Batch# 18 – Dry Stout BIAB Split batch

Days000

Date

Brew:4/24/2014

Rack:0/00/0000

Bottle:5/27/2014

Recipe:

http://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/9665/brads-dry-stout-biab

Goals:

Make a simple recipe for our first foray into BIAB. Not very much hops, not a ton of grains, and (theoretically) fairly simple. I was in the homebrew store trying to decide on yeasts and someone brought up the idea of doing a split batch.

Brew Notes:

First BIAB batch! And split batch – half nottingham yeast and half safale us-05. The big pot was used. Temp control was weird, because the electronic thermometer was jacked, and the other glass one seemed to fluctuate pretty wildly. Rest of the brew (after ross left) went well. The wort chiller worked well, I stirred the wort almost the whole time and got it under 80 in about 15 minutes. I used the kettle spigot to pour into the bag/funnel setup into each carboy. The filtration setup worked, but mainly because there was almost zero hot or cold break! Also, the hop bag worked like a charm and there was little to no residual hops in the kettle. I think we should always do this from now on. Unfortunately, we seemed to have come up a bit short on both gravity AND volume. I really didn’t get a good volume measurement, but I’m estimating about 5 gallons. It tasted pretty good. Not very sweet at all.

	OG	FG	ABV
Recipe	1.041	1.010	4.1%
Recorded	1.034	1.012*	0.00%

*the us-05 was 1.012, and the Nottingham was 1.014

Fermentation notes:

Split batch with Nottingham and Safale US-05 yeasts. Each half is in a 5 or 6 gallon glass carboy with the yeast packet taped to the side. One of my fears is having one amazing beer and one terrible beer and then not knowing which yeast is in which.
Chris says that the notty smells a bit wild in the first week.

Bottling notes:

Our final volume surprised us. It was around 5.5 Gal, and we thought we has 5 gal. We ended up using 5 oz of sugar for 5 gal as opposed to 5.5 oz, so carb may be slightly light. The notty had the incorrect amount of bottling sugar because we measured and bottled the US-05 first. Nottingham was also .002 higher, so maybe that will help even things out.

Label

Tasting notes:

At Bottling we were impressed with the flavor. Dry stout-ish dry roasted peanut flavor. No big off flavors, but a hint of a creamy/banana aftertaste (that I actually like). Sweetness seemed good, and will be reduced with both bottle conditioning and carb.

We were both sadly disappointed with the lack of difference between the two yeasts. I’m hoping something shows itself in the bottle. This isn’t really a yeast-driven beer so perhaps it wasn’t a great test. Time will tell…

Conclusion:

 

Volume Notes:

US 05 yielded ~2.9 gallons or 28*12oz bottles
Nottingham yielded 2.6 or 20*12oz + 3*22 oz bottles