Dead Czar Imperial Russian Stout

[pantsmachine]

Bloody hell.
Yeah, that’s a good starter and sums up my experience today making the above beer! You know how you can sometimes get yourself into a situation through ignorance and its only using hindsight you realise how close you came to F**ing it all up? Well that was me today.
Taking a mental note to self that next time I decide to do an IRS I will have bought a REALLY BIG mash tun and not tried to do it with a daft wee 23 ltr job. Please note my brewhouse efficency below, that’s not a misprint. On ‘normal’ beer I hit 76 to 78% consistently.

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 24.00 L
Boil Size: 28.00 L
Estimated OG: 1.085 SG
Estimated Color: 83.3 SRM
Estimated IBU: 79.4 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 57.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

6.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter
1.70 kg Barley, Flaked
1.50 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L
1.00 kg Amber Malt (22.0 SRM)
1.00 kg Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM)
0.50 kg Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM)
0.50 kg Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)
1.50 oz First Gold [8.30 %] (90 min)
2.00 oz Northdown [8.50 %] (90 min)
1.00 oz Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] (20 min)
1.00 oz Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] (10 min)
0.32 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)
1.27 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min)
5.07 oz Oak Chips (Secondary 7.0 days)
2 Pkgs Windsor Yeast

60 minute mash
90 minute boil

Also next time I do it I will know just what a ridiculous amount of wort the grains retain at this volume of grain. But hey that’s nothing compared to the amount of wort that 5.5oz of hops will hold back! In the end I have around 3 gallon of IRS from a kettle which at end of boil looked to be around the 24 ltr mark. So get this, I managed to turn 12.2 kgs of grain into around 13.5 ltrs of beer. That’s almost a 1:1 ratio and that’s really poor to say the least.

Don’t get me wrong I had a great time doing it, loved every minute, I just wish I could kick my own arse for getting such a poor result at the end! I can say that I have not tasted a wort like this one before, quite something.

I’ll post the photos and the story tomorrow.

P.S Super Styrian hops, what a smell, first time today.

Edit 18:00 Just walked into the garage. The airlocks bubbling like a mad thing and i can smell dark treacle in the air. I didn't put any in though! Thats the first time a beer has knocked down ALL the smell of whatever other beers are fermenting in the garage at the time.

[adm]

Haha! Nice job.

These big stouts are fun aren't they? And yours had a bigger grainbill than my recent one.

I look forward to the pics and story tomorrow. I'll be brewing a much more restrained porter...although I have abigger mashtun now, so you never know....

[Aleman]

We did post piccies of our brewday well before you did yours . . . something should have been going "Knock, knock, knock . . . . Hello"

Actually your 57% is not far off from my 60%. One thing I have noticed about the Durden park recipes is that you have to reduce the efficiency for the big beers so that the grain bill matches the OG . . . but that is to be expected reduced or no sparging is a very inefficient way of getting extract from grain.

Another reason why they used to take a second or third runnings and make a table beer from the used mash.

[maxashton]

That's one hell of a grain bill right there.
You could surface roads with the first runnings from that lot.

[pantsmachine]

Started off the brew on weds night with a yeast starter so it had a night to get going.(Free ad for Paul)


Pan on the left has the grains in it. Thats a 28 ltr pot that is!


Got the water up to strike temp in around 20 minutes(72 degrees). I knew straight away i'd have to split the grain bill tween the tun and the kettle so thats what i did.



Here we go!


As you can see the yeast starter most certainly did and the hops are ready,thats a 3 ltr jug the bittering hops are in.


Moved the burner outside for easy cool down later and got a good boil going.


First hops in and i know the pan has around 28 ltrs of wort in it.


Sorry no pics of the aroma hops going in so straight to the cooler after 90 minutes


The money shot, cool ruby highlights not a s dark as i expected but in truth nothing was as i expected on this brew


End result is on the left, after all the hassle for a small amount of beer this bad boy is going into long term storage in the loft for 2 years before i touch bottle 1.


Bottom line is that my wee 5 gallon brewery was not fit for something this size. I think a full on 10 gallon brewery would be needed to get a mess free 5 gallon batch of this beer. I agree with aleman that a second batch of 'normal' beer could be brought forth from the grains. Sadly that was not an option for me as my kettle was used as a tun so i needed to crack on with the brew. Once i go 10 gallon brewery i will make the beer again. It took off really quickly once the yeast was pitched and the yeast climbed up about 6" internally on the barrel! Once its fermented out i am secondary fermenting with french oak chip and curaco orange peel foe a week then its getting bottled and put away till 2010.

[adm]

Nice work. Looks like you had a fun (if somewhat stressful) brewday.

I'm sure the beer will be a cracker......you'd better sample some at Christmas, Easter etc...just to see how it's progressing!

[pantsmachine]

Talking of progress. I made a strong dark brown beer in July called dark dragon ale(recipe is on the site). Tried a bottle now and then since brewing it and the dark treacle taste dominated far too much. I had a bottle last night and so did a mate of mine. Its really mellowed and tastes great. Another 6 months and i think it will be REALLY good. Strong though i think we could easily have split the bottle tween the 2 of us as we had a bit of a speed wobble on when we left the house to go for a pint!

[pantsmachine]

All activity ceased at airlock 36 hours ago. This stout fermented out like a mad thing. Gave it a rousing to no avail so i dropped the curaco orange peel and french oak chips in after boiling them and pitching fluids and solids at same time. Brought the fv in from the garage and will give it another day or so at higher temp to see if the yeast wakes up again and then i'll bottle it. FG 2 days back was 1.042. I'd have liked a bit lower but thems the breaks i suppose. had a taste of the sample and Oh yes is the verdict!

[pantsmachine]

Ahahh there's life in the old bugger yet. Back up to 1 bubble every 20 secs or so. Thanks to central heating i may yet end up with a beer to kick my head in while tasting devine in 2009(online poet)!

02/10/08 17.50
Down to 1.038 tonight and now on a heater plate and blanket wrapped, monitoring temp to keep at around 20 deg.

[pantsmachine]

All fermentation stopped at 1.036 which i think puts it at about 6.9% ABV? I decided to sec ferment in bottles with just over 1/2 teaspoon of muntons spray malt per bottle. Just realised that i did not ask if sugar and spray malt give roughly the same amount of carbonation? Its too late now as i bottled 2 weeks ago but i'd still like to know for refernece down the road. Want to get as good as i can on current set up and hope replacing sugar for spray malt for carbonation is a small step in the right direction.

[Aleman]

You get slightly more carbonation from sugar than you do from spray malt

I always use the carbonation calculator to determine how much to add . . . then fiddle it

[pantsmachine]

Cheers Aleman,

If i remember correctly i got 26 1/2 ltr bottles in the end so that would be 13 heaped teaspoons plus 2 more for luck. I think it will be ok, i did not know there was such a thing as a carbonation calculator. Have you tried you IRS yet, i see your sig says still fermenting?

[Aleman]

Carbonation calculator from promash . . . think there is one in the utilities so you don't have to buy it . . . Well worth it to get carbonation 'right'

I racked my IRS at the weekend, so it is sat in the secondary under CO2 for the moment just to let some more Yeast settle out . . . I'm looking for 180ml nip bottles (The sort Gold Label Barley wine comes in) I've been offered a good deal on a pallet load but don't need the additional 3500 . . . I do see that butwiper is available in 200ml bottles now, but they look too thin to take the pressure . . . . but I've got a year or so before I bottle

[steve_flack]

I use Belgian bottles for my stronger beers. You can get 250ml but most of the trappists are 330ml and are used for highly carbonated bottle conditioned beers so can take the pressure. Orval bottles in particular are bomb proof. I'm lucky enough to live near a major importer/distributor/retailer of European beers so they always have loads of empties and charge around £4 for a crate of bottles (including the crate).

[Aleman]

I have looked at the Belgian bottles . . . . but I don't like Belgian beer