First, developing the proper grain profile. The types of sugars (fermentable vs unfermentable) is a big factor. These brews need to finish a bit high in FG. What I've read is ideally somewhere around 1.030 to 1.035. Going much lower loses mouth feel and thins the beer out, being higher results in too sweet a beer.
Second, the mash and boil will be different to get that amount of sugar out. Using standard 1.25qt to lb water to grist ratio requires a lot of water for mash, not to mention added water needed to sparge. This results in more wort volume than needed for the boil, which means a very long boil to get it down to the right amount.
Third, handling the yeast and fermentation. Most ale yeast strains do not hold up past 11% ABV. Any higher and the alcohol will kill the yeast itself. There are some strains that can handle higher, but they are a bit trickier to use because they could take the FG down too low if not careful. Another option is to start with one yeast, which will contribute the most to the flavors, then finish with another as needed to manage the FG.
Fourth, this is a bourbon oak aged stout which requires proper oak aging. Since I am brewing on a smaller scale and don't have full bourbon barrels, I need to soak small amounts of charred oak in bourbon and pitch into secondary to age. Everything I read references a surface area to volume ratio, this is difficult to do with oak spirals. I have experimented a little using oak this way. The first time I let an ale sit on whiskey oak (batch #7) for a month. That batch evolved on a daily basis after kegging until ultimately settling down about 3 weeks later. Initially it was too oaky, then the vanilla started to emerge, then all flavors settled down. I had broken up batch #7 into 2-5gallon batches. The second batch I let sit on oak for 2 months, and I just kegged that yesterday. It tasted too oaky again to me, but this time I am going to let it sit for a few weeks before passing judgement. Based on this outcome I am going to use this to determine how long to age the stout on oak. My secret hope is that 2 months is too long, which means I found the point of going too far and can dial it back. Plus that means beer quicker!
Here is the recipe I ran with:
Batch
Size - 5 gallons
Grains
15 lbs
- 2-Row
5 lbs - Munich Malt
4 lbs - Chocolate Malt
2 lbs -
Crystal Malt 60L
2 lbs - Roasted Barley
1.5 lbs - De-Bittering Black Malt
28 oz - Light Pilsner DME (will explain this later)
8 oz - Molasses (will explain this later too)
Hops
7.8 oz - Willamette
Yeast
Wyeast
1056 - American Ale - Target 600 billion cells
The brew
schedule was as follows:
Mash
1.25 q
water/lb
120 min at
150 degrees
Mashout
to 170 degrees
Sparge
for approx 1 hour
Boil
4 hour (roughly) boil
Final 90 min -
Add Willamette Hops
10 min -
Add Whirfloc
Fermentation
Primary - 14 Days @ 62
Secondary
- 30 Days @ 70 (will depend on how long to oak)
Keg
Condition - 100 Days (maybe longer)
Here are
the specs on this brew:
IBU's - 60
Color - 87.4 SRM
Calories - 510 per 12 oz
Estimated
OG - 1.139
Actual OG
- 1.138
Estimated
FG - 1.035
Estimated
ABV - 13.9%
This was an incredible learning experience, and it was such a long brew day. With clean up, it was a solid 14 hours. Let's talk through the day.
It started find, measured and crushed a lot of grain. This is not too far off the volume of grain for a 10 gallon batch, so I figured the mash would be pretty straight forward. I mashed at a lower temp (150) to pull as many fermentable sugars as I could. After the mash I brought the temps up to 170. It took a bit longer than I expected because of the volume of grain, but it did get there, and I let it sit for 10 min.
Once I started the sparge, I noticed differences. The top of the grain bed was a bit frothy so it was hard to tell where the grain bed actually was. While sparging I also doubted the accuracy of my site gauge, mostly because I couldn't tell where the grain bed line was by looking in, and it simply felt off. I figured with the higher amounts of sugar it was possible it got clogged. Eventually I got the sparging leveled off, and felt it ultimately went well enough. Ultimately I used all the water from my HLT, interestingly enough that proved to be 16 gallons of boil wort (I started with 20 in my HLT). Through evaporation, some loss of liquid in lines, and grain absorption, 4 gallons went away.
With 16 gallons to boil, it was time to take a gravity reading. Initially I was going to take one just to see where I was sitting, then the plan was once I got down to 10 gallons, which would be the amount I'd want to normally start a boiling session with for 5 gallons, to take another reading. Unfortunately the readings I took at the 10 gallon mark made me feel my gravity was too low. First I had to get the sample down from a boiling temp to a measurable temp. After cooling things down I was only getting readings around 1.085 when my pre-boil calcs said I should be around 1.109.
Unfortunately the brew shop had already closed, but fortunately I had some DME on hand for my yeast starters and I had about 8 ox of molasses. In an act of winging it, I threw what I had into the boil pot. I let that dissolve then tried another reading, however I was still getting too low of readings. At this point it was as far as I could take it though as I had nothing else to throw in unless I wanted to start another mash.
My system boils off roughly one gallon every 30 minutes. As I was at 16 gallons and I needed to reduce to 10 gallons to start my recipe boil, that was 3 hours of boil time to reduce. My goal initially was to end with 8 gallons of wort so I wouldn't be scraping the bottom of my BK to get every drop of wort. However with the lower gravity readings I was seeing, I decided to push that boil down as low as I could take it and still get 5.5 gallons into a fermentor. With shrinkage from cooling, and some loss, that meant taking things down to about 7.5 gallons.
Where I ended up was pitching the hops in 90 minutes before end of boil, and I took it down to 8.5 gallons. Cooling the wort was also tricky as it was so thick. Though I was pulling out foaming proteins right before the boil started to avoid lots of proteins settling later, the hop blocker still got pretty clogged. It was slow to pull everything out, and I had to regularly scrape the hop blocker to clear the hops and stuff clogging it up to allow liquid through.
The moment of truth was upon me, to take that real reading of what I had left. It came in at 1.138! With a target of 1.139 that was fantastic to see.
Cleanup was a bit longer because this stuff was thick. I had to run lots of hot water through everything, and lots of general scrubbing. The cleaning seemed quick though knowing I hit my target SG.
I pitched the yeast, which I felt for my second starter the yeast looked good, and first thing this morning I checked things and saw the usual signs of a good fermentation.
Next steps will be to see how far this yeast takes the batch. I plan to let it do it's thing over a couple of weeks, then will take a reading. Will watch the activity as well of course and my take a reading sooner if things slow way down.
The funniest thing I learned during the session was that taking a gravity reading with my refractometer for something that is in the 1.138 area is not possible. Their was no blue line through my eyepiece. In fact rather than seeing my usual blue/white view, it seemed angry and was a pinkish white all over. I chuckled to myself and moved onto my hydrometer.
I am very excited about this brew. I have completely fallen in love with this style beer, and when the good ones cost $15-20 per 22oz bottle, having 640 oz on hand for $60 to make is music to my ears! Time will tell if I hit the marks on taste and flavor, but I like the direction so far.
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