Home Brew Forum

Had a cracking brewday yesterday with fellow forumers Mr C and The Mumbler.

Having bought some of the 14l food-safe buckets with taps at bargain price of £7 from Oxfam (http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/ethical-co ... n/HN252913 - often out of stock) to use as split-batch fermenters I figured why not do 4 splits and a double-length brew rather than just 2 - the more the merrier and all:


I was keen to use them and do a 1-2-3-4 brew with one mash and one mini-mash, two different hops, three boils (two full size and one parallel mini band then four ferments - each slightly different. Having Mr C and The Mumbler around made it all a lot more fun and practical!

I'd tried Chris Reboot's four shades of stout and was impressed by the flavours and depth it has compared with a lot of stout recipes - using amber and balancing the roastiness of roast barley with the debittered carafa special and a thick creaminess from the flaked barley. However lacking cascade hops which are its real 'twist' on usual stout flavours and wanting to try out variations I went for that as the mash base and then further variations on the recipe.

FOUR VERSIONS OF FOUR SHADES OF STOUT
Brew length: 50l

MASH (25l liquor, 67c):

• 6.7kg pale malt (3.5kg Golden Promise + 3.2kg Pale Marris Otter)
  1kg Flaked barley
  500g Amber Malt
  500g Pale Chocolate
  400g Carafa Special III
  400h Roasted Barley

2 BOILS of 25l EACH:

• Boil 1: 65g Challenger (6.2%) = 40IBU
  
  Boil 2: 70g Fuggles (4%) = 30IBU
  
  1 tsp protafloc per boiler

ADDITIONS/EXTRAS/VERSIONS:

Whisky Shade of Stout - 13l, OG1050 (FG 1.012, ABV 5.1%, 76% attn)
Using peat smoked malt to try and add a smoky, peaty, whisky tone to the stout

• MINI MASH (1.5 l liquor, 66c ):
  200g Peat Smoked Malt
  120g Golden Promise
  
  Parallel boil in a pan with a couple of challenger for luck.
  
  BOIL: Challenger Boil (should have use fuggles with smoother and lower IBU I now recon)
  YEAST: WLP005 British Ale Yeast - split from 2l starter

Pirate Ship Stout Shade of Stout - 12.5l, OG1060 (FG 1.014, ABV 6.17%, 76% attn):
Using Molasses which is supposed to leave a rummy flavour, with spices to give it that captain morgan spiced rum hint - inspired by Randy Moshers Black Ship Pirate Stout in Radical Brewing.

• END OF BOIL ADDITIONS
  350g Blackstrap molasses - melted in pan with a little of the run off.
  1tsp mixed spice
  1tsp ground black pepper
  
  BOIL: Fuggles Boil (should have used challenger one I recon with higher IBUS)
  YEAST: WLP005 British Ale Yeast - split from 2l starter

Java Shade of Stout - 12l, OG1048 (FG 1.012, ABV 4.9%, 75% attn)
Just the fuggles boil and ferment but will be adding 170g of cold-extracted coffee in a sterilised cafetiere overnight in the fridge and then poured into secondary.

• BOIL: Challenger
  YEAST: WLP005 British Ale Yeast - split from 2l starter

Belgian Shade of Stout - 12l, OG1048 (FG 1.010, ABV 5.1%, 79% attn)
Just the fuggles boil but using a belgian yeast to give it a very different character.

• BOIL: Fuggles
  YEAST: WLP575 Belgian Yeast Blend

All fermenting away now!

Pics forthcoming - in posts below

what a brilliant Experiment, I bet the Belgian yeast will be interesting

Hi PDTNC - your thoughts are much like mine - I was thinking of adding some sugar to thin the belgian out and whack the gravity up but wanted to leave this version to be a little simpler (erm... simple? not my forte!) and let the yeast come through before developing that in the future... Russian Imperial Stouts have caught on in Belgian due to Podge's beer tours it would seem so there's an emergent style to try and develop further...

Will come back and edit/add pics once Mr C's uploaded them

Crown Brewery's 'Wheat Stout' is fermented with WB-06 apparently... Thick and black and you wouldn't know the yeast was that, or at least I didn't spot it.

On the subject of Amber Malt in stouts, my two recent dark beers (Porter & a Stout) have both had amber malt and/or Brown malt in them, Amber & brown do add a whole new depth to a stout with some good body. Though each malt featured on its own, to my tastes at least, is a bit overpowering.... Further Stout & Porter Experiments needed

Final batch sparge - had a bit of a mare with the batches and dropping temps in the cold and hlt packing in but all came gd - just took a long time!

The Mumbler mixes th last batch sparge in:


And on to the pitching and running off -

Running off the challenger boil with no extras to add (yet) for the coffee variation - I'll add cold-extracted coffee in secondary


Pouring in the mini-boil from the mini-mash of the peat smoked malt into second half of the challenger boil - so it is strained through the hop bed and mixes in fine.


Pouring the molasses and spice and wort mix into the fermenter before running off the fuggles boil onto it


Running off the second half of the fuggles and pitching the belgian yeast from a 1/2 pint starter


Pitching the british ale yeast, stepped up to 2l and then slit between 3 x 12l brew bins.

pdtnc wrote:Crown Brewery's 'Wheat Stout' is fermented with WB-06 apparently... Thick and black and you wouldn't know the yeast was that, or at least I didn't spot it.

Interesting - belgian yeasts really are dominant without swirling up (whereas wheat beers yeasts seem to need a swirl up in my experience to really come through) and dry wheat yeasts aren't anywhere near as characterful.

pdtnc wrote:On the subject of Amber Malt in stouts, my two recent dark beers (Porter & a Stout) have both had amber malt and/or Brown malt in them, Amber & brown do add a whole new depth to a stout with some good body. Though each malt featured on its own, to my tastes at least, is a bit overpowering.... Further Stout & Porter Experiments needed

Have you read Radical Brewing? There's a good double-page spread on "12 ways to improve a stout" which is great reading - along with the rest of what is BY FAR the best brewing book I own/have read. Ideas include mild ale malt, hopping it up, smoke, coffee, crystal malts and using weird roasted grains. One idea is roasting your own - I recon that roasted oats with malted and flaked oats as well would be v. different and intriguing oatmeal stout...

My last stout was good - I based it on the GW guinness recipe but with roasted rye instead of roasted barley, then split of the remaining ingredients between rye and barley i.e. 2.4kg marris otter and 1.2kg malted rye (instead of 3.6kg pale malt), then 500g flaked barley and 500g flaked rye (instead of 1kg flaked barley) and added a little rauch malt too - nice and spicy and very much a twist on a stout... The Mumbler (aka ben) keeps talking about doing a wheat stout using the same principle with roasted and chocolate and flaked and malted wheat...

I've had ideas for a Wheat stout though didn't think of Flaked Wheat just Chocolate Wheat and Wheat malt.
I bought some Flaked Rye from the health food shop a few weeks back, how was Mashing and Sparging with the Flaked Rye?

Great idea with the variations. Bet the tasting session to compare notes will be interesting

lancsSteve wrote: Have you read Radical Brewing? There's a good double-page spread on "12 ways to improve a stout" which is great reading - along with the rest of what is BY FAR the best brewing book I own/have read. Ideas include mild ale malt, hopping it up, smoke, coffee, crystal malts and using weird roasted grains. One idea is roasting your own - I recon that roasted oats with malted and flaked oats as well would be v. different and intriguing oatmeal stout...

I was thinking of those pages when I opened this post, got the book for Christmas
He really make you think, eh?

This will make for a great tasting night, well done

pdtnc wrote:I've had ideas for a Wheat stout though didn't think of Flaked Wheat just Chocolate Wheat and Wheat malt.

I recon chocolate wheat alone would make it more like a wheat mild - roasted wpuld add that stouty burt flavour - malt miller has roasted wheat: http://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/index.ph ... oductId=35 also some crystal wheat prob wouldn't hurt...

pdtnc wrote:I bought some Flaked Rye from the health food shop a few weeks back, how was Mashing and Sparging with the Flaked Rye?

A bit of a PITA - I used a load of oat husks, ceap from manor farm: http://www.manorfarmbirdseed.co.uk/oat- ... 1523-p.asp

Another thing we got into discussing was adding hops to the mash tun - used by some yanky hop heads to add even more hoppy oomph but seems to help with sparging.

BIAB sorts all those issues out though and lets you go stupid on the rye or wheat - as I did with my weird 100% wheat beer...

Spud395 wrote: I was thinking of those pages when I opened this post, got the book for Christmas
He really make you think, eh?

This will make for a great tasting night, well done

Cheers - tis a great book eh - i got it for Mr C (my bro-in-law aka Karl) for Xmas too. Makes you think and is the book I go back to time and again for ideas and inspiration. It's the spirit of homebrewing I go for: doing things that aren't necessarily commercially viable but are possible where margins aren't a consideration. There are lots of other valid and viable approaches like technical excellence, prepping and development to go pro etc. etc. but for me Radical Brewing is the book that makes me go 'ooooh I have to try that' - and gets you to see recipes as ideas not rules and style guides as indicators not limitations.

Cheap Oat Husks but expensive postage. Your 100% Wheat looks interesting! I do seem to have half a sack of wheat at the moment and running out of lager malt / run out of Pale malt.

Excellent idea and I love those Oxfam buckets!

Andy wrote:I love those Oxfam buckets!

Awesome eh! Great price and good cause - 2 are perfect for splitting a standard brew length, taps a little high but no more than most pre-drilled brew bins.

The other thing I'm interested by on this brew is the liquid ale yeast - the first time I'm using a liquid British ale strain having had good successes with liquid German (Kolsch and both Alt yeasts) and American (WLP001) ale yeasts compared to their dried equivalents. I've gotten really bored/annoyed by the 'nottingham gap' as I now think of it - where the 'neutral' aspect of nottingham yeast actually seems to flatten and homogenise flavours rather than emphasise and harmonise as great yeasts do - and the homogenisation spreads across diverse styles and seems to lend a lot of beers that 'ahh, Nottingham" taste which is defined by a very particular lack of an area flavour rather than its presence.

Skimmed the scum off the top of the yeasts and leaving them to ferment away - the lack of airlocks is a pity though as I like the symphony of bubbling from having multiple beers fermenting at the same time.

ive had radical brewing for a while ive used some of mr moshers ideas to good effect . its a top book.