07 – St Patrick’s Celebration Stout

My family organizes an annual St Patrick’s day party where many different groups of friends come together and spend the day together eating, drinking and catching up. Last year I brought a case of my “chinook-hopped rye IPA”, so my new tradition will be to bring homemade home brew each year to this gathering. For this year, I am attempting my first “dry Irish stout” and thus this recipe is being made for this party.

For the grain bill, the recipe is…

percentage	lbs	ingredient	potential SG	points
74.38%	9	maris otter	1.038	342
11.57%	1.4	flaked barley	1.032	44.8
11.57%	1.4	roast barley 500-500L	1.025	35
2.48%	0.3	chocolate malt 300-400L	1.034	10.2
100.00%	12.1			432

For the brew day volume / additions, the recipe includes…

step	amount	details
strike water	8.5 gal	planned loss 0.75-1.25 gallons to mash, 1.5 gallons during 90 min boil, resulting in 5.75-6 gallons of wort in bucket.
mash temp	150 F	single step mash
bittering hops	2 oz	1 oz East Kent Goldings, 1 oz UK Fuggle
whirlfloc	1/2 tablet	added at 9:50pm
yeast	1 packet	WYeast Irish Ale #1084

For the prep day, some details…

The LHBS didn’t have UK fuggle hops, so I got Willamette (alpha 5.2, beta 3.6) instead
The LHBS didn’t have 500L roasted barley, so I got 300L (Briess) instead.
Overnight, shook and smacked the WYeast pack, and curled it up with a hot water bottle overnight.

For the brew day results, here is how it went…

5:33pm, flame on!
6:15pm, reached strike temp of 157F
6:26pm, all grains in and mash started at 150F
7:26pm, mash out started, BIAB wort recovery process started
7:46pm, 17 cups / 136 oz / 1.06 gallons recovered and flame on again!
8:20pm, reached boil, added bittering hops
9:20pm, 60 mins in, at 6.95 gallons volume, 0.54 gals / hour boil off rate
9:40pm, immersion chiller added to kettle to sanitize
9:50pm, whirlfloc 1/2 tablet added
9:56pm, flame out and cooling begins.
10:08pm, 12 mins into cooling, reached 70 F
Took gravity reading, OG 1.055
Took 2 cups (16 oz) of wort, set aside for spontaneous fermentation attempt
approximately 6 gallons of wort in the bucket
aerated wort for 2 mins with oxygen stone
yeast pitched, bucket capped, blow out tube attached
10:28pm, beer is done and cleanup begins
11:03pm, cleanup is done and sample is tasted!
4/25/2016, I went back and tried to find my “brewhouse efficiency” for this batch, and I believe it came out to 77%.

Bottling day notes…

bottled this batch of beer on Sunday, December 27th 2015
the spontaneous fermentation sample had gotten moldy 2 weeks in, so it was not re-introduced back into the beer but was thrown out a couple of weeks ago (bew!).
during transfer to the bottling bucket i somehow screwed up and left at least 8 cups of liquid in the bucket. the siphon got air in it, and when i tried to tilt the bucket and re-start the siphoning it just wasn’t happening. #FML.
still, got 2 cases of beer (24 12oz’s + 12 22oz’s) and an extra 7 12oz’s, so did pretty good still.
the FG was 1.012, so with the OG of 1.055 this batch comes out at 5.6% abv.

A photo journey of this batch of beer…

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Getting the wort up to a boil, using my signature 4 burner strategy 🙂

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This batch only has 2 ounces of hops, willamette (5.2% alpha) and uk east kent goldings (5.7% alpha).

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Getting down on the boil, looking pretty good.

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I have a habit of straining the wort on its way to the fermentation bucket.

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The batch has a pretty good volume going into the bucket, just about 6 gallons.

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The OG came out to 1.055.

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I had saved a 2 cup sample to try and sour with naturally occurring bacteria, but it didn’t work out so well, so this never made it back into the batch.

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The batch of beer after fermentation, ready to be transferred to the bottling bucket.
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Here we are on bottling day, transferring the wort and getting an FG sample.