Chernobyl Stout

Today I kegged Tyo's Fourth of JulIrish Red, White and Brew, and since that meant I had a ton of yeast ready to go I decided to brew up a massive Russian Imperial Stout. My goal is to hit the elusive 12% ABV mark on this one, which Wyeast says that 1084 can do.

The Recipe:

20 lb 2-row pale malt
2.5 lb chocolate malt
1 lb crystal 60°
12 oz Cara-Pils
12 oz roasted barley

290g light dry malt extract
225g corn sugar

22 AAU (43g @ 14.2% AA) Citra @ 60

Wyeast 1084 - Irish Ale

Mashed for an hour at 157° on a dough-in of about 30 quarts. Collected 12 quarts of first runnings and boiled that down to about 4 or 5 quarts to caramelize some of the sugars. Maintained the mash at about 150° for the two-plus hours that process took. Once that was done, continued taking runnings, sparging with a few quarts of ~170° water when necessary.

O.G.: 1.126
Est. IBU: 52.9

As I was preparing to do the main boil, I decided that perhaps the gravity could be kicked up a notch so that I can hit my goal of 12% ABV. I went ahead and added the ~10 oz of light dry malt extract that I had laying around (it was getting old and needed to be used anyway), then added a half-pound of corn sugar left over from my bottling days. This beer is going to have absolute truckloads of body anyway, so I felt like it wouldn't hurt to add a little sugar to boost the gravity and provide a little bit of counter to the eventual sweetness that it will have.

One thing I forgot about was the lower utilization of whole hops vs. pellet hops. If I had remembered that, I would have made it maybe 28 or 30 AAU of Citra rather than the 22 that I used.

Lastly, I think I am going to oak this beer once primary fermentation is done. My current thoughts are to use two or three ounces of toasted oak chips, soaked in bourbon (for sanitation purposes, naturally). Should add a little character to this massive beast, no?

Tyo's Fourth of JulIrish Red, White & Brew

Today I brewed up my first Irish Red and decided to give it a preposterous name. Brewing was completely uneventful, which is just the way I like it.

The Recipe:

10 lb 2-row pale malt
8 oz Crystal 60°
3 oz Cara-Pils
2 oz chocolate malt

5 AAU (27g @ 5.1% AA) Fuggles @ 60
2 AAU (11g @ 5.1% AA) Fuggles @ 20

Whirlfloc tablet @ 15

Wyeast 1084 - Irish Ale

Mashed for an hour at 151°, which was right about my target. Doughed in with 14.25 qts to get to 151°. Performed an 8 qt mash-out with 175° water, followed by a small (~6 qt) batch sparge, followed by fly sparging until I had the requisite 26 quarts. It was a bizarre sparge, but it yielded 75% efficiency for me. So, yay!

O.G.: 1.054
Est. IBU: 24.6

I am feeling optimistic about this brew. If all goes well, I think I am going to use the yeast cake from this batch to make another Russian Imperial Stout. Should be fun!