Batch# 20 – I Eat Danger For Breakfast Stout

Date	Brew:05/21/2014	Rack:0/00/0000	Bottle:07/02/2014	Drink:7/14/2014
Day#	0	0	0	56

Recipe:

I got the recipe for this ridiculously named beer from here and converted it in beersmith to look like this.  I converted liquid extract to dme, and brought the projected OG into line with the recipe projected OG. Beersmith was calculating the og about .010 lower than the recipe called for, so I bumped it up by that amount. We ended up .010 over, so beersmith must have been off. Oh well.

Goals:

For our 100th gallon we wanted to make something a little out of the ordinary.  This thick, strong stout with coffee, chocolate and a bit of smooth oatmeal flavor will hopefully be a good cellaring candidate and have a coming out party toward the fall. It’s a bit over the top, since it has all of the big stout buzzwords, but it’ll hopefully be tasty.

Brew Notes:

This was a double brew with Joe making a DIPA at the same time. We spent a fair amount of time talking instead of looking at recipes.
Chris subbed 8 oz special B for 8 oz crystal 150 and then 4 oz crystal 120 for 4 oz special B. I’m never leaving him unsupervised in the brew store again.
They didn’t have munich dme, so we used lme.
The grain steeping temp was high: 168 – 160ish
We forgot the oats at steeping! We added them with ~10 left in the boil.
The recipe wasn’t very clear if the coffee was supposed to be ground or not, or added to fermenter or not. We decided it should not be ground, and to steep from knockout through chilling in a muslin sack. Coffee was not added to fermenter.
1.5 lbs of bakers chocolate(!) was melted in a second, smaller pot with a bit of water.  At knockout a bit more hot wort was added, and then it was spooned into the fermenter bucket. That’ll be interesting come racking time.

	OG	FG	ABV
Recipe	1.083	1.019	8.4%
Recorded	1.092	1.026	8.65%

Fermentation notes:

US-05 yeast was used. 2 Packets were rehydrated for an hour in a sanitized pyrex measuring cup. 2 is slightly overpitching, it should have been 1.7 packets, but over is better than under, especially since it will be a high abv brew.  We slowly poured the wort from the 8 gallon kettle to the brew bucket through the ball valve. The valve was partially closed to allow for more aeration on the way to the bucket. After topping off, the bucket was sealed, shaken, and a gravity measurement was taken. Finally, the yeast was pitched, and it was set to ferment in the back hallway. By the next morning it was steadily bubbling 2-3 bubbles per second.

Bottling notes:

We decided to not top off at bottling. We had closer to 4.5 gallons and left it at that. 4 bombers and the rest in 12’s. This was the debut night for the bench capper, and it worked out pretty well, despite chris ripping the wooden handle off of it.

Label

Tasting notes:

The coffee flavor isn’t nearly as present as I wanted it to be.  The bitterness of the bakers chocolate also gives the beer a very ‘sharp’ flavor.  It reminds me of sharp cheddar cheese. I think that it is mellowing with age, but it’s still very present. Perhaps a bit more sweetness would balance it out (as it does in regular chocolate vs baking chocolate) but the beer ended up pretty sweet at 1.026.

Conclusion:

Grind the beans next time, add them to the last bit of the boil, or possibly even add a french press at knockout. Play with the chocolate levels to bring things more into balance. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the oatmeal!