#11 Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout Clone - Tasting

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

I always get impatient for my bottles to carbonate and inevitably pop one open before it's ready.  It's interesting to see how the flavor changes as the carbonation changes--and with this beer it was especially apparent--but I frequently regret it.  After only two weeks in the bottle it was still almost completely flat and tasted like root beer.  I have no idea where that flavor came from (yeast maybe?), but it was very prominent.

As the beer continued to carbonate, the root beer flavor faded.  However, as I mentioned in the bottling notes, I miscalculated the priming sugar so this took awhile.  I intended to make it pretty carbonated, so the smaller dose of priming sugar it ended up being okay.  English beer--like oatmeal stout--tends to have lower carbonation levels anyway.

Besides changing the mouthfeel, carbonation also liberates aromas from the beer, carrying them to your nose and mouth.  Once this stout fully carbonated, one such aroma was a faint smokiness that was hidden before.  It's a pleasant woody smokiness--not rubbery like the IPA last summer--which works well in a dark beer like this, but not what I intended.  Since I had no smoked malt in the recipe, it is probably coming from the toasted oats that I didn't let sit as recommended.

Overall, I'm happy with how this beer turned out.  There are no major off flavors that detract from the beer, just some things that didn't go as planned.  It's a little thinner and drier than what you would expect from an oatmeal stout, but still an enjoyable beer in its own way.

#14 Stone Imperial Russian Stout Clone - Brewday

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

Brewed 11/17/13:
After struggling last time with the ESB, this brewday went extremely smoothly.  Not only was I able to finish the beer without a hitch, but I bottled the ESB simultaneously, all at record pace, by myself.  If only it always went this smoothly.

I took a pH measurement for the first time on this beer.  I picked up a tube of test strips on amazon for $5, because I figured this would help me get a feel for what might have gone wrong with a few beers earlier in the year.  If the pH leaves the narrow mashing window, the malt enzymes that hydrolize the starch in the grain become less effective, possibly resulting in incomplete conversion, plus tannins can soak into the wort from the grain husks.  I haven't tracked or adjusted mash pH up to this point, but this time I can at least see where I'm at.  The strips proved hard to read as the shade changes between the high and low ends of the mash pH are not as obvious as they could be.  About all I could gather was that the pH during the mash was somewhere in the right neighborhood.  Given the high percentage of dark malts in the mash--about 16% with another 24% brown malt--this beer should be way more acidic than previous beers.  This supports my hypothesis that the water I have here is very alkaline and the batches that went wrong probably missed the optimal mash pH window.

After the brew was complete and the ESB bottled, I racked the wort straight onto the yeast cakes from the ESB.  Imperial stouts and other high gravity ales require high cell counts of healthy yeast to ferment all that sugar and finish their business in the resulting high alcohol environment.  Instead of preparing a massive yeast starter with fresh yeast, I planned my ESB to perform the same function.  Now it's not best practice to rack fresh wort into the same fermenter--the yeast should always be rinsed with sterilized water to separate the trub, and the fermenter should be cleaned and sanitized to remove the potential contaminants and debris--but it was easier.  I didn't have an extra pair of hands, so since I was already bottling on brewday, I let sleeping yeast lie.  The result was approximately three times the recommended cell count according to the Mr. Malty yeast calculator, but oh well.


Fermentation:
I racked the wort at 60F into the two fermenters with the Whitbread dry and Worthington White Shield yeasts, 4 gal in each, and set the temperature to 62F.  Each got 1 minute of O2 and half a tsp of yeast energizer just to make sure they were ready for the big stout.

I got a text from my mom two days later when she checked on it for me:

I had no idea the yeast would be so aggressive at 62F, the lower end of their active temperature range.  These carboys were only 2/3 full, leaving 2 gallons of headspace, but the foam clearly spewed well beyond that.  You can't see it from this picture, but there were sticky brown splotches all over the sides, door and ceiling of the refrigerator.  Moral of the story: always use a blow off tube for primary fermentation.

I drove up the next day to clean the fermentation fridge out and replace the airlocks.  The whole roomed smelled wonderful, like a chocolate bar exploded everywhere, but just not what I wanted to be doing with my Wednesday night.  The fermentation seemed to have pretty much finished as the surface of the beer was pretty clear, so after bleaching resanitizing the airlocks, I bumped the temperature up to 68F to keep the yeast active as long as possible.

Racked 12/1/13:

I racked this to secondary after 2 weeks.  I've done a lot of brewing lately, so I'm in no hurry to get this bottled.  I plan on letting this sit for at least a month to let it mature a bit while I drink the other beers.  After losing so much volume to trub and the blowoff, I'm worried there may be too much headspace in the secondary carboy.  These ones are only 5 gal instead of 6, but from what I've read that increases the risk of oxidation.  I don't remember where I read this, but someone recommended adding a bit of corn sugar or malt extract to restart the yeast and clean up that oxygen.  I like that idea, especially in a big stout like this where I need to age it awhile and the extra point of gravity will hide nicely.  I added 2 oz. of corn sugar to each carboy and replaced them in the fermentation fridge at 68F.

Bottled 1/4/14:

Ned and I bottled our cider this afternoon, so I decided to do the stout too while everything was out.  Thankfully Ned decided to stick around and do this one too, because it was a very long day as it was, and very cold as well.  Seriously.  Hose water was freezing underneath my feet as I was cleaning things, and the next morning I discovered this pile of frozen foam.  It was so cold it froze solid before the bubbles could pop.

Anyway, both the stout and the cider have been sitting for quite awhile, so maybe they could have used a dose of fresh yeast to kickstart the carbonating process.  All I have on hand is US-05, and between the risk of increased attenuation and the extra effort required, I decided to just let the current residents do their job.  Next time I'll have some dry wine yeast on hand so I don't have to worry about attenuation issues.  It should be about a month before these beers are ready to drink.

#14 Stone Imperial Russian Stout Clone - Recipe

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

If I had to choose just one style to perfect, it would be the Russian Imperial Stout.  Capitalization required.  I love stouts in general, but this is the biggest and baddest of the bunch.  They are so big--often with an OG in excess of 1.100--that despite the high degree of attenuation and intensely bitter roasted malt and hop flavors, they are still balanced with residual sweetness and a thick, viscous body.

I tried an extract imperial stout last spring--a clone of Old Rasputin from North Coast--but that turned into a rubbery mess.  A clogged counter-flow chiller sent boiling wort flying, and we twice lost rubber tubing through the neck of the fermenter.  I still have more than a case "conditioning" in my closet, but really I'm afraid to touch it.

This time I'm aiming to tackle another of my favorites: Stone Imperial Russian Stout.  Not only is it one of the best, but it is a seasonal beer released mid April, usually within days of my birthday.  But a big reason I chose to brew this is that there was a great article in BYO Magazine on Stone that included clone recipes for several of their beers including this one.


The recipe I plan on using is a partial mash adapted from the one in the article.  I've been getting terrible efficiency (around 55%) doing brew-in-a-bag, so I doubt the grain bag could hold all the malt I would need, especially when I scale it up to 8 gal.  The plan is to mash the specialty grains and as much base malt as I can (about 15 lbs. total) like normal, then make up the rest of the base malt with dry light malt extract.  On a side note, this recipe looks similar to the historic Courage Russian Imperial Stout recipe as reported by Ron Pattinson with the high percentage of brown/amber malt.

Stone IRS Clone
--------------------------
Batch Size (fermenter): 8.00 gal
Estimated ABV: 9.2 %
Estimated OG: 1.087 SG
Estimated FG: 1.018 SG
Estimated Color: 38.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 92.8 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 55.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 71.3 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt           Name                                     %/IBU         
9 lbs         Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)         36.7 %
3 lbs 12.0 oz Amber Malt (22.0 SRM)                    15.3 %
1 lbs 12.0 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)               7.1 %
12.0 oz       Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM)          3.1 %
4.0 oz        Corn Sugar (Dextrose) (0.0 SRM)          1.0 %
9 lbs         Extra Light Dry Extract [Boil 90 min]    36.7 %
3.80 oz       Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.60 %] - Boil 90  92.8 IBU
1.00 tsp      Irish Moss (Boil 15.0 mins)              -
1.0 pkg       British Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1098)    -
1.0 pkg       London Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1028)     -

Mash Schedule: BIAB, 150F
Total Grain Weight: 24 lbs 8.0 oz
Estimated Cost: $63.25

As I mentioned in the ESB brewday notes, I have two English yeasts from that beer that are now built up to sufficient quantities for the stout.  The recipe from BYO calls for WLP 002 which is the Fuller's strain, but it tends to leave residual sweetness while Stone's beers tend to be pretty dry.  The two strains I chose are much more attenuative and should do a better job thinning the morass that is high gravity wort.


Russian Imperial Stout Links:
BYO Style Profile
Brewers Association Style Spotlight
All About Beer Magazine

#13 ESB - Brewday

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

Brewed 11/10/13:
So this brewday was a shit show.  I was forgetting things left and right.  Thankfully Steve joined me, so we had an extra set of hands and eyes on the wort.  I thought that would make things go smoothly, so we tried to bottle the oatmeal stout simultaneously.  It was too much.  I think I've learned my lesson: brew day and bottling day are not the same thing.

Anyway, so we brewed the ESB.  The general theme of English bitters is to extract as much flavor and body from as little grain as possible.  Flavor comes from a lot of places, but the body of the final beer comes primarily from unfermented sugars or dextrines (and to some degree from proteins in suspension).  Yeast digest short chain sugars like glucose, fructose and maltose, but have a hard time with longer carbohydrates.  Starch from the malt is broken down in different ways by different enzymes at different temperatures.  Fine tuning the body of a beer depends on adjusting the temperature of the mash to achieve the right balance of enzymatic activity, and thus the right balance of fermentable and unfermentable sugars.

But to complicate matters, different yeast strains also handle different ranges of sugars.  Some Belgian yeasts can ferment over 80% of the sugar content (known as 80% attenuation), while some British yeasts may only take 60% of the sugars.  For this batch we chose two middle of the road English strains that will ferment the big imperial stout up next but leave sufficient dextrines in this beer to prevent it from seeming watery.

Between the yeast choice, and a warmer mash temperature, this beer should come out full of flavor and body, but after drinking so many "double" and "imperial" american beers, I'm still hesitant to drop the original gravity too low.  We've been mashing using the brew-in-a-bag method, so our temperatures can swing by as much as 10F.  By contrast, professional breweries can keep there mash temperatures within a degree of the target.  I would be curious to know what effect these swings have on the composition of the wort, as I'm sure the temperature and timing of these swings could produce some surprising results.  As mentioned in the last post, we targeted an original gravity 1.050, so that we have room to play with these techniques, but still have a flavorful beer if things come out more fermentable than expected.

Fermentation:
Yeast pitched at around 60F.  Worthington White Shield (Wyeast 1028) pitched straight from smack-pack (popped in the morning), and Whitbread dry (US-04) pitched dry.  Carboys placed in refrigerator and set to 62F.

2 Days: Temp to 68F.  Smallish krausen (~1") on each.  Look nearly identical.  Smell already starting to turn from sulfur/sour to something English.  Is that from the yeast, hops or malt?  I don't know but it smells good.

The remains of the bottling day gravity sample when I could finally pull it away from my face long enough to take a picture.  Oh and remember how I said I wouldn't bottle and brew on the same day?  Well that's the imperial stout in the background.  Whomp whomp.

#13 ESB - Recipe

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

To be honest, I've never really been a huge fan of English bitters--or really most beers not from the good ol' USA--but several things lined up to make this a great time to brew an English bitter.  First of all, the last brew was a clone of the Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout, so it would be nice to have something lighter on hand as a complement.  Another English beer would fit nicely, and on our trip trip to Europe last winter, my dad loved the English ales.

During the Nottingham leg of the trip, we made a pit stop at Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem--a pub claiming to be the oldest in England, and a favorite of knights on their way to join the crusades--for a pint and some fish and chips.  While definitely a local favorite, this place was literally a hole in the wall; the tiny building was nestled against Castle Rock, with tables and booths tucked into natural caverns in the cliff.  My Dad's Olde Trip from Greene King Brewery was his favorite beer during our travels, and among the bitters we tried it would be tough to argue against it.

On top of all that, I happen to be sitting on 40 lbs. of Maris Otter malt left over from the oatmeal stout.  What's special about Maris Otter?  Well for starters it's an English barley varietal bred specifically for brewing English ales.  But more interesting than that is the malting process: English malt was traditionally "floor malted" or spread out on the floor of the maltings to dry after germination and turned periodically.  This resulted in less even drying and kilning than modern malts, meaning a more interesting and malty character.  While I have heard that this maltster, Thomas Fawcett and Sons, no longer floor malts the Maris Otter sold here, it is still darker than most American malts.  I've been interested in how this actually comes across, so since I have the stuff on hand I like the idea of brewing a beer that really showcases it.

The recipe I'm going to use is pretty basic, like most bitters.  Malt, water, yeast, hops.  English beers tend to be smaller than American craft beers, but make up for that with techniques that maximize body and flavor.  At 1.050, this will be fairly big for the English (est. ABV 4.5%, as compared to Olde Trip which at 4.3% is the strongest draft ale in Greene King's lineup) but the smallest beer I've brewed in awhile.  This should give some room to play with English mashing techniques while still having a decent beer if I can't get the body I'm looking for.  I'm going to do another split batch to try out a couple English yeasts, the Whitbread Dry strain (S-04/Wyeast 1098 WLP007) and Worthington White Shield.  Like with the Maris Otter, I'm interested to see the difference the English variety makes over the classic American yeast I've been using.  Plus as a bonus, this batch will serve as a giant yeast starter for my next brew: a Russian imperial stout.

ESB
--------------------------
Batch Size (fermenter): 6.00 gal
Estimated ABV: 4.5 %
Estimated OG: 1.048 SG
Estimated FG: 1.014 SG
Estimated Color: 9.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 39.1 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 55.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 68.7 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt        Name                                     %/IBU         
13 lbs     Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)         92.9 %
1 lbs      Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM)    7.1 %
2.00 oz    Goldings, East Kent [6.30 %] - Boil 60.0 31.3 IBU
1.00 oz    Goldings, East Kent [6.30 %] - Boil 15.0 7.8 IBU
1.0 pkg    British Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1098)    -
1.0 pkg    London Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1028)     -

Mash Schedule: BIAB, 156F
Total Grain Weight: 14 lbs
Estimated Cost: $32.92

#12 Dry Cider

Recipe     -     Tasting

Good news everyone!  My friend Ned will have 7 gallons of cider to ferment!

I don't know a whole lot about cider, but it shouldn't be as hard as beer.  There's a lot that goes into brewing--recipe formulation (selecting grains and hops in proper ratios), mashing (managing mash thickness, temperature, and chemistry to produce an appropriately fermentable wort), boiling (I mean, this just takes time, but still)--that we won't have to deal with here.  The juice is a pre-mixed blend of primarily honey crisp, some granny smith and golden delicious, and maybe a few other varieties.  All we have to do is let the yeast do its thing.


Pitched 10/20/14:
Ok, so maybe a bit more complicated than that.  We started by adding campden tablets as soon as the juice was pressed to inhibit bacteria and wild yeast.  Usually campden tablets are added at a ratio of 1 tablet/gallon to wine but apparently the grape juice binds to a portion of this in a way that apple juice does not, so lower concentrations can be used for cider.  Also, some people are sensitive to the sulfite and it can give off sulfurous odors before it eventually dissipates.  We went with half a tablet per gallon and didn't encounter any infections or unpleasantness, so I feel like that route worked.

After waiting 24 hrs, we poured the juice into two carboys, 3 gal in each (lost 1 gal to sediment), and added corn sugar to boost the ABV.  Since corn sugar is primarily simple sugar, it raises the alcohol content without adding significant flavor.  As in beer, it can lighten the mouthfeel if used in large amounts.  We went with .75 lbs per carboy (.25 lbs/gal) to bring the anticipated ABV up to 8.3%.

(EDIT: Looking back on this we used corn sugar because I had seen it strongly recommended for beer.  Some sources identified a disagreeable "cidery" taste in beers fermented with table sugar as opposed to corn sugar.  While "cidery" would not be out of place in a cider, I already had corn sugar on hand, so we figured better safe than sorry.  I later learned that the dextrose in corn sugar is most similar to the dextrose and maltose found in wort. Fruit juice--including apples and grapes--contains primarily fructose.  The sucrose found in table sugar (either from sugar cane or sugar beet) is a disaccharide composed of a fructose and a glucose unit.  While these are all fermentable by ale yeast and (except maltose) by wine yeast, I suspect that the difference in taste is related to that fructose molecule.  Apparently it must be converted to glucose in the yeast cell before it can be consumed, so I'm guessing this process introduces a byproduct characterized as "cidery," but this is only speculation.  I would be curious to know if this is true, how significant the impact is, and how the final flavors compare in different types of fermentations.)

Then we pitched the yeast.  As mentioned earlier, the must (unfermented fruit juice) was split between two carboys so we could try two different yeasts.  The recommendations online strongly favored Danstar Nottingham ale yeast and Lalvin EC-1118 wine yeast for cider so we did both.  Both yeasts were rehydrated in cool, boiled water and then pitched at ambient temperature.  The fridge was set to 60F for the duration of active fermentation.

At 3 weeks, I racked to secondary.  I noticed the fermentation fridge had a funky sulfury sour smell like with the lemonade I did during the summer.  The cider was then moved to the closet to free up temperature controlled fermentation space.  It took quite awhile for the lees (Yeast and apple pectin? We didn't use pectinase as recommended.) to settle, and when it did they formed a fluffy sludge atop the yeast.  The wine yeast was noticeably more powdery than the highly flocculant Nottingham.

Bottled 1/4/14
Thanks Ned for coming over to bottle!  It was a long cold day of bottling, but it's always great to have a second pair of (frozen) hands.

#11 Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout Clone - Brewday

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

So before brewday even started, I needed to toast the oats.  The CloneBrews recipe recommended toasting at 325 for 75 minutes, but I decided to take it conservatively and did 75 minutes at 300F (or rather 275F but with convection on).  Spread out on cookie sheets, they started to turn golden, but not quite toasty, and smelled delicious, but I removed them just as the smell began to turn harsh.  As I was reading the notes on the forum, I noticed they recommended getting the oats off the pans immediately so they don't continue to cook, and letting them sit for 1-2 weeks to let the aroma dissipate.  I was brewing the next morning, so I simply moved them to a shallow tub and hoped the exposure would be enough.


Brewed 10/12/13:
Then when I went to brew, I realized I was out of grain.  After buying the big 55 lb. sack of Gambrinus pale malt I forgot this was even possible!  The original recipe called for English Maris Otter malt, so I had added some Munich to mimic it (read somewhere that US 2-row + Munich = Maris Otter?  A little extra toastiness won't be out of place here.)  I rushed to the homebrew store and wound up dropping the extra change on the sack of Thomas Fawcett Marris Otter, so now the grain bill looks like I just scraped up all my past mistakes.  Time to knit a onesie for it.

Once I actually got brewing everything went pretty well.  I calculated the recipe using 50% efficiency, but I ended with 55%, so I ended up with 8.5 gallons into the fermenters instead of 8.  No complaints there.  I double crushed the MO portion of the base malt to try to improve efficiency, but it doesn't appear to have made a sizable difference.  I need to get that efficiency up to around 75%, so next thing to try is water chemistry, then getting the mash tun running.

PS.  I thought this was one of the most delicious looking beers I've brewed in the kettle.

Fermentation Notes:
Pitched yeast at 60F.  Split batch, half Wyeast Irish Ale and half dry US-05, 4.25 gal in each.  Temp set to 64F.

2 days: Temp to 66F. Irish Ale about .5 to 1 in krausen, US-05 minimal.  I guess this shows why they say to rehydrate the yeast!  Even at 64F the Chico should have been active.

1 week: Racked to secondary and stored in bedroom.  One week is sooner than I planned, but should be fine.  I need the fermentation space for cider!  Based on the krausen scum, the Chico seems to have picked up and had a healthy fermentation.


Bottled 11/10/13 (4 weeks from brewday):
Aimed for 2.5 vol of carbonation, but I calculated priming sugar weight using cold-crash temp (40F).  Residual carbonation levels depend on the maximum temperature after fermentation finished, so recalculating using the max fermentation temp (66F) gives a carbonation level of 1.9 vol before.  This is a bit low for the pillowy head I was aiming for, but will fit perfectly with the classic English style.  I tried to pop the top on a warm bottle and add more sugar, but it foamed over.  Hopefully carbonation is adequate when not overly chilled.

#11 Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout Clone - Recipe

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

I recently received a raven from Winterfell bearing a message from Lord Stark.  It bore a simple message, "Winter is coming."  Well thanks, dick.  I could have told you that.

But with colder weather on the way, I now have a good excuse to brew something ... darker.  I would love to brew a big imperial stout, but with nothing in the fermenters for the last few weeks, I need to get something quicker going.  I'll definitely get to that shortly though, so in the meantime I'll try a bit softer beer: oatmeal stout.  Hopefully it will be slightly more accessible, and something I can take to share with the family over Christmas vacation.

Oatmeal stout, as the name implies, is a stout brewed with oats, typically up to 30% of the grist.  Though oatmeal stout was popular for its supposed nutritional properties in the late 1800's, it faded from existence after World War II.  (See BeerSmith's blog post for a nice concise overview of the style and it's history.)  Modern oatmeal stouts are descended from the version reintroduce by Samuel Smith's in the late 80's, so it seems logical that, for my first oatmeal stout, I brew a clone of that.

The following recipe is an amalgamation of two clone recipes, one from brew365 and another from HomeBrewTalk that I think was originally included in the CloneBrews book.  On his Brewing With Style Podcast, Jamil Zainasheff recommends toasting the oats to get the rich oatmeal cookie flavor that people expect from the oats, so I'm going to give that a shot.  And since I haven't brewed in awhile, I might as well make this a big batch: 8 gal split into two fermenters so I can test the difference between the Guinness yeast and the Chico yeast I've been using.

Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout Clone
---------------------------------
Batch Size (fermenter): 8.00 gal
Estimated ABV: 5.5 %
Estimated OG: 1.061 SG
Estimated FG: 1.019 SG
Estimated Color: 40.0 SRM
Estimated IBU: 31.6 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 50.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 56.3 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt           Name                                     %/IBU         
16 lbs        Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)         60.0 %
2 lbs 10.0 oz Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM)                   9.8 %
2 lbs         Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)             7.5 %
1 lbs 12.8 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)           6.7 %
1 lbs 4.0 oz  Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)    4.7 %
1 lbs 4.0 oz  Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM)               4.7 %
1 lbs         Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM)                 3.7 %
12.0 oz       Black Barley (Stout) (500.0 SRM)         2.8 %
2.75 oz       Goldings, East Kent [6.30 %] - Boil 90.0 31.6 IBU
1.00 tsp      Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins)              -
1.1 pkg       Irish Ale Yeast (White Labs #WLP004)     -
1.0 pkg       Safale American  (DCL/Fermentis #US-05)  -

Mash Schedule: BIAB, 156F
Total Grain Weight: 26 lbs 10.8 oz
Estimated Cost: $50.47

This recipe reflects brewday shenanigans.  See the brewday post for the explanation/excuses.