This will be brewed over the holidays, so I still have a few months to root out the line between “complex” and “overblown”.
The goal is to brew something that bounces around the palate. A touch of roast, but also other appropriate flavors such as chocolate, coffee, vanilla, etc. A malty, winter sipper. Not looking to pigeonhole this as American or Russian or Baltic etc.
I’ve made a gajillion stouts and porters before, but never an Imperial. My thoughts are that this style should be complex and I’d also like to think that I have a reason for everything, but I’ll acknowledge that I may be pushing into “muddled” territory.
The approximate Goal:
OG ≈ 1.100
FG ≈ 1.025-1.030
ABV ≈ 11% ish
IBU’s ≈ 50
SRM ≈ 40
The Foundation:
42% Deer Creek Pale
21% Briess Golden Light DME - using this for gravity points and to compensate for the limitations of my kettle
7% Deer Creek Dark Munich (20L) - I’ve gotten nuts, chocolate, toast from this malt before
7% Deer Creek Twilight Wheat (8.5L) - for foam retention primarily, but this malt has a definite almond presence
The “Stout” character:
9% Flaked Barley
7% C120 - hoping to balance the dark malts with a bit of stone fruit, caramel
4.5% Crisp Pale Chocolate (220L) - the only “chocolate” malt that I’ve ever detected chocolate from. YMMV.
2.5% Deer Creek Roasted Barley (300L)
Bitter with Magnum
Finish with something…Cascade, Willamette, Northern Brewer. Or a mix.
2 packs - BRY-97
Homemade vanilla extract at packaging, or vanilla beans in primary for the last few days. Bottle, then forget it for 6 months to a year.
I have used Briess Golden DME to increase the gravity in some big beers because of the limits of my kettle, just as you propose. This year I am going to use Dark DME and see what that does. It makes sense to me to use a darker DME in a darker beer.
Thanks for the reply. I considered that. But at 21% of the bill? Considering I haven’t used extract in 25 years, I thought it was safer to use a pale extract and build my Stout flavors with what I am familiar with. I’m under the impression that the Golden Light DME will be close to a blank canvas whereas a Dark DME will give me…what exactly? Will I still need Roasted Barley and Chocolate Malt? According to Briess, their Dark DME has a flavor profile of “sweet, intense malty”. Seems that might be best used in small doses??
Thanks. I would probably end up raising the % of flaked barley. The Twilight Wheat also gives me some DP to help in the mash. Though I think I’ll be fine without it. Under consideration.
I agree about the light extract instead of dark. That way your just adding gravity points without much flavor contribution so you can heve more control with your specialty malts.
So I brewed that beer above pretty much exactly as written, except I pitched 2 fully-expanded pouches of WY1728 Scottish Ale yeast instead of BRY-97. Temp range of 1728, according to Wyeast, is 55-75°.
OG was 1.114.
Pitch temp was 65°, +/- a degree.
Set fermenter at 62° ambient.
Temp of wort fell to 62° as fermentation got going in about 6-7 hours, then gradually rose hitting a peak of 70° at high krausen ≈ 2-3 days later. Fermentation was vigorous (to say the least) for about 4 days and seems to be going as expected. Temp of wort has now dropped back down to 62° as krausen has fallen and bubbles have slowed considerably.
Would you:
A - leave the wort at 62°?
B - raise the temp to upper 60’s?
C - something else
Did you make a starter, or just pitch two packs of yeast? At that OG, I’d be afraid of stalling out at a high FG, especially with so much DME in the malt bill. I would definitely rouse the yeast and bump the temp a few degrees. I’d expect full fermentation to take 2-3 weeks, and you probably want to swirl your fermenter every day or so just to help keep your yeast in suspension.
No starter, though this is a 3 gallon batch if that matters.
For sure on the time. I did bump the temp and it’s now sitting at 68, where it will remain for at least another week, maybe 2.
As far as swirling, I hear this a lot but why do I find this unnecessary? Does swirling a fermenter actually make yeast that has given up now come back to life? Maybe it does, I really have no idea. Also, I have a spigot on the fermenter that I will be bottling directly from and I’m a bit concerned that swirling the yeast and trub will only lead to a clogged spigot.
Bottled over the weekend. 1728 took this Imperial Stout from 1.114 —> 1.027. That’s 76% attenuation and 11.4 ABV, which is a bit more than I expected, but not much more. Temp never got above 68°. Sample taste was promising enough, though admittedly a bit green. Hopefully I can get a fair bit of hardy yeast to give me enough carbonation. I’ll check back next Christmas.
Well, I didn’t wait until Christmas. Instead, my son and I decided to pop a couple yesterday to toast his birthday.
But “pop” they did not.
4 months after packaging, this beer is essentially as flat as the day it went into the bottle. Hmm.
Beer was brewed on 12/31/22 and fermented from 1.114 —>1.027.
Beer was packaged on 1/21/23 after 3 weeks in primary.
22oz bottles were primed with 1.5 Cooper’s carbonation drops each.
1tsp Vanilla extract was added to each bottle.
Capped as usual with O2 scavenging caps.
Set in basement closet at 67°
On 2/5, I waxed the caps of all 11 bottles, mostly for aesthetics but also for a little more O2 protection.
So…
What went wrong? For the record, the flat beer tastes very good. We both thought that there is a great beer here, but for the carbonation. As for the amount and usage of the carb drops, all I can say is that I’ve had great success using these in my yearly Barleywine (12oz bottles, 1 drop each, those). No issues. Were 1.5 drops not enough for 22oz bombers? Maybe. And I can understand if the bottles were UNDER-carbonated. But these are not carbed at all. Not even the slightest “pfft” from the caps upon opening. I can’t rule out poor packaging, though this is the first time I have had an issue with bottles not carbonating. Did the dip in hot wax mess with the cap’s seal? I can’t buy that either, mainly because the beer has no stale off-flavors and the caps appeared to be sealed correctly. My guess is that the yeast, after 3 weeks in primary, was simply tapped out. I can point a finger at the storage temp of 67° and say that wasn’t warm enough either…but again…nothing?
2. More importantly, what do I do with the remaining 9 bottles, all apparently flat yet promising Imperial Stout?
Drop back 10 yards and punt? ;D Flush 'em?. (Seems too early for that)
Do I give these bottles the “shake and bake” treatment, turning them upside down a few times and getting them into the mid-lower 70’s?
Do I open every waxed cap, add a bit of dry yeast and re-cap?
Do I just pour all the bottles into a keg and force carb?
Something else?
Thinking them through, all options seem to have clear drawbacks. But I’ve got nothing to lose.
I had a batch of beer that was not carbonated (or seriously under-carbonated). I wondered if perhaps I did not have the caps on tight enough, since there was a bottle or two in that batch that was carbonated perfectly.
For the non-carbonated ones, I added a teensy bit more sugar to each, and a teensy bit of dry yeast - I think Nottingham. Seriously, only about 1/8 of a teaspoon, probably less. (I think the original yeast was a lager, but I can’t remember.)
Brought them upstairs to 72 degrees for a week, then refrigerated one of them for a couple of days and tried it, it was carbed nicely and tasted great.
Granted, you’ll get oxygen ingress with that (I’m sure I did) but probably not enough to ruin them.
I don’t have kegs or any way to force carbonate, so that was my only option. Maybe you can go another route, I can’t say if that would work better.
I would add a sugar and Cask Conditioning yeast to each bottle and recap them. I had a very big barley wine that aged nicely, but didn’t have any carb (flat as a pancake - presumably because the fermentation yeast just petered out). I went the sugar and dry yeast route on a bottle by bottle basis and they carbed up nicely in a couple weeks. I have one or two of those bottles left from that batch and will enjoy them on a special occasion.
I think that pouring back into a keg for forced carbonation is asking for more trouble (from an oxidation and contamination risk), as I see it, but it will get carbonated taking that route.
Best of luck and I hope you get a good result regardless of what you do.
Would adding more sugar give anyone pause? The two beers that I opened were completely flat, so my thinking is that the sugar from the carbonation drops is still floating around in these bottles. If I add more sugar, do I run the risk of over-carbing?
Yeast: Lallemand CBC-1? I do have a sacrificial pack of BRY-97 at home. I’m assuming the concern now is whether or not the fresh yeast will ferment in an 11+% ABV environment.
;D ;D