!

Nice stout yeast (shame I don't have time to make a big starter, oh well)


Local organic crushed malt from Muntons via my friend's excellent brewery stock

Boiled up some spraymalt and went with an overnight starter in any case:

coatesg wrote:

Scooby wrote:Is that my old green one coatesg? It's done well and deserves a rest

Certainly is It's been great and still doing sterling work (though gonna push it to the limit tonight!) - when I eventually get round to getting a new one, I'll pass it onto another brewer as a freebee-intro-mash tun

fivetide wrote:Boiled up some spraymalt and went with an overnight starter in any case:

I reckon that's a good idea.

I'd join in with my porter but it's a shoot weekend, that means getting cold and wet
while being shot at

All done and safely in the fermenter! Pictures and details later, but 23L at 1.048 in the end.

That was a great brewday, but what with everything going to plan it wasn't particularly exciting! Also I really missed adding aroma hops - it's one of my favourite steps I think. Still, the brew looks great and its airlock is bubbling away very nicely.

On my website you can see plenty of photos and descriptions of the day. I mashed-in at around 11am in the end, and pitched around 4pm, managing to fit the process around various chores...

The new mashtun was superb and made me even more keen to replace my boiler with something equally cool looking and move my current boiler to be the HLT. One day, maybe.

In the end I got 23L exactly in the fermenter with no need to add any further liquor, but I missed the 1.050 OG and got 1.048 instead. I’m putting this down to not compensating for the switch to batch sparging, which seems reasonable.

It looked like a gigantic pint of Guinness. I hope it turns out okay!

Excellent

Great yeast this! Went off like a rocket after a couple of hours in a nice warm room, and about 20hrs into fermentation the airolock is bubbling continuously. Smells like stout too, which is comforting.

Nice, you got love a nice stout

1.016 after 48 hours. Rah!