Begin Brewing!

I've heard quite a lot about this beer over the last couple of years, so I decided to try brewing a batch with the best recipe I could locate, adjusted for my Grainfather and a three gallon batch.  This will be the first Imperial Stout I think I have ever brewed.  I don't know where I found this recipe, and I tried to locate it again on the web with no success.  My apologies to whoever originally published it, but since I've significantly altered it below (adding DME, swapping out the flavor/aroma hops, and the yeast) that may be just as well if the beer doesn't turn out. Ingredients 5 pounds 5 ounces Maris Otter malt 3.3 pounds (1 large can) Maris Otter LME 8 ounces English Medium Crystal malt 6 ounces English Pale Chocolate malt 2 ounces English Black Patent malt 2 ounces English Roasted Barley 1/8 tsp. Brewtan B (mash) 1.5 tsp. pH 5.2 stabilizer (mash, after grain) 10 ounces cane sugar (start of boil) 4 ounces Lyles Treacle (10 min.) 1 tsp. yeast nutrient (15 min.) 1...

Thanks to the mold infection, I had to toss Irish Red 6.0 before I even got to taste it.  Since it was mostly a mash optimization experiment, it was less painful to toss it out than it might have been.  Today, I decided to brew a sixth version of the beer, as a further test of mash optimization. Ingredients 6 pounds, 6 ounces Maris Otter malt 6 ounces Caramel/Crystal 120L 6 ounces British Medium Crystal 5 ounces Chocolate Rye Malt 0.57 ounces Whitbread Golding Variety hops @ 7.1% AA 1/4 tsp. Brewtan B during boil (20 min.) 1/2 tsp. Yeast Nutrient (15 min.) 1/2 tsp. Irish Moss (15 min.) 3 gallons RO mash water 1.75 gallons RO sparge water 1 gram Calcium Chloride 0.5 grams Canning Salt 1.1 grams Epsom Salt 2.5 grams Gypsum 0.5 grams Magnesium Chloride 1 package Wyeast English Ale III yeast Brewfather estimates the batch will have the following characteristics: BJCP Category: Irish Red Ale Batch Size: 3.0 gallons, 2.7 gallons actual Original Gravity: 1.058 SG estimated, 1.060 ...