Update #2: Boxshed Seasonal Stout

After a week or so in primary, this impressive smelling stout was ready to be moved into secondary. I also wanted to take this opportunity to harvest that valuable liquid yeast, which by now had grown and taken over the bottom of the FV bucket, and which threatened to turn into The Magic Porridge Pot. It will stay in secondary for at least another week, then I’ll post a kegging/bottling update and sort out another brewday, finally…

 

When your beer starts smiling at you, it’s a good sign that primary fermentation has finished

The liquid yeast did its thing admirably then settled down to see what would happen next

I eschew Fv taps in favour of a swan-neck siphon. Eschews are NOT salty bar snacks.

In goes the lovely black stuff

The smell was unmistakably stout, with a CO2 taint from continued fermentation

Bubbles. No idea why as the tube was under the surface and they stopped the moment I noticed them

Satisfying clumps of trub and gunk remained around the sides of the primary bucket

Managed to get all of the brew out. You don’t need to be too precious about moving a little yeast over

Hard to get a decent photo, but take it from me it was just under 1.012, but will probably drop a little further

Stout nice and safe and clean in secondary where it will stay for a week or so

There was plenty of liquid yeast slurry to harvest with a jug of cooled boiling water

This is what it looks like after a day or two chillin’ in the fridge

Obviosuly i’ll have to tip out that beer before splitting or pitching. Looks good though

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Update #1: Boxshed Seasonal Stout

Well the fermentation for my dry stout was rapid and impressive to watch. This is only the second time I’ve ever invested the extra money and effort to get hold of the most appropriate liquid yeast rather than just shoving in S-04, US-05, Gervin or Nottingham dried yeasts, and I really don’t know why! Last time was when I bought an East Coast White Labs vial for an extract APA style thing and it worked really well, both for that brew and when harvested for the next golden ale I made. This Dry Irish version took off like a rocket, smells superb and will definitely be harvested and used in whatever dark ales I brew in the near future.

As I mentioned prior to kicking off this brew, I ordered the yeast much too late, expecting Patsy at Hope & Grape to travel back in time in order to get the gear to me with enough of a run up to make a worthwhile starter for brewday. As it turned out, 24hrs or so proved more than enough, which is good to know. I boiled up 200g of Muntons Spraymalt in one litre of water, let it cool in a demijohn and shook it well with the yeast vial before putting under airlock.

By the time I needed to pitch the next day the starter didn’t look spectacular, but a layer of yeast had formed in the bottom of the bottle and there was a very gentle fizz and occasional airlock burp. I swirled it up and pitched it into the fermenter as the 20c wort transferred from the boiler. A thorough paddling and a warm room did the rest. Fermentation kicked off after just a couple of hours, in 24hrs the krausen had billowed high enough to coat the underneath of the FV lid in sticky stout tar, and just now, less than 48 hours after pitching, it was already susiding and gravity was down to 1.016 with a lot of action still coming through the airlock.

Very satisfying so far, all in all. I had a sample from the hydro drips while testing the gravity this lunchtime and, yup, it’s stout allright! Bitter and dry as you like, but unmistakeably stout. I plan to move this into secondary towards the end of the week where it will stay for a further week. I’ll update as and when anything interesting happens. Meanwhile, here are some pics as ever:

 

Starter. It wasn’t this lively until I shook it 🙂

I liked the way the krausen rose without touching the sides

Looked like stout, smelled like stout…

Shortly after this photo the head stuck to the lid. It didn’t blow though, thankfully

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Brewday: Boxshed Seasonal Stout

This turned out to be a very relaxed brewday with my new mashtun. Because I hadn’t sorted out the sparge manifold to my satisfaction just yet, I reverted to batch sparging for this one – there’s plenty of headroom in the thermo box after all!

The plan was to make a dry Irish stout, not a million miles away from Guinness in terms of overall bitterness, but with the added fun of using my own grown WGV hops in the copper. I added a small amount of wheat malt for head and feel. I also ordered liquid yeast especially for this brew, although I probably ought to have given it more time to multiply ahead of brewday – ah well, it’ll be fine I’m sure.

Anyway, here’s the full recipe:

 

Boxshed Seasonal Stout

Date: 08/11/2008
Style: Dry Stout (Irish)
Batch Size: 23.00 L
Boil Volume: 32.00 L
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.0 %

Ingredients
3.75 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC) 68.2%
0.8 kg Flaked Barley (3.3 EBC) 14.5%
0.75Kg Roasted Barley (591 EBC) 13.6%
0.2Kg Wheat Malt (3.9 EBC) 3.6%

65.00 gm Whitbread Golding Variety (WGV) [5% est.] (60 min) Hops 36.7 IBU

Protofloc Tablet (15 min)
1 Pkgs Irish Ale yeast (White Labs WLP004)

Batch Sparge
Mash Grain Weight: 5.25kg Mash PH: 5.4 PH
Grain Temperature: 13.0 C
Mash In Add 13L of water at 69.3C (63C) 90 min
Step Add 11L of water at 67.7 (65C) 10 min
Step Add 11L of water at 80C (75C) 10 min

Beer Profile
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.050 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.014
Estimated Color: 62.6 EBC
Bitterness: 36.7 IBU
Alpha Acid Units: 1.9 AAU
Estimated Alcohol by Volume: 4.8%

 

 
Below are some photos and descriptions of the day. I mashed-in at around 11am in the end, and pitched around 4pm, managing to fit the process around various chores. The new mashtun was superb and made me want to replace my boiler with something equally cool looking and move my boiler to be the HLT. One day, maybe. In the end I got 23L exactly in the fermenter with no need to add any further liquor, but I missed the 1.050 OG and got 1.048 istead. I’m putting this down to not compensating for the switch to batch sparging, which seems reasonable.

 

All out of malt until a friend who runs a micro sorted me out with some organic pale malt from the local maltsters

I splashed out and ordered the best yeast for the recipe that I could find from H&G

Although I only had 24 hours to do it in, I made a quick litre starter using spraymalt

I had to move some shelves around a little but the new mash tun looked great and worked brilliantly

In went all the pale malt, flaked barley and wheat…

…then the important dark stuff!

I mashed for 90 minutes at a coolish temperature to add dryness then returned plenty of black runnings

The mash tun manifold worked well thankfully!

I decided to batch sparge with two 11L additions but will sort out a sparge attachment for that MT lid very soon

WGV hops grown in my back garden. Looked an awful lot and I don’t know the AA, but estimated around 5% for 36ish IBUs

Watered, nurtured, picked, dried, frozen, boiled!

Lovely mountain of green into the boil with the last batch from the tun still to come

The last batch ran on top of the hops into the already boiling copper

It doesn’t get much closer than that. Only a 60 minute boil for this one

The new tun really did the business. Here it is drained dry

The boil went very smoothly. Chiller in. I really missed the late addition of aroma hops. It’s probably my favourite part of my normal brewday

I let the cooled wort sit for half an hour longer than the cooling required and it really seemed to pay off in reducing the break in the fermenter

Starter roused and ready to pitch. I pitched it while the wort was running into the FV this time for a change

Aerated this so well it instantly turned into a giant pint of stout

Safely in the fermenter and bubbling away very nicely after just a couple of hours

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