I’m about to brew a 1.130 RIS this weekend. I’m looking for full body finish (Beersmith projects a 1.025), and is suggesting 30 mins protein at 122F then 30 mins sacch at 156F, and 1.3 qt/lb. That sounds rather quick to me, especially given the 28lbs of grain, so I’m tempted to push it to 60 mins sacch, and change the ratio to 1.1 qt/lb.
I’ve brewed some strong tripels and stouts in the past but those were extract, so any thoughts or suggestions from the more experienced crowd would be appreciated. I’ve already knocked back my projected efficiency by a couple of points, and extended the boil time from 90 to 150 mins to account for the high gravity push. And it goes without saying its big starter time, going to use a WLP007 yeast cake.
Skip the p rest and do a 60 min. single infusion.
Thanks Denny, I do have some oats and wheat in the grain bill. Still skip the rest? I’ll do the 60min infusion anyways.
You might also want to come down a bit on the mash temp. For a regular stout, you go that high so that the beer has plenty of body like a stout should. With a mega-gravity brew, you can drop the mash temp and get a more fermentable wort and still have plenty of unfermentables left to provide the body.
Big time.
I make a well received RIS every couple of years - mash temp is always 149-150 - and it has as much, or more body than a Bell’s Expedition
at 156 you might need a knife and fork.
With a 1.130 OG I’d mash for 2 hours at 148-149F
To hit a 1.024 FG that is 82% attenuation, you need to make this as fermentable as possible.
Using a yeast cake is THE way to go. When you aerate/oxygenate, exceed what you think you need to do by a good margin.
And this is why I come here. Duly noted, I’ll adjust for 149F for 2 hours unless anyone recommends otherwise. Man, a 2.5 hour mash and 2.5 hour boil, this is gonna be a looooooong brew day. Mind you this thing wont be ready to drink for 12 months anyways…
Thank you all
Ferment cool, mid 60s wort temp, pitch BELOW or at your ferment temp, and it will be good to drink the day you force carb it. Do NOT try to bottle carb this beer.
Do you have sugar in your recipe? Otherwise I wouldn’t expect anything lower than 1.030.
And big beers take lots of yeast, lots of oxygen and lots of temperature control.
Also, a beer this big would benefit from more than one shot of oxygenation. Do it before pitching and again 24 hours later.
Tom,
There’ 2lbs of turbinado to help the FG a little. Otherwise; yeast cake, check; O2, check: temp control, check.
Bonjour,
I’ll force carb then bottle.
Rather excited to give this one a go…
The long mash should help with fermentability too. In a recent zymurgy article they talked about long-chain dextrins being cut into short fermentable sugars as mash time progressed.
The long mash is purely targeted at fermentability, I picked up the hink from Noonan’s book.
Interested to know what process you ended up using and the OG. I would have skipped the protein rest as well. But I might have gone as high as 152 for the single infusion.
Dave
In the end I realized I was missing part of the O2 system, so I passed on the RIS and brewed a nice rye IPA this weekend . Once I have everything in place I’ll do a 2 hour mash at 149-150, oxygenate heavily, and let you all know what happens. I like these threads to have a result, not just pre-brew recommendations.
Thanks, all
Don’t add more oxygen than usual all at once, just repeat it somewhere between 4-24 hours after pitching.
So finally got round to brewing this today. Mashed at 150 for 2 hours. Boiled for 3 hours to get volume down. Aerated with oxygen before pitching, then 2 hrs after. Pitched a huge WLP007 slurry at 60F. OG hit 1.135. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Mash at 149-150 for sure. Also Irish Ale yeast at fermented at 70 works great with RIS…gives just enough diacetyl that I think is desirable in a RIS.
Dry hopping also can add complexity to the mouthfeel.
Looking at some of the NHC Gold medal winning recipes I’m seeing higher mash temps like 152F and as high as 158F on the most recent RIS brewed by Streve Fletty. Perhaps there is something to be said about that… Maybe the more dextrinous profile lends some balance to the beer. Apparently the BJCP Judges liked it.
So no problems getting fermentation going then. This is after the 1st 24hrs…