Sunday . Brewday

So I'm having breakie and I realised I've nothing I need to do this beautiful Sunday. Obviously there's the yard to mow and the gardens to maintain and the car to wash and I could do with some exercise... but, nothing more important than to brew a beer.

Haven't made a dark beer since my Mars bar stout last year, and having recently seen a Facebook post about an American style stout, I thought "why not".

The first step for me is to open the Brewfather app and build the recipe. I didn't know that American stout was actually a recognized style , but I'm always learning.

20.B in the BJCP style guidelines. ( Beer Judge Certificate Program )

Type, Ale,

Aroma, Moderate to strong roast aroma with coffee or dark chocolate quality.

Colour, Jet black in colour though can appear dark brown.

Flavor, moderate to high roast flavors, dark or bittersweet chocolate, Medium to high bitterness and low to high hop flavors.

Seems anything dark will be within style guidelines so away we go.

4.5 kg Pale malt

1kg Dark Munich malt

500g Medium crystal malt

300 Dark chocolate malt

100g Shepherds delight

75g Black malt.

I'm using all reverse osmosis water now in my brewhouse so all salt additions are calculated to suit style via the Brewfather app. A bit of this and bit of that followed, with Calcium and Magnesium additions, no acid as I expect the dark grains to lower the pH nicely.

Flicked the hot switch on at 9am and crushed grains and sorted the hop additions waiting for the kettle to heat up. Cranked up the brewery music, and looking around noticed that my brew space looked like a pig stye.

Mashed in at about 50 degrees for a 67 degree one hour mash. Apart for the occasional stir and recirc of the mash and a pH check, I spent the next hour cleaning up the pig stye.

Dark chocolate and black malt can often impart an acrid bitterness to a beer and I'm one who doesn't like it, even if its in the style guidelines, so I always add those grains late in the mash and I still get the malt flavor and the colour, but not the acrid yuckiness.

Of course there's always a brew mistake when I'm not paying attention. With the music cranked up and I'm tidying the pig stye, I noticed a wet floor where it shouldn't be wet and sure enough my recirc hose was not recircing as was its job, but syphoning wort onto the floor. A quick reaction from the jive ass brewer and it was fixed with only the loss of maybe 3 litres.

A quick lauter and drain and my kettle is full, well except for about 3 litres, of beautiful malty sweet wort ready for the boil.

I've recently stopped sparging my grains as I'm not sure I get enough value for the time spent, we'll see when I check my numbers.

60 Minute boil with 20g Magnum for bittering, 30 grams of Cascade at 10 minutes for flavor and a 30 gram hit of both Cascade and Centennial at whirlpool.

Apart for that little German hop Magnum, the others are classic American hops true to style.

The urge for me to turn this into a Black Ipa by throwing in a %hitload of extra hops was resisted and the boil and transfer to my fermenter went well.

When I checked the gravity I had overshot my numbers, partly because of the no sparge but also the loss of 3 litres, ( or "the floor addition" ) and I hit 1.070 up from an expected 1.062. All that means is I have more sugar for those yeasties to consume and I'll end up with about a 7.2% stout instead of a 6.2% abv stout. Happy days.

My yeast of choice for this brew is an S04 from Fermentis, suitable for up to 11% abv, fast and clean and able to tolerate a range of temps up to 26 degrees C. With a check of the next weeks forecast, I can leave this one out of my temp controlled fridge, which is good as that fridge is full of kegs anyway. 2 x 11g packs of S04, a blanky over so it can sleep and we're good.

My cleanup regime after a brew is much quicker when I'm not tripping over junk on the floor "a tidy brew space is a good and safe brew space"

Turned the lights off at 12.30, my quickest brewday ever.

Looked out the window and our resident rock wallaby was lunching away on my spent grain, just as I was heading in for a luncheon feast myself.

mmm Lunch

mmm Lunch

Brew Love.. Andrew.