Home Brew Forum

Thought I'd use a tried and tested recipe from here for my first foray into stouts:

Four Shades of Stout


Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 25.0
Total Grain (kg): 4.744
Total Hops (g): 45.45
Original Gravity (OG): 1.043 (°P): 10.7
Final Gravity (FG): 1.009 (°P): 2.3
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 4.51 %
Colour (SRM): 34.2 (EBC): 67.4
Bitterness (IBU): 33.5 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 75
Boil Time (Minutes): 60

Grain Bill
----------------
3.314 kg Maris Otter Malt (69.86%)
0.508 kg Flaked Barley (10.7%)
0.256 kg Amber Malt (5.39%)
0.256 kg Chocolate, Pale (5.39%)
0.205 kg Carafa Special III Malt (4.33%)
0.205 kg Roasted Barley (4.33%)

Hop Bill
----------------
45.5 g Cascade Leaf (7% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (1.8 g/L)

Misc Bill
----------------
0.5 g Whirlfloc Tablet @ 15 Minutes (Boil)

Single step Infusion at 66°C for 90 Minutes.
Fermented at 18°C with Danstar Nottingham


Recipe Generated with BrewMate

Another smooth and quick brewday today. No stuck mash, nice simple hop schedule. Minimal spillage during transfers between vessels. Only snag was forgot to fit the hop strainer, but was able to stick it in during the chill using Starsan and my Blichmann gauntlets. Hit OG on the nose again. Collected about 26 litres in the end as well. Everything packed up and ready for the next brewday on Friday!

Pictures:

Grains and chalk weighed and ready


By skittlebrau666 at 2012-05-07

Nice dark mash


By skittlebrau666 at 2012-05-07

First runnings


By skittlebrau666 at 2012-05-07

Nice spinny spargification


By skittlebrau666 at 2012-05-07

Sparge runnings getting lighter


By skittlebrau666 at 2012-05-07

Waiting for the boil


By skittlebrau666 at 2012-05-07

Boil on the go. This seemed like eff all hops compared to everything else I've brewed to date


By skittlebrau666 at 2012-05-07

Into the FV with you!


By skittlebrau666 at 2012-05-07

Into the bin with you!


By skittlebrau666 at 2012-05-07

Looks good, you've made me want to have another crack at a stout. My first one was ok but I wasn't blown away by it and even though I primed with my usual amounts it didn't really develop any carbonation. Personally, I don't mind sticking a syringe in and giving the beer a few blasts, as it does gives a thicker head, it's just not very glamorous when you have guests sampling your beers LOL

Just under 24 hours since putting in the brewfridge and we have a big old krausen already. Nottingham is a monster, although I'll be interested to see what it does with this beer. The first beer I did with it was very nice, but it had a sort of strange "clinical" taste to it that I wasn't sure I liked, which I think might be what people have described as Nottingham's "neutral" taste.

Looking good there! I should have another go at "Four Shades..." soon, I made a version last year but without the amber malt (so it was only Three Shades). It came out really good but I'd like to try the proper recipe next time. Good luck with yours

Fermentation has stopped at a higher gravity than expected... 1.013. I think I must've got the mash temp wrong somehow. Is it worth rousing? I wouldn't have thought that would get me anywhere with Nottingham.

with a bit of a re-design on your hop-stopper you'd maybe get a litre or two more wort out of your boiler

Well we can add me to the list of believers in this recipe!

Looking good

All gone now... was lovely almost all the way through, but the last couple of bottles seemed to have lost something... Seemed to be at its best after about a month, and up to three months. This will definitely be brewed again.

I had the same thing with a similar stout recipe of mine, brewed in July.

For the few weeks it took us to drink most of it, it tasted gorgeous - roasty, malty, bitter, lovely & full. So I saved a few bottles back and entered it into the UK Homebrew Compo last weekend (in which it scored very well), however when I sampled a bottle the night before it didn't taste anywhere near as good as it used to be.

I don't know what that means really. Some beers take a while to age well, and some beers lose something over time...

Same losses here with a toasted oatmeal Mocha stout I'm working on. Brewed it twice now and for the first couple of weeks after starting to drink it, the espresso masks the choc malt flavours but over the next couple of weeks it balances really well. It remains like this for another 3 weeks or a month then the espresso aroma begins to tail off quite drastically to the point I can't pick it out. The flavour remains however.