AG#27 - New Years Day Imperial Stout

[Lugsy]

This is my contribution to the NYD RIS group:

Grains:
Pale Male 7500g
Amber Malt 500g
Peat Smoked Malt 500g
Brown Malt 300g
Roasted Rye Malt 300g
Pale Chocolate Malt 300g
Black Malt 200g
Chocolate Malt 150g
Blackstrap Molasses 340g
Jaggery Goor 660g

Hops:
Apollo 19.8%AA 100g 90 minutes
Amarillo 10.7%AA 50g 15 minutes

Brewlength 20l
Predicted OG 1.112
Predicted FG 1.021
Alcohol 12.1%
Colour 508 EBC
Bitterness 118 EBU

My brewday didn't go quite according to plan. I drank a bit too much on new years eve and felt shocking, I'd decided against brewing early on but then had a change of heart and mashed in at 4:30pm. It was a struggle to maintain temperature in my new 70l boiler so I had to use a couple of hot water additions to stay around 65C but finally got the insulation sorted and only dropped to 62C after a two hour mash. The first runnings and first small sparge yielded 20l at 1.075, then I messed up with my next sparge and got another 23l at 1.040, far too much wort and far too many gravity points for the beer I want. I decided to hold back 12 litres of the last runnings and ended up with 31l at 1.062 in the boiler. It was gone 8:00pm by now so I gave up for the day and went off to feel sorry for myself. I got going again this morning, it's just come to the boil so now I have to check my evaporation rate and work out when to add the bittering hops. The sugars are going in just before the 15 minute addition to keep the initial gravity down and aid utilisation. I'll update a bit later on when I know how its going

[leedsbrew]

I bottled it yesterday as well matey, but mine was due to having done a shit night shift in A&E. I've just got the mash on now! Recipe looking well good BTY!

[Spikesdad]

Nic e recipe there Lugsy, a lot going on with that lot.

I need to get to specsavers, though, thought it said jockstrap mollasses!!!!

[Lugsy]

Ha ha ha, that would be an interesting flavour

I've boiled off just over four litres so I think I've got another 3 hours to go before I hit my OG target, probably be a little shy of my target volume but at 12% I don't think I need a full 20 litres.

[barney]

MMM Tasty.

[Lugsy]

Time to sort out my sugars I think. I asked a friend to get me some Jaggery Goor in Leeds the other day, I failed to mention how much I wanted and she got me a whole one - I'd only ever seen it in 500g packs, this is about the size of a fez and weighs in at 1.8kg . Better get the big knife out and start hacking at it!

[Lugsy]

Sugars went in about ten minutes ago, I've just added the Amarillo, protafloc and IC. 15 minutes to go and I'll start cooling, gravity should be bang on but my volume will be down due to me forgetting to account for kettle losses. Like an idiot! Oh well, no biggie

[leedsbrew]

nice one matey! I'm just waiting for the trub to settle with mine. My 2nd gyle will be getting boiled tomorrow as we've got guests coming tonight and I've cracked a bottle of 02-01-2010 RIS so unless I want it to end up shit I'm gonna do it tomorrow!

[Lugsy]

Ha ha, fair enough! So how is it after two years ageing then? To be honest, if this goes according to plan and ferments out to 12% than I don't think it'll be right within a year and it'll be more like two before it's nice. We'll see...

[leedsbrew]

It is really good EIIDSSMS!

Dark fruits, tobacco, leather, roast coffee! well worth waiting for. No harsh noted at all and a nice alcohol warmth that isn't overpowering any more! If Titan works out half as good as this one I'll be well happy!

[Lugsy]

Fantastic! Hope mine turns out to be somewhere near as good as that.

My hop filter is crap, I'll have to sort out a new one before my next brew. It's stopping the hops fine, and presumably most of the trub given its pitifully slow flow rate. I'll have to give up on it soon and go with filtering through voile into the fermenter.

[koomber]

One day my brewballs will develop enough to go for a brew like this!

[WishboneBrewery]

Nice name Looks a tasty complex beast
I've added your thread link to my blog post too.

[Lugsy]

Cheers pdtnc

I ended up having to abandon the hop filter after about 4 litres and strained through voile instead, I only managed 15 litres into the fermenter so boiled down the last 12 litres of the final sparge to OG and added that. It was a bit of a nightmare at the end and I didn't get done until about 10:00 last night but I got 19 litres at 1.112 so I'm happy with that. My poor little yeasties seem to be struggling a bit with the gravity, I only had two packs of US-05 which isn't ideal but there's not a bad krausen formed now so I'll just have to see if they can manage to ferment it out to the 12% I'm hoping for. I've got some champagne yeast as a back up but I'd rather avoid using it in case it dries the finished beer out too much.

[WishboneBrewery]

Nice one, You could give the yeast a helping hand a beat the crap out of it with a paddle, loads of sugar left in there so a bit of extra air in there wouldn't hurt.