Oatmeal Coffe Stout - Brew Day

So this weekend my folks came to visit and I decided it would be fun to brew with my dad. So without further ado, here's the recipe:

Ingredients:


- 7 lbs. of Dark Liquid Malt Extract (unhopped)
- 0.5 lbs. of Black Patent Malt
- 0.5 lbs. of Roasted Barley (unmalted)
- 1.0 lbs. of Flaked Oats (toasted by yours truly)
- 1.0 qt of strong coffee (10 Tbsp. Italian roast, pressed)
- 2.0 oz. of Columbus hops (boiling, 12.2% AA)
- 0.5 oz. of Fuggles hops (aroma, 4.2% AA)
- Whitelabs Irish Ale Yeast (WLP004, liquid, pitchable)

Sadly, there are very few pictures from this brew day. It's easy to get busy/distracted and forget to take pictures. Anyway, here's the procedure:

I toasted the oatmeal in my oven for about 40 minutes at 350F. Unfortunately I only have one oven rack so I wasn't able to toast them as efficiently as I would have liked, but I think they got toasty enough.

The grains and oats were steeped in 1.5 gallons of water at 150F for 45 minutes and the malt extract and hops boiled for an hour. The aroma hops were added for the last minute of the boil.

The cooled wort was then added to 1.5 gallons of water plus the cooled coffee in the fermenter. This time I used a colander to filter out some of the trub, which made adding the wort go a lot faster. Of course, not all of the trub gets filtered out, but that's not such a bad thing as the yeast like to munch on it during the lag phase. The fermenter was then topped off at 5 gallons with more water.

The recored OG was 1.056, right at the top end of the range for this style of beer. The ABV should come out somewhere around 5%, the bitterness around 27 IBU, and the color, well, dark (~48 SRM, for you numbers people).

I had removed the liquid yeast from the fridge about 6 hours prior to pitching time, which in retrospect was more than enough time for it to come to room temperature. When I cracked the seal on the vial it behaved similar to a soda can that had just spent a few minutes in a paint can shaker. I probably lost roughly 25% of my yeast because of that. Always the (naive) optimist, I pitched the remaining yeast and hoped for the best.

This was my first experience with liquid yeast. I've been using dry yeast and the lag times are usually around 8 hours. Thus, I began to grow concerned the next morning when the yeast had still not started to ferment. I tried to bring the temperature up around 70F and I agitated the carboy a bit to try to get the yeast back into suspension. I'm not sure if it was anything I did or not, but the yeast finally started fermenting about 24 hours after pitching, much to my relief.


Apparently, liquid yeast, especially those that have been in their packaging for roughly 2 months like mine, have lag times around 15-20 hours, so what I experienced isn't too surprising. I just need to learn to relax a bit more.

I plan on bottling this batch in a couple of weeks. I'm thinking that if the coffee flavor isn't as strong as I'd like I might add some more coffee to the bottling bucket.

Armenian Imperial Stout - Bottling

Bottling went smoother this time, mostly because of lessons learned from the last bottling. It still took me about 3 hours from start to final clean-up because you still have to sanitize, fill, and cap 48 bottles.

Boiling the priming sugar before I did anything else was the way to go because by the time I was ready to pour it into the bottling bucket it was down to near room temp. The acquisition of hose clamps also improved things as it made my auto-siphon actually work!

Anyway, here's the rundown. (I apologize in advance for the poor picture quality. Not only am I using a crappy camera, but I think I have Parkinson's or something becuase I could not keep my hands still.)


As you can see, it's a very dark beer. As I mentioned before, the recipe is from Charlie's book and as far as I can tell, everything he says about this beer is true. My OG and FG were both a little higher than the recipe states (1.082 and 1.026, respectively, versus 1.075 and 1.025, respectively). Normally, his book has an expected bitterness (in IBUs) and color (in SRMs) for a given recipe, however; for this beer he states that the bitterness is "Like wow!" and the color is "Like really dark".

He couldn't be more correct. I may have understated the bitterness of this beer in my previous post. It is not for the faint of tongue. Most of the bitterness comes from the hops, but despite this, it doesn't come off like a dark IPA or anything. The bitterness really hits you on the aftertaste on the back of the tongue. There is a quality to the bitterness that isn't hop-like, which I think might be from the adjunct grains; it's hard to describe exactly.

Make no mistake though, this is certainly an imperial stout, albeit a bit more bitter than what is available commercially. It has an ABV of 7.35%, which you can't really distinguish becuase of all the other flavors that are going on in the beer. The mouthfeel is medium to full bodied (with an FG of 1.026, how could it not be?), but isn't syrupy at all. (I hate syrupy beers.)

Another thing I should mention is that the beer smells a little fruity, although there is no fruity flavor whatsoever. I'm wondering if maybe sometime in the past couple of days the temperature in the fermentor got a little high and the yeast produced some esters. I don't remember that aroma being there a few days ago when I last pulled a sample. I might be overreacting though as it's kind of hard to tell if it's truly fruity or if the aroma is just from the alcohol as the aroma of alcohol has a significant presence as well.

I believe all the harshness of this beer should mellow out with age, and if not, hell, I'll still drink it. Apparently the beer is ok to drink after two weeks, but really starts to be optimal after four to six weeks. You can also age it for longer than that and it supposedly continues to improve, so I'll have to let some of them age for a few months to a year and see what happens.

Ok, on to the bottling process.


Here I'm siphoning the beer out of the fermenter into the bottling bucket which has been primed with the boiled corn sugar. Thanks to a hose clamp, I didn't introduce a bunch of air into my beer this time.


Big fat yeast cake. It's amazing how much the yeast of multiplied from those two little packets I pitched. It's also a little gross, especially when cleanup time comes.

I should mention that I know a guy who homebrews who brews three different batches on the same yeast cake. That means that after he kegs a batch he goes ahead and brews another one and pours the wort right into the fermenter that still has the yeast cake from the batch that he just kegged. I assume he does something to try to remove as much of the beer from the previous batch as he can and also carefully controls his wort addition/temp to keep from shocking the yeast.

It's an interesting method which might be worth trying, but there's no way I'm up to bottling and brewing on the same day. I guess you could maybe have a feeder wort that would keep the yeast alive for a day or two until you were ready to brew again. Hmmm... Anyway.


There's 4.5 gallons of home-grown, ready to be bottled, Imperial Stout. Woohee!


44 bottles filled, capped, and ready to age. (It looks like 45, but the loner on the top left is only about 1/3 full, so it doesn't count.)

Well, not much more to say about this batch. Expect another post in a couple weeks when I taste this beer and/or brew my Oatmeal Coffee Stout.

Armenian Imperial Stout - First Taste

The bubbling has slowed to about once every 1 minute, 45 seconds and I want to bottle on Saturday so I thought I would take a sample to see what the SG is like. It's currently 1.026, which indicates an ABV of about 7.35%. Here's the kicker though: there is so much flavor (mostly bitter, but not all hoppy) you can't really detect the alcohol. It is most definitely an imperial stout. Dark as hell, bitter as hell (the good kind, and I expect it to mellow a bit with age), and tasty as hell. I cannot wait to get this batch bottled and aged so I can drink it!

Oatmeal Coffee Stout - Recipe Idea

As many of you are aware, I loves me some coffee and I loves me some oatmeal stout. Thus, it is only natural that I would want to make an oatmeal coffee stout. I've looked around and found a few recipes, but I've decided to try to devise my own. Here's what I'm thinking:

Ingredients:
- 6.6 lbs. dark liquid malt extract
- 0.5 lbs. black patent malt
- 0.5 lbs. roasted barley
- 1 lbs. flaked oats
- 1 qt. strong coffee, freshly brewed (8 tbsp of fresh grounds, Italian/dark roast)
- 2 oz. of Galena hops for boiling (or similar, 13% alpha acid)
- 0.5 oz. of U.K. Fuggles hops for aroma
- Irish Ale liquid yeast (preferrably WhiteLabs, Nottingham Ale dry as backup)

Procedure:
I'm thinking I will roast the oats first, to get a nice roasty/toasty flavor. This will be done in the oven at 350F for about 30 min., moving the oats around every 5 minutes or so to keep them from burning.
Steep the grains and oats in 2 gallons of water at 150F for 45-60 min. Remove, then add extract and boiling hops and boil for 60 min. Add aroma hops for the last couple minutes of the boil. Add cooled wort and cooled coffee to fermenter containing 2 gallons of cold water and top off with more water to make 5 gallons. Pitch yeast when temperature is appropriate. Bottle once fermentation is complete (1-2 weeks).

I used this handy-dandy calculator to figure out what to expect from this recipe, and to make sure it falls within the definition of an Oatmeal Stout. I had to adjust the hops a little, but other than that, the recipe was spot on. Go me!

Here's what to expect from this recipe. Unfortunately the link above isn't quite robust enough to include coffee added to the fermenter, so I've put (estimated) adjusted values in parentheses next to the calculated values.

OG: 1.054 (1.056)
FG: 1.015
ABV: 5.0% (5.3%)
Color: ~48 SRM (50 SRM)
Bitterness: 29 IBU (33 IBU)

I did way too much research on the different kinds of oats available for this. Most brew shops sell "flaked oats" which I've found is basically the equivalent of Quaker "Old Fashioned" Oats. They have been processed to a point where they have already been gelatinized and don't require boiling like other less-processed forms (groats, steel cut, etc.).

My dad brought up a good point about the coffee affecting the pH of the wort, but after doing some calculations I've determined that it's not going to have much of an impact on the pH of the wort.

As for yeast, I want to give liquid yeast a shot, specifically the Irish Ale strain since it's the best for stouts. However, I don't really have the equipment or motivation for doing yeast starters so unless I can get some pitchable liquid yeast I will just use the Nottingham Ale dry yeast.

As for the Armenian Imperial Stout, it's still fermenting. Bubbles are occurring every 30 seconds now and there's a nice malty/hoppy/beery aroma emanating from the fermentation lock, so all is going well.

Update: I fixed some stuff in the recipe, specifically not boiling the coffee with the wort as it will affect the flavor/aroma of the coffee. Also added OG, FG, etc.

Update 2: Updated coffee roast/amount, added comments about pH, added yeast comments.

Armenian Imperial Stout - Activity

Just a quick update. The blowoff phase seems to have completed. Even though the krausen is still present and occupies all the head space in the carboy, I have not noticed any further flow out of the blowoff tube. Thus, I have placed the fermentation lock on the carboy and it is merrily bubbling away every 7 seconds or so.

Based on what I've read of this particular strain of yeast (Nottingham), I expected the bulk of fermentation to be done by now as it's supposedly pretty fast. However, there are a lot of fermentables in this batch and because of this I pitched two packages of yeast instead of one, so I think fermentation is going to take somewhat longer. Of course, this isn't a big deal as I was planning on leaving it in the carboy for two weeks regardless.

Armenian Imperial Stout - Krausen Ahoy!

Yarrr, thar be yeasties here!

Armenian Imperial Stout - Brew Day

So today I brewed the Armenian Imperial Stout found in Charlie Papazian's book.


Collage of ingredients. Here's the rundown (butter not included):
6.6 lbs. of Muntons Old Ale Kit (that's a hopped extract)
3.3 lbs. of Muntons Light Ale Extract
0.5 lbs. of Black Patent Malt
0.5 lbs. of Roasted Barley (un-malted)
3 tsp. of gypsum (has to do with the water chemistry)
2 oz. of Columbus hops (boiling, 12.5% alpha acid)
1 oz. of Cascade hops (aroma, 6.3% alpha acid)
2 pkg. of Danstar's Nottingham Ale Yeast (dry, not pictured)

The grains steep for 30 min. at 150F-160F, then the extracts, gypsum, and boiling hops get boiled for 60 min. The aroma hops are thrown in for the last minute of the boil.


Here the grains are being steeped while the cans of extract are sitting in simmering water so that they are easier to pour later. I cannot wait to have a decent oven/stove. I would really like a nice big gas range, especially one that has a digital thermometer built into each burner so that you can set the probe in your pot and set the burner to stay at a certain temperature. Trying to keep a pot with 1.5 gallons of water in the 150F-160F range for 30 minutes on a small electric range is frustrating, to say the least. The oven should also have a cylon eye and talk like KITT from Knight Rider. But I digress.

Again, I had issues with separating the hops and break (the proteins that clump together because of the boiling and cooling) from the wort. I used a larger stainless steel strainer which let me work a little faster, but it isn't really an option when brewing by one's self. Luckily, Greg was nice enough to come over again and help me brew so I had an extra pair of hands to hold the strainer and funnel. I think on my next brew I will try the decanting method described here. (It's worth noting that that website, www.howtobrew.com, is an excellent resource for the beginning homebrewer.) He doesn't say what the scrubby pad is for, but I guess it goes on the bottom of the siphon so that the gunk doesn't get up in the siphon and you can just scrape it off the pad.

This beer is said to have an OG of 1.070-1.075. My OG actually measured 1.082 (yowzers!). Assuming it reaches the expected FG of 1.018-1.025, it should have an ABV around 8-9% (wowzers!). I used two packages of the Nottingham yeast because even though that particular strain has a pretty high attenuation, I wanted to make sure I have a large enough yeast population to finish the job.

Not only will this beer be pretty dry, but it's (allegedly) going to be fairly bitter as well. I believe the final bitterness should land somewhere around 100 IBU. I'm calculating something much higher (due to the hopped extract), but I don't think it will get nearly that high. Of course, 100 is the technical limit for IBUs so it doesn't really matter anyway.


(Sorry for the dark picture, I'm using Allison's old camera and I can't seem to get the flash to work.) I plan on letting this beer sit in the carboy for two weeks before bottling even though the bulk of the fermentation should take place over 4 days. I mainly just want to see if letting it condition in the fermentor makes any detectable differences in the beer. (Of course, if I wanted to be really scientific about it I would get another carboy and do two exact brews in parallel, bottle one after the primary fermentation is done and let the other condition in the fermentor for a week or so before bottling. But I don't really feel like doing that.)

Not much activity going on yet, but I will be sure to post again when things start happening.

Badger Dark Ale - One Week Since Bottling

Well, it's been nearly a week since I bottled so I decided to crack one open and try it out.

As I pried off the bottle cap I was greeted with a healthy *hiss*--a sign that bottling had probably gone well. I gently poured it into the glass, maybe too gently as no head formed. The beer seems to have cleared somewhat in the bottle. It's still a dark beer though so it's rather opaque, but you can tell that it isn't cloudy.

It tastes pretty good; it's much better now that it's carbonated. It's more malty than anything though and I can't really detect any hoppiness at all so it's not very bitter. I was expecting a bit more character, but I still think it's pretty good for my first beer. We'll see if things change as it ages. The body is medium; it's not as thin as a Guinness, but not nearly as thick as a proper stout. It also has this kind of sweet aroma when you bring the glass up to drink it, but it doesn't taste too sweet.

I will probably brew my imperial stout tomorrow, so there will probably be a post about that.

I've plotted it out a little and I think I can have 5 different homebrews on hand by the time graduation rolls around, maybe 6. The real limiting factor is space, but I'm sure I'll figure something out. In addition to the dark ale and the imperial stout I want to try a brown (or maybe a scottish) ale, a bitter/esb, and a "lite" beer for those who prefer that sort of thing that will be around during graduation. A straight up stout or porter would be nice though, so I might do that instead of the brown ale. We'll see.