Home Brew Forum

I got my arse in gear today and did another brew.....this time, the Four Shades of Stout recipe although I didn't have any of the Carafa Special malt, so I bunged some melanoidin malt in instead. I know it's a totally different malt, but beer's all about experimenting !

Three and a Half Shades of Stout

Malts:
Maris Otter 4kg
Flaked Barley 0.5kg
Amber Malt 0.25kg
Chocolate Malt 0.25 kg
Roasted Barley 0.25 kg
Melanoidin Malt 0.25kg

Hops:
55g Cascade 7.3% AA First Wort Hopped

Yeast was the yeast cake from last week's Celtic Stout, which got kegged today and is now carbonating on the mixed gas.

Here's some pics....less than usual as I was also doing Dad's Taxi duties today....


Pale malt (under the other grains), roast barley, choco, melanoidin and amber


Plus the flaked barley


Mash in


Temperature's good.....


pH looks good....


Sparging......topped up and ready to go for the second batch.


Hops weighted out and ready


First runnings. This wort smells lovely and tasted very complex.


I love first wort hopping. It makes life easier, tastes good and stops potential boilovers. Why take three bottles into the shower?


Relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew. The last bottle of the sadly missed Galaxian. I need to make more of this.


Boil you bugger, boil....


Here's the yeast cake from last week's Celtic Stout


By the time I'd run the wort into the FV and aerated, it almost looks like a yeast head already. Within an hour or so, the airlock was bubbling. I think this will ferment out quickly.

I ended up with 23l , but missed my 1048 OG target and got 1046....no big deal though, I'm sure it will still be lovely.

Sounds like another good brewday mate.

Robdog wrote:Sounds like another good brewday mate.

Cheers Rob,

It was an enjoyable one for sure.....I was kind of on autopilot brewing, shifting bricks and running the kids to karate/football/parties at the same time. It's amazing how much easier brewing gets after a while. At first, I had to stand over it all the time, now I know how much spare time I have and can do other stuff too.

Of course.....if you get too blasé about it, everything turns to shit!

This and the other shades of stout recipe's seem to be really popular, one for the future definatly. Need to invest in a couple more FV's and a load more bottles i think!

Looks like a successful brewday This is next on my schedule (was hoping to do one this weekend but no such luck...) - Mine will be a slight alteration on the original 4 shades recipe too - likewise no Carafa, so I'll substitute suitably (or unsuitably!).

Wow!

I pitched this about 6pm last night, by midnight the airlock was bubbling madly...

When I got up this morning, it appeared to have stopped bubbling, so I took a hydro reading at and it's down to 1014 already !

So it's dropped 32 points (68.7%) in 16 hours! That's the fastest fermentation I've seen.

Are there any downsides to such a quick fermentation? Hopefully it will continue to drop another few points over the next few days.

Forgot to say......the hydro sample tasted great ! Smooth and complex....very nice indeed. I think it's going to be a winner.