Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name Time Gravity
18.00 kg 79.12 % Fawcett Maris Otter Pale Malt 60 mins 1.038
500.00 g 2.20 % Briess Caramel 120L 60 mins 1.032
1.50 kg 6.59 % Dingemans Special B 60 mins 1.030
500.00 g 2.20 % Black Barley (Stout) 60 mins 1.025
250.00 g 1.10 % Black (Patent) Malt 60 mins 1.025
1.50 kg 6.59 % Aromatic Malt 60 mins 1.036
0.50 kg 2.20 % Barley, Flaked 60 mins 1.032
Hops
Amount IBU’s Name Time AA %
0.10 kg 44.19 Nugget 60 mins 13.00
75.00 g 38.23 Warrior 60 mins 15.00
90.00 g 15.18 Centennial 15 mins 10.00
90.00 g 8.35 Williamette 15 mins 5.50
50.00 g 0.00 Centennial 0 mins 10.00
50.00 g 9.35 Williamette 60 mins 5.50
Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.00 pkg Safale US-05 Fermentis US-05
Additions
Amount Name Time Stage
1.00 oz Oak Chips 15 mins Secondary
Full Body Infusion In 25 min @ 55.0°C
Add 60.28 L ( 2.96 L/kg ) water @ 62.8°C
Full Body Infusion 5 min @ 62.0°C
Add 12.85 L water @ 100.0°C
Protein Rest Decoction 60 min @ 70.0°C
Decot 17.39 L ( 0.00 L/kg ) mash & heat to 100.0°C
Protein Rest Decoction 30 min @ 75.0°C
Decot 13.77 L ( 0.00 L/kg ) mash & heat to 100.0°C
IMO, yes. I can’t imagine that Fawcett MO has a Kolbach index or S/T % that would warrant a protein rest at 55C. What would you be aiming to accomplish with the separate beta/alpha rests? I’ve done a fair amount of research (non-scientific) on the benefits of separate beta/alpha rests and it sounds like brewers use them to create a subtly complex and enhanced mouthfeel. With an impy stout grainbill, I really doubt you would be able to perceive those benefits.
As for the 150 boil, I’m not sure you’d be able to perceive much of a difference in this beer if you boiled for, say, 60-90 minutes vs. 150.
Keep it simple and enjoy your brew session. Maybe smoke some bacon and watch a Cubs game while you’re at it.
Re the decoc temps and times, I’m going mainly off of wikipedia and iBrewMaster, so the mash schedule is probably a mess. I didn’t find any examples of double decoction mash schedules for imperial stouts, so I had to wing it a bit. Any suggestions on a better schedule?
hopfenundmalz, What’s out-of-bounds about the OG? Is that the sort of thing that can be fixed by more grain? Or do I have to go the sugar addition route?
If you want to go big, go real big. The bjcp says 1.115, but it is your beer.
I really don’t think that yours is out of bounds, but you will only get in the 1.080 to 1.090 range using first runnings. You add DME or other sugars to bump it up, or boil a long time.
Fred has some good advice on his site. Look under thoughts on making a big beer. beerdujour.com
Yeah I don’t think hopfen is saying you can’t do it, it’s just going to take a lot of water so you will have to boil a long time to get your post boil volume.
I know I can get around 1.110 with about 30 lbs grain to a 5 gallon batch, first runnings only but it does take a 120 minute boil. It’s also only around 50% efficiency if you don’t do a second runnings beer.
I would consider doing incremental feedings. Osmotic pressure starts to be an issue around 1.120.
If I were going to brew a beer that big, I’d start it at whatever OG I could easily get, let it ferment a good bit, then add malt extract to make up the difference in gravity. It will be kinder for your yeast and easier to achieve.
I would also use a good amount of simple sugar, maybe 10-15% of fermentables. Attenuation is going to be your biggest issue with a beer like that.
Here’s the link Hopfen was talking about. That page was a godsend when I started making bigger beers. Before I found that my big beers sucked. http://beerdujour.com/Howtobrewabigbeer.htm
Re yeast, I’ve got a 1L starter clearing in the fridge and will boost that to a 5L starter - I was considering doing two, actually, one from the US05 pack (that’s where the 1L came from) and one that’s a transfer from a bottle of Old somethingorother I have from Stone - can’t remember the name but it’s their barleywine. Would that work? Is a 5L starter enough for 10 gal, or should I do double?
yes more yeast!! Phil, if you have the time at all I would highly recommend knocking off a quick 5 gallon small beer with whatever yeast you want to use and use the cake. but I think that if you step up from 1L to 5L it will probably be okay, what does mr. malty say?
I have always wondered about the whole incremental feeding thing, not understanding how it helps to feed incrementally when the net effect is the same level of alcohol. But if it’s an issue of osmotic presure that makes sense to me. as the gravity goes down you can add more sugar without exceeding the presure threshold! thanks nateo!
Whether or not osmotic pressure matters really depends on the health of the cell walls, but even healthy cells have trouble over 1.120. I’ve read (don’t remember where) that osmotic pressure inhibits fermentation even down at like 1.060 if the yeast have poor cell membranes. The pressure will literally squeeze nutrients out of the yeast, like squeezing a wet sponge, only instead of water, nitrogen comes out, inhibiting their fermentation performance.
I would be incredibly careful adding nutrients, if you do. Wort has a really high level of yeast available nitrogen (relative to any other growth medium). Too much nutrient will cause off-flavors, and if you add too much at the wrong time and the yeast can’t use it all, it could potentially feed bacteria.
Adding O2 multiple times keeps the yeast in growth mode. They make like 33x more alcohol per cell during the growth phase than during the stationary phase. This is related to incremental feeding of nitrogen, but again, be careful not to overdo it.
The more I think about it, the less adding nitrogen to beer fermentation makes sense to me. I haven’t found many hard numbers for yeast available nitrogen content in wort, but one study found a typical range to be 1-2g/L, or 1000mg/L - 2000mg/L.
Brewers’ yeasts’ nitrogen requirements aren’t published, but wine yeasts’ are. The “standard” winemaking yeast available nitrogen recommendation at 28 Brix (1.120) would be 375-425mg/L. Wine yeast nitrogen requirements vary pretty widely, with some needing nearly twice as much as others. I assume beer yeasts are similar in that regard. Even if the yeast needed twice the nitrogen, that’d only be 850mg/L, well below the minimum reported amount of yeast available nitrogen in wort.
In order to need nitrogen for a wort fermentation, you’d need to have a very nitrogen-deficient wort, and a yeast with exceptionally high nitrogen needs.
EDIT: Thanks MX, fixed it. Nitrogen =/= nutrients.
this is an interesting idea. However you are only looking at 1 nutrient. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to find a yeast nutrient with low or no N but I have noticed (in a very unscientific way) better results when using nutrients then when not, at least with big beers.
Servomyces and GoFerm (I think) have relatively low nitrogen levels, but I think they still have some. I can’t find specifically what they contain, but the descriptions of how they’re made sound very similar. I’m completely on-board for having proper yeast nutrition, don’t get me wrong. My gut is telling me that yeast nutrients that also contain additional nitrogen and ammonium salts like Fermaid-K wouldn’t really be appropriate for wort fermentations, and something like Servo or GoFerm would be better.
In the kind of beer fermentation you’d need additional nutrients (big beers), you probably wouldn’t be able to detect vitamin/mineral faults anyway, as long as you didn’t add way too much. Without a lot of lab testing, you’re just guessing if your wort needs extra nutrients or not. I “just guess” on a lot of brewing-related issues, like yeast counts and AA% for my hops, so I don’t know why this makes me uneasy.
As an aside, I’ve read that winemakers that don’t like to deal with formol titration to determine nitrogen levels just use their nose, and add nutrients if the yeast starts throwing sulfur.
Winemakers don’t want to wait till they smell sulfur, they add at the onset of fermentation and at 1/3 sugar depletion. Yeast throw sulfur early in fermentation, and again late. The amount is dependent on the health of the yeast, so you want to keep them happy to minimize sulfur since its harder to remove than avoid.
As for MO not needing a protein rest, I think several people have been noting problems with haze using MO and this can be a protein problem.
When I do decoction, I get a slight boost in OG and it seems to mostly show up in the FG as well. If I’m going for the body and residual sweetness, its fine.
I’ve heard people smarter than me say that there is little to no change in the molecular weight of proteins in the mash. Don’t know if I believe it.
Do winemakers use a formol assay or use a spectrophotometer typically?
Another point is that excess FAN can result in the formation of diacytel.
Fermaid K has something like 17ppm YAN as does Wyeast’s BCN – not sure about servo.
Pitching rate, to some extent, determine if you have excess of FAN (i.e. if you pitch 15e6/mL you have too much FAN – the yeast won’t use it, you’ll have a diacytel problem).
I believe formol is common in small wineries. I’ve read spectro is prohibitively expensive on a small scale.
I know GoFerm doesn’t have any inorganic nitrogen, because Lallemand says in the website that no DAP should be used during rehydration. I think Servo is similar to GoFerm because of this, from the White Labs website: “Servo is yeast and is propagated in a micronutrient rich environment then, and is killed off prior to packaging.”
Also, this: “Our nutrient (WLN1000) has amino acids, so if your wort is deficient in nitrogen, our nutrient helps a lot. When trying to grow more yeast as done in propagation, our nutrient can really help. But most of our customers use Servo. It has a lot of usable zinc and zinc is a great source of fermentation power. If that doesn’t work, it may be a nitrogen problem, and they try our nutrient.”
Not sure I understand that, you are aparently changing the protein enough that it no longer functions as a foam-promoting protein. But I haven’t researched this.
