Re-brewday: Accidental Imperial Stout

Of the beers I've brewed so far, Bron's favourite is the Accidental Imperial Stout. I brewed it about 11 1/2 months ago and we're down to about 8 bottles. She's been wanting me to brew it again so that the supply is maintained. Also, it's Winter and there's no better time to be drinking a Stout than in the depths of a Tasmanian Winter.

Really imperial

I've made a few changes that should make it ready to drink sooner and better:

Using the Mr Malty calculator, I've realised that I pitched only about 1/3 of the yeast I should have last time. This year, I've got plenty of yeast ready to go. This should help the fermentation to be quicker and cleaner which should mean that the beer is ready to drink much sooner than the first time when it was more than 6 months before it became a pleasant drink.

ALL the yeast

Temperature control is now in my grasp. Last year it fermented a bit cool which didn't do the poor, under-pitched yeast any favours. This year, sitting at around 20'C, it should be much happier.

I added some more hops and changed the variety from East Kent Golding to Northern Brewer. The main reason was just to give it better balance. The first version is thick and syrupy and doesn't have much bitterness. I'd like the hops to cut through that a bit with this version.

Yeast gone wild!

The recipe is big and ugly, with almost 3/4 of a kilo of roasted barley and chocolate malt together and 640g of crystal malts. On top of that there's 5kg of light dried malt extract. It is the blackness. There's also a bunch of Northern Brewer hops. I've chucked in about 22g of S-04 yeast and it's gone bezerk.

Brewday: ANZAC Day Export Stout

I've been itching to brew with Huw and Jason, my regular co-conspirators and today was the day. We also roped in Benny who we've been wanting to have along for a while.

We brewed an Export Stout, pinched but with minor changes from The Mad Fermentationist who in turn pinched it from Oregon's Pelican Pub and Brewery.

For my version of the recipe, I changed the hops to Fuggles and a small amount of Northern Brewer since I'm still trying to use up some leftovers. I also read somewhere about an old school technique for brewing Stouts: adding a portion of the black malt directly to the boil. I've given that a go and we'll see how it turns out.

We did some brewing. It was pretty relaxed and everything worked out well with no problems. Jason showed us his skills with the weber, cooking pork belly and a pork roast. That stuff was amazing.

We also drank the last remaining bottle (a growler) of one of our past efforts, a Nelson Sauvin Pale Ale. It was past its best but still fun to share. I also brought out some of my Berliner Weisse, Galaxy Pale and Imperial Stout.

Loving using glad wrap as a lid which lets me stickybeak the whole process

Laughs, brewing and good beers. It was even better after such a long time stuck in bed. I'm totally trashed now and will probably be paying for it for a couple of days but it's totally worth it. I was going to take some photos but I was having too much fun and forgot.