Brewing up a Stout

A week before Thanksgiving I had the opportunity for a brew night so I decided to brew up a batch dry stout I was going to call “Black Friday Stout.” Well, time dragged on with it in the fermenter and it became “The Naughty Elf” and then when I kegged it after Christmas I wised up and dropped the seasonal references and changed the name to “Once You Go Black, You Never Go Back.”

Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to build the collar for my keezer (I hope to complete that by the end of March) so right now the keg is sitting in my ice cube fermentation chamber hooked up to the gas.


Brew Date: 11/17/2001
Beer Number: B22
Beer Name: “Once You Go Black, You Never Go Back”
Type: Dry Stout
Primary Fermenter: 6 1/2 gal. glass (57 days)
Secondary Fermenter: n/a
Volume: @5.5 gal. wort in fermenter
OG: 1.053
FG: 1.014
Expected IBU: 34
Expected SRM: 31
Expected Alcohol %: 5.6%
Expected Calories: 176


Ingredients:
7 lbs. Maris Otter Pale Malt
2 lbs. flaked barley
1 lb. roasted barley
4 oz. Carafa III (added to mash after protein rest
2 oz. East Kent Goldings pellet hops (5.0% AA) @ 60 min
US05 yeast


Step by Step Process:
Wort
1. Crushed grain in Barley Crusher (double-crushed the flaked and roasted barley)
2. Heated 12.75 qts. strike water to @141F and poured into mash tun
3. Added grains to tun and stirred – temp. settled at @131Ffor protein rest – total protein rest of main mash was @45 min.
4. After 10 min. protein rest, pulled 4 qt. decoction and brought to 153F and held for 4 minutes and then heating to boiling, stirring constantly
5. Added decoction back to main mash and the temperature settled at 151F
6. Mashed for @50 minutes
7. Opened valve slowly and then wide open and drained into kettle
8. While draining, fired burner and set heat on low
9. When empty, filled with 3.5 gal. of @168F water, stirred mash, recirculated and drained
10. When empty, filled with 3.5 gal. of @168F water, stirred mash, recirculated and drained
Note: the mash draining became extremely slow and eventually ½ lb. rice hulls were stirred in with minimum positive effect
11. Collected a total of @ 7.5 gal. wort
12. Brought to a boil and added 2 oz. East Kent Goldings pellet hops as soon as hot break formed
13. Boiled for 60 minutes, adding wort chiller with 15 minutes remaining
14. Turned off burner and using wort chiller, cooled to @90F in @ 15 minutes
15. When temperature had dropped to 80F, transferred to sanitized glass fermenter
16. Allowed to cool to 61F overnight in ice cube fermentation chamber with frozen water bottles
17. At 10 hours after flame out, pitched yeast packet into wort (did not rehydrate)
18. First activity noticed @ 48 to 60 hours after pitching yeast

Kegging (1/13/12)
19. Cleaned and sanitized ball lock keg and filled with CO2
20. Used large autosiphon to siphon from fermenter to keg
21. Used keg lube on bail o-ring, sealed keg
22. Charged keg and set CO2 to 20 psi (temp. approx. 60F)
23. The next day, placed keg in ice cube and added several frozen water bottles
24. Estimated that keg temperature would drop to 50F, so relieved keg pressure and set CO2 to 14 psi
25. Changed frozen water bottles every 1 to 2 days


Notes:
pre-boil gravity was 1.043
over filled keg and had to use sanitized piece of tubing to draw out a small portion from keg to get top on