There are a couple of things I don't like about this recipe, so I'm posting this with fair warning. First, the grain bill is huge. I'm not talking about the 25 lbs of grains. There are a 11 different grains in this one. While that may be appropriate for a world-class beer brewed by a world-class brewer, for someone like me, who had been brewing for a little over a year this kind of brew is tough to learn from. Don't get me wrong, I've ended up with a great and incredibly complex beer. The problem is, I really don't know how I got there. I could brew it again, but I'm no closer to making up my own recipe. I'd say this is the polar opposite of a SMASH brew. Second is the partial oz hops. I don't have a problem with whole or 1/2 oz uses, but when I'm using 3 or 4 tenths at a time it means I'm left with 6 or 7 tenths in my hop bag. What do I do with that? I suppose if I were trying to make a true clone or if I were making a brew commercially and required commercial consistency, then this level of precision might be necessary.
Recipe
Batch Size Target (Actual): 6 gal (6 gal)
OG Target (Actual): 1.102 (1.098)
FG Target (Actual) : 1.022 (1.019)
Brew House Efficiency Target (Actual) : 69% (61*%)
IBUs: 75
Color: 50.6 SRM
Style: Russian Imperial Stout
Recipe Type: All Grain*
Boil Time: 80 minutes
Water:
Carbon filtered York water
Grains:
19.5 lbs US 2 Row
14 oz Flaked Barley
14 oz Belgian Special B
14 oz White Wheat
12 oz Carafa III
10 oz Aromatic
8 oz Caramel 40L
8 oz Roasted Barley
4 oz Black Patent
4 oz Caramel 120L
4 oz Chocolate Malt
(yeah that's ridiculous)
Then, because my boil gravity was low, I added 11oz of extra light DME too.
Hops:
1 oz US Magnum (pellets) @ 75 min.
1 oz St Celeia (pellets) @ 75 min.
1 oz Perle (pellets) @ 75 min.
0.3 oz Centennial (pellets) @ 15 min.
0.4 oz Palisade (pellets) @ Flameout, 15 min. steep
0.5 oz St Celeia (pellets) @ Flameout, 15 min. steep
0.5 oz Willamette (pellets) @ Flameout, 15 min. steep
Yeast:
WLP001
Brewing Notes
7/20/15 - Yeast Starter:
A huge beer deserves a huge starter. With this one, I had started using a calculator, which told me to use a 3L starter on my stir plate. This was 3L water, 12oz xlt DME, and 1 tsp yeast nutrient, boiled 10 minutes and chilled
7/25/15 - Brew Day:
- Cold crashed the starter overnight from 7/24 to 7/25, then decanted the morning of 7/25
- Sanitized (star san) my cold side equipment in the big mouth bubbler primary.
- Heated 28.2 quarts of water with pH 5.2 to 168 F in 8 gallon stainless HLT on outdoor propane burner. I knew this one was going to be close for mash tun, so I used this calculator to estimate my mash volume. This was the reason I dropped to 1.12 qt/lbs.
- Mashed in in 10 gal Igloo cooler, paddled until everything was well mixed and there were no dough balls. Mash in temp was 154-156F
- 60 minute mash rest
- 0 minutes: temperature was 154-156F
- 15 minutes: paddled, temperature was 151-153F
- 30 minutes: paddled, temperature was 153F
- 60 minutes, began vorlauf
- Manual Vorlauf: I run a 2 cup measuring cup full of wort out of the valve and gently pour this on top of the mash. Then I repeat until I'm satisfied with the clarity. This takes about 10-15 minutes.
- Ran off and fly sparged with 14.12 quarts of 210F water.
- Ran until the mash tun was dry, about 30 minutes
- Brought to boil - 80 minute boil time
- Added:
1 oz US Magnum (pellets) @ 75 min.
1 oz St Celeia (pellets) @ 75 min.
1 oz Perle (pellets) @ 75 min.
Added 11oz xlt DME @ 45 min due to a low measured boil gravity.
0.3 oz Centennial (pellets) @ 15 min.
0.4 oz Palisade (pellets) @ Flameout
0.5 oz St Celeia (pellets) @ Flameout
0.5 oz Willamette (pellets) @ Flameout - Brought inside and allowed hops to stand 15 min.
- Chilled to 76F - My ground water was getting warmer so the immersion chiller was not working as effectively, so this one got an ice bath too.
- Siphoned to BMB
- Took an OG reading of 1.096, corrected to 1.098.
- Pitched decanted yeast starter
I gave this one most of a month to ferment and settle down. Siphoned to Secondary on 8/16. Gravity was 1.021. I also measured 11.9% brix on my new refractometer.
8/16 - 9/30 - Secondary Fermentation:
I gave this a month and a half for bulk conditioning, and then I wanted to liberate my carboy, so we bottled and planned to allow some more time for conditioning in the bottle.
Bottled 53 12 oz bottles with with 4.1 oz corn sugar, boiled in 2c water. Final Gravity was 1.019 (10.5%).
Tastes:
I tasted 6 or 8 of these periodically from October 19 until January 12, 2016. Some were carbonated, some were flat. By late January, these were consistently carbonated, although a little on the flat side for my taste.
Updated tasting 4/18/16: I'm not going to try to use the BJCP five-part tasting notes because that would be a farce. Here goes: This beer pours black as midnight and opaque, with a thin dark tan head. Flavor is very complex, with dark chocolate and coffee dominant, with raisin/dark caramel in the background. Little alcohol heat. Hop bitterness is definitely present. This beer is full-bodied but slightly under carbonated. Overall, I very much enjoy this beer and it will quite the feat of will for me to reserve any for aging.
Next Time:
I'll most likely brew a different RIS this summer for consumption over the wintertime. The reasoning behind this is just to get a little variety. I expect to reserve almost a case of the KTG for winter 2016/2017, and I'd like to have something a little different. As I wrote in the preamble to this post, I really think this recipe is too complex of a malt bill for an amateur homebrewer to learn much from, so when/if I brew this recipe again, I would most likely brew it identically I would either force carbonate or re-pitch yeast next time so that I can be sure it fully carbonates.
Learning Experiences:
This brew in particular spurred a couple of changes in my brew set-up. First, it set the wheels in motion to start kegging and force carbonating. It is frustrating to brew a very big (expensive) beer, wait patiently for fermentation and bulk conditioning, then bottle with sugar, wait, only to find out the beer is flat. Most likely on this one, the yeast was just so exhausted that it took a very long time to wake back up. Then because the FG was pretty high, I didn't get the kind of carbonation I was looking for. The second change was the purchase of a false bottom for my mash tun. Up until this point, I had been using a bazooka screen, and I think that that is partially to blame for my low efficiency. I have a theory that there is a dead space on either side of the screen where the flow from the fly sparge is bad, resulting in a portion of the grain being not fully sparged. A false bottom covering the entire bottom of my mash tun should fix that. I'll find out next time I brew a beer with half a sack of grains.
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