Skip to main content

Dry Irish Stout 1.0

Having managed to get three successive batches out of the Brewie+ which hit my volume and gravity goals, today I decided to brew a Dry Irish Stout for possible competition. I like the style and I have never brewed it before, so it seemed like a good time to try.

I began by reviewing some articles online about brewing the style, then by considering the BJCP criteria for it. I took one of the published recipes and tweaked it to suit my taste (hopefully).  I added Melanoidin malt and Carapils to try to get the beer to have a nice head on it. I used Willamette hops and Bramling Cross for a little twist to the style, while not taking it too far off base. The Bramling Cross hops are used in British stouts and reportedly carries fruity, citrusy notes with some blackcurrant, loganberry, gooseberry, and lemon - sometimes even with vanilla. That should all do nicely in the stout. I'm adding gypsum to help punch up the hops, since I'm hopping it toward the lower end of the style (the style's range is 25-45 IBUs, and I'm aiming for 30).

Ingredients

5 pounds, 5 ounces Maris Otter malt
1 pound 5 ounces Flaked Barley
10.6 ounces Roasted Barley
2.7 ounces Melanoidin Malt
2.7 ounces Pale Chocolate Malt
2.7 ounces Carapils/Dextrine Malt
2.7 ounces Acid Malt
1 ounce Willamette hops pellets @ 4.2% AA (40 min.)
0.35 ounces Bramling Cross hops pellets @ 6.5% AA (20 min.)
1/8 tsp. Brewtan B (mash water)
1/2 tsp. Gypsum (added to sparge water)
1/4 tsp. Brewtan B (15 min.)
1/4 tsp. Yeast Nutrient (10 min.)
1.5 tsp. pH 5.2 Stabilizer (added with grain)
10.2 liters of mash water
5.7 liters of sparge water

BeerSmith 3 estimates the following qualities for this beer:
  • Batch Size: 3.5 gallons (3.75 actual)
  • BJCP Style: 15.B Irish Stout
  • Original Gravity: 1.048 SG estimated (1.047 SG actual)
  • Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.040 SG estimated (1.040 SG actual)
  • Final Gravity: 1.012 SG estimated
  • IBUs: 30
  • SRM: 39
  • ABV: 4.8% estimated
  • BU/GU ratio: 0.618 estimated
The mash schedule:
  • Mash in at 145F for 15 minutes
  • Mash step 1 at 152F for 30 minutes
  • Mash step 2 at 158F for 30 minutes
  • Mash out and sparge at 168F for 10 minutes
Boil schedule:
  • 60 minutes: No additions
  • 40 minutes: Willamette hops
  • 20 minutes: Bramling Cross hops
  • 15 minutes: Brewtan B
  • 10 minutes: Yeast nutrient
The Brewie+ was instructed to chill the wort to 62F after the boil was over.

Fermentation plan:
  • Pitch WLP004 Irish Ale Yeast and White Labs Clarity ferm (for gluten removal)
  • Ferment at 65-68F for 7-14 days until final gravity is reached
Following the end of primary fermentation, bottle direct from the primary fermenter and use either 1 large carbonation drop or 5 small tablets per 12-ounce bottle.

Post-Brew Notes and Observations

03/24/2019:  I apparently ordered two extra pounds of Maris Otter malt when I ordered grain for this recipe. My original plan was 2.64 gallons of wort at a gravity of 1.042 SG. When I opened the bag from the homebrew shop, I noticed the extra Maris Otter in it (and it was mixed with all the other grains, so extracting it wasn't really an option). To correct that, I scaled the recipe up to 3.5 gallons. Fortunately, I had enough extra specialty malt on hand to reach that volume. The 4.8% ABV is a little above the BJCP criteria for the style but I'm hoping it will be close enough that no one knocks my score down for it in competition.

The Brewie appeared to load the correct amount of water for the mash process, and required no adjustment by me. For the sparge, it loaded about 3 liters more than I wanted, so I removed that excess water before adding the gypsum to it. I held onto the extra water, however, as I wanted to use it if the pre-boil volume was too low later on or the gravity too high.

The mash appeared to go well, with the wort achieving a nice deep brown color pretty early on.

During the mash, before the sparge started, a refractometer reading was 19.0 Brix. That represents standard gravity of approximately 1.081. Assuming the sparge water dilutes that quite a bit, we would still appear to be on track for a 1.048 SG original gravity.

After the sparge, the wort level was much lower than expected. I ended up adding back the water I removed during the mash/sparge process and a little extra to hit the expected depth of 18.0 cm in the kettle pre-boil.

The refractometer registered 11.1 Brix pre-boil at an estimated 15.8 liters (4.17 gallons) in the kettle. That works out to a gravity of approximately 1.046 SG. One of the tilt hydrometers registered the gravity 1.033 SG pre-boil. I figure reality is somewhere between those two figures, perhaps around 1.0395 or 1.040 - which is where my calculations had estimated it would be.

In the fermenter, the gravity read around 1.052 SG. After adding the yeast slurry and some distilled water, I got that to 1.048 with a volume just a hair under the 4-gallon mark in the fermenter. The temperature of the wort at that point registered 59F.

03/25/2019: Roughly 14 hours after the yeast was pitched, we're seeing fermentation activity. Gravity is registering 1.043 SG this morning, down from 1.052 SG last night.  The temperature is reading 61F, up from 59F when the yeast was pitched but well below the yeast's optimum range.

03/26/2019: Gravity is down to 1.022 SG and the temperature is up to 66F. This represents 51% attenuation and 3.15% ABV. We're about 10 points away from the estimated final gravity of 1.012.

03/28/2019:  Gravity is now 1.015 SG and the temperature is down to 61F. This represents 68% attenuation and 4.2% ABV.

04/02/2019:  Gravity has held at 1.015 SG for a few days now, so it should be ready to bottle.

04/07/2019:  The beer was bottled today, with four small carbonation tablets per bottle (medium carbonation).  A flat, warm sample from the end of the bottling process had a nice chocolatey and roasty flavor to it. I'm looking forward to the finished beer.

06/02/2019:  This beer was entered into the Ohio State Fair Homebrewing Competition. It took third place in the British Stouts category, making it my only win for the year so far.

This beer is the one listed in the center column (British Stouts) as the third place winner


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Note that comments to this blog are moderated in order to minimize spam comments and things that might be offensive to readers.

Popular posts from this blog

Yellow Label Angel Yeast vs. Typical Brewing Yeast

I currently have my second batch of rice wine fermenting with the "magical" yellow-label Angel Yeast from China, and wanted to share some of the more unusual aspects of using it.  If you've never seen or used this yeast, I suspect you're not alone.  It ships in a 500 gram package that looks like this: What makes it "yellow label" is that yellow box you see in the upper left corner of the package.  This implies that it's yeast for distilling (though you do not need to have a still or distill the output to use it).  As I understand it, inside the package is a mix of yeast and other materials which will convert starch into sugar and directly ferment it, without the need for a traditional mash step.  This can radically shorten your brewing time.  For my most-recent batch of rice wine, I heated 3 gallons of water to 155F, poured it over 13+ pounds of uncooked rice straight out of the bag, let that soak for an hour, rehydrated some of this yeast in warm water,
Post a Comment
Read more

2021 Batch 1 - Rice Wine made with Yellow Label Angel Yeast

I've become a big fan of the Still It channel on YouTube.  About a month ago, Jesse posted a video about how he made rice wine using nothing more than water, rice, and a purported "magic" yeast from China called Yellow Label Angel Yeast. Perhaps even more amazing was the fact that he was able to make the rice wine without gelatinizing or mashing the rice.  He shows three batches in the video.  One was made by cooking the rice before adding the yeast mixture. Another was made by adding uncooked rice to boiling water.  The last was made by adding uncooked rice to room temperature water.  All three fermented out to roughly the same amount of alcohol in about two weeks. He was amazed by this, as was I. I resolved to buy some of this magical yeast from Aliexpress.com and try it out. In the Still It video, the rice is ground up in the grain mill into smaller chunks to make it easier for the enzymes in the yellow label yeast to convert and ferment.  I'm changing this up s
Post a Comment
Read more

Making Alton Brown's Immersion Cooker Fennel Cardamon Cordial

Alton Brown's "Good Eats" series is my favorite cooking show.  I love the way he explains the "why" and "how" of a recipe in detail, which helps you understand (if things don't go right) where you may have gone wrong.  In his episode on immersion cooking (also known as sous vide), he shows you how to make a cordial in an hour using an immersion cooker. It took me a while to locate all the ingredients here in Columbus.  I ended up getting the fennel and vodka at Giant Eagle. The cardamom seeds, pods, and anise stars came from Amazon.  The Fennel fronds and bulb came from Trader Joe's at Easton. Ingredients 32 ounces of 80-proof vodka 2 cups of fennel fronds 10 green cardamom pods 3 ounces granulated sugar 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 teaspoon black cardamom seeds 1 whole star anise Begin by loading your sous vide vessel with hot water and set your immersion cooker to 140F. While the cooker is getting up to that temperature, meas
2 comments
Read more