Brew U

This post is one in a series following six brewers collaborating to each make a small adjustment to a single recipe in order to improve it, then pass it along to the next brewer. We hope to learn more about the art of recipe creation as we see how other brewers approach the same recipe. The rest of the series can be found here.

Author: B. Crochet

Brew Day

The biggest change to my brew day process since I brewed Iteration 3 was using RO water for mash/sparge. I started with 12 gallons of RO and added 20g chalk and 5g gypsum. I heated my strike water to 168°F. Once at temperature, I transferred about 4.5 gallons of water to the mash tun. Usually, I preheat my mash tun, but neglected to do that. Thus started the long brew day I had ahead of me. I transferred water back and forth between my HLT and MT until I had a dough-in temperature of 168°F to offset my lack of preheating the tun. After mashing in, I hit my target of 154°F. Exactly. It was a pain to get it there, but once there, it was perfect. I let the mash rest for 60 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so.

While the mash was going, I heated the HLT water to 200°F. After the 60 minute mash, I added about 3 gallons of 200°F water, and started a vorlauf. Then I began to collect the sweet wort. When the wort got to the level of my thermowell, I discovered another problem. I had changed the gaskets on my thermowell and it sprung a leak. A bad one. One that I couldn’t ignore. Thankfully, my wife happened by to give me a hand. She kept downward pressure on the thermowell, as this seem to keep it down to a tiny trickle so that I could step back and figure out what to do. Thankfully I still had the plugs that came with my kettle, so I decided to send the wort back into the MT so that I could just remove the thermowell and put the plug back in. This was a successful operation, and only lost a tiny bit of sweet wort.

I topped off the mash with a few more gallons of water, and finished with a total of 7.5 gallons of sweet wort. After undershooting the gravity of my last brew, I made sure the gravity was where it should be preboil. Calculations told me it was spot on, so I started the boil.

Once the wort was at a vigorous boil, I added the first hops of 0.87 oz. of 15% Nugget, and set my timers. Luckily, I was paying attention to the boil, and not just doing other things around the house. I ran out of propane. Ok. No biggie. I have another tank. So I paused my timers, hooked up the second tank, and when it got back to a boil, started the timers again. And wouldn’t you know, 15 minutes later, the second tank ran out. Sigh. Pause timers again, run to the hardware store, and do a quick tank exchange. I had it back to boiling within 10 minutes, but geez, what a pain.

Boil achieved again, timers now resumed, I got down to 15 minutes remaining, and in goes the chiller. 5 more minutes, and in goes one teaspoon of Irish Moss. With 5 minutes to go in the boil, I added 1.3 oz of 7.8% Centennial.

The final volume of wort in the kettle was 5.75 gallons, and it finished at 16 brix. Success! I started a whirlpool and the chiller. Usually I just let the outflow from the chiller go, but this time I used a second hose to send it down my utility sink, which of course invited yet another place for something to go wrong. I didn’t secure the hose enough, and it sent hot water all over my laundry room floor. I was thankful for two reasons: 1) My laundry room is off of the garage and pretty much detached from the house, so not too much harm there; 2) It actually helped me to discover a leak from the utility sink faucet hose. But I digress.

I chilled the wort down to 80°F and couldn’t get it to go much lower. So I started to collect the wort into the fermenter. I collected about 5.25 gallons. I put a sanitized airlock on it, and left it in my fermentation room for a few hours at 66°F before I pitched the yeast. I increased my fermentation room to 68°F. Fermentation activity was observed 12 hours later.

11 days later, I transferred to a 5 gallon corny. It finished at 1.023, for an apparent attenuation of 64%. It’s a little lower than desired, but not by much. It probably could have benefitted from a few days at 72°F.

Recipe

My impression upon opening and pouring Iteration 8 was pleasant. Only a small head formed, with a brown to dark brown color. As expected, the aroma had coffee notes and chocolate. Color was dark brown. Definitely tasted roasted coffee flavors. There was an acidity there though, that was not pleasant or desired. I had my wife taste it as well to make sure that I wasn’t misperceiving it. At first I thought it might be some type of addition to the recipe, but once I looked at the recipe, I decided that wasn’t the case. I’m only speculating, but I think the issues with the previous iteration having too high of an OG/FG, it may have been due to the additional alcohol. I really don’t know, to be perfectly honest. But I didn’t think it was anything fundamentally wrong with the recipe.

With the perceived acidity, it was hard to truly judge what to change. It really overpowered the beer. So, I took a leap and decided to just try a more expressive yeast. I hadn’t used Denny’s Favorite 50 (Wyeast 1450) before, but I had read that it’s supposed to accentuate the malt without becoming cloying, which seemed like it would be a good fit for this stout, so I figured we’d give that a try. I ended up with the following recipe:

• Mashed at 154°F for 1 hour

• • 68% 2-row
  • 10.2% Victory
  • 7.5% flaked barley
  • 7.5% roasted barley
  • 5.1% Pale chocolate
  • 1.7% Chocolate (350°L)
• Boiled for 1 hr.
  • 0.87 oz. Nugget (60 min.) at 15% AA (43.2 IBUs)
  • 1.3 oz Centennial (5 min.) at 7.8% (6.7 IBUs)
• Pitched Wyeast 1450 (Denny’s Favorite 50)
• OG: 1.065
• FG: 1.023
• ABV: 5.5%
• Kegged, then force-carbonated with a carb-stone lid. Started at 4 PSI, then ramped up 2-3 PSI every couple of hours until reaching 12 PSI, then rested for 24 hours at 12 PSI.
• After force-carbing, bottled with a growler filling tube, then capped.

Tasting

The biggest differences I could detect from the previous iteration was the lack of that acidity. Color and carbonation levels were pretty much the same, but my iteration seemed to lack some head retention. There was definitely more expressive malt character, which was my goal in changing in the yeast. The mouthfeel is nice on both. The head was a nice brown color on both. The coffee and chocolate notes were still present in the aroma, and the roastiness in the flavor was still present.

My next change would probably be to actually simplify the grain bill again. Perhaps remove the chocolate malt altogether, and add that percentage back to the base grain. Alternatively, I’d try a bit more IBUs from the bittering hop charge, to balance out the more expressive maltiness from the yeast.
Recipe Progression

This post is one in a series following six brewers collaborating to each make a small adjustment to a single recipe in order to improve it, then pass it along to the next brewer. We hope to learn more about the art of recipe creation as we see how other brewers approach the same recipe. The rest of the series can be found here.

Author: T. Bowen

Brew Day

To keep the crew on schedule, my recommended brew-by-date was July 13. But I wasn’t too worried about starting a day late since I’ve used WLP004 quite a bit (it’s essentially my de facto house stout yeast), so I’m familiar enough with how it ferments to be satisfied with my adjusted timeline. Per the usual, my brew day was Sunday, July 15. I started as early as possible that morning because I was not looking forward to standing around a hot burner for a few hours due to how hot it is right now. Suffice to say, it was a drastically different brew day weather-wise than my first iteration brewed back in January. I’ve also moved my setup to the driveway as opposed to the backyard because the flies are miserable this year and my backyard is a wasteland of old leaves and crap for flies to hide in.

After tasting Iteration 7, I had some initial thoughts on where I wanted this beer to go. Of note, I enjoyed Iteration 7 much better than Iterations 1 and 2 (the only others I had tasted). Not that the earlier ones were bad, I just felt this beer has really started to come together nicely and it’s kind of cool to see the community collaboration thing happening before my eyes (and palate). But I was fairly certain I knew what I wanted to add/change before I even looked at the latest recipe. I also opted to not review recipes from other iterations; I wanted to formulate my new iteration with a completely open mind without influencing my decisions based on previous recipes that I never got to taste.

After getting everything set up, I proceeded to mill my grains while my strike water was heating. I targeted a strike water temperature of 165°F to reach my target mash temperature of 154°F. This required a watchful eye on the strike water because I realized two brews ago that the thermometer on my HLT is reading about 6°F lower than actual, and I haven’t gotten around to calibrating it. Nonetheless, I heated the strike water to 165°F, ran off to the mash tun, and stirred in the grains like a mad man to break up any dough balls. I checked temp—right on the money—and put her to bed for 60 minutes.

During the mash, I took time to weigh out my hop additions for the boil and started heating my sparge water.

This is going to sound insane, but for the longest time (really since I started), I’ve never touched the mash tun until the mash was over. No intermittent stirring, temp checks, nothing. But recently I’ve started doing a temp check and stir of the mash halfway through. So, at 30 minutes, I opened the tun for a stir and checked the temp.

It was still dead on my mash temperature of 154°F. It’s always a good feeling when you’re getting into the thick of a brew day and everything is going perfectly. I let the mash finish out and decided to take a final temp of the mash.

Well that is nice! Usually I can hold temps fine and maybe lose a degree. I can’t remember the last time I lost zero heat. I guess that’s one advantage of brewing in the sweltering heat. I then proceeded to vorlauf and sparge and hit my desired preboil volume of 7 gallons. The boil was uneventful, as boils often are. I had a minor hiccup when my propane ran out about halfway through the boil. Thankfully, my backup tank still had some juice to squeeze, and I was able to switch out the tanks and get the burner going again all in about two minutes. I never even really lost the boil.

Following the boil, I began chilling while I pulled a sample from the kettle to chill for a gravity check. Chilling proceeded nice and slowly due to the ridiculous temperatures and the fact that my groundwater is around 80°F at this point. I augment my chilling by pumping ice water through my immersion chiller with a simple pump. Even with the ice water, chilling took 45 minutes or so. I can’t wait to get a pump!

I nailed my post-chill volume of 5.25 gallons and got exactly 5 gallons in the fermenter. After racking to the fermenter, I tucked it away for an hour or two while I cleaned up to let it chill a few more degrees before I pitched my WLP004 starter. At this point my gravity sample had chilled sufficiently to drop in the hydrometer. In keeping with the spirit of this collaboration and the parameters of the recipe, I had an estimated OG of 1.064. So imagine my surprise when I saw this…

1.075?! Ok, something is off here. Sample temperature? Nope, right around calibrated temp of 60°F. Hydrometer is going wonky? Nope, double checked the hydrometer with distilled water and it’s pretty spot on. So I started to dig in and figure out why I overshot my gravity by 10ish points.

I use Beersmith2 for all my recipe design. I have multiple equipment profiles dialed in, as well as mash profiles. Suffice to say, I know my system very well and since I finally properly set up Beersmith earlier this year, I’ve been very consistent with volumes, gravities, etc. My efficiency setting is 67% and I consistently hit my numbers with this efficiency. So I went back to my laptop and plugged in the actual OG and it showed an 80% efficiency. How does that even happen? I should also note at this point that I had recently gotten a new grain mill. This was my first mill and I used to always get it milled in the shop. But, this was the fourth batch I had brewed with this new mill, and other than a one or two point bump in efficiency, the first three batches with the new mill were dead accurate. Also, I set the gap on my mill with feeler gauges and following this brew day, I verified the gap had not changed. Suffice to say, I have no idea how this happened. Everything else in my equipment and process was ceteris paribus. Oh well. There is one final possibility…on the day I went to pick up my grains from my LHBS, my usual guy was out of town and I had someone else weigh out my grains. He asked for clarification at least once or twice on some amounts, and with a few of my grain weights being “ounce-specific,” I suppose it’s possible he gave me more of something. I’ll add this to the list of myriad reasons why I need to start buying grain in bulk.

I hit the wort with oxygen and pitched a 1.8L starter of fourth generation WLP004. [Note: I use liquid yeast 99% of the time. Ergo, I overbuild all my starters and harvest from the starter pre-pitch. I continue to use the same source strain until things start skewing too much or the yeast starts attenuating less and less. The last time I used this 004 was in April. That was, of course, 3rd generation, and it still fermented out fine with no off flavors and attenuated 86%, so I was confident using this 4th generation for this stout.]

I reached out to Chris for his advice on how we wanted to proceed with this higher gravity. We discussed topping off the fermenter with water to get down to the OG I was shooting for. I was fermenting this batch in my 7 gallon Fermonster, so I certainly had adequate headspace. However, ultimately I decided to leave it as is. The primary reason for this was I did not want to dilute the beer, particularly the hop presence and bitterness. I ran the numbers, and to get down to 1.064, I would need to add roughly 0.86 gallons of water, which I felt would dilute the beer more than I was comfortable with. The hop profile and bitterness on this beer is borderline perfect for my palate, so I did not want to disrupt that. Ergo, what was planned to be a mid-5% ABV stout, could potentially end up a mid-8% ABV stout. As the saying goes, “waste not, lest ye be wasted.” Or something like that, right?

Recipe

Iteration 7 was far and away better than Iteration 1, which is saying a lot because Iteration 1 was a solid stout. One thing I felt was lacking back on Iteration 1 was hop presence, but the hops in Iteration 7 were much better. Pretty much spot on, in my opinion, so I knew I did not need to mess with the hops. Iteration 7 also had a great mouthfeel, big and creamy, which I attributed to the flaked barley. I love having a flaked adjunct in all of my stouts for exactly those reasons, so I knew I was not changing that. The deeper I got into Iteration 7, and the more I let it warm up, the more roasted notes came to the forefront. The beer had a solid roast backbone, but I wanted more chocolate; actually, I wanted a softer, rounder chocolate flavor to balance some of the roast. Ultimately, what I was seeking was more of a candy bar chocolate flavor, which led me to Pale Chocolate. Depending on the beer, I usually like to balance Chocolate Malt with Pale Chocolate. To me, Chocolate Malt has more of a roastiness associated with coffee, whereas Pale Chocolate tastes more like, well, chocolate. Put another way, Pale Chocolate has more of the candy bar chocolate flavor, and Chocolate Malt has more of that bittersweet baking chocolate flavor. With my end goal firmly decided, here’s what I came up with:

• Mashed at 154°F for 1 hour
  • 68% 2-Row
  • 10.2% Victory
  • 7.5% Flaked Barley
  • 7.5% Roasted Barley
  • 5.1% Pale Chocolate
  • 1.7% Chocolate
• Boiled for 1 hour
  • 1 oz. Nugget (60 min) at 13% AA (44.3 IBUs)
  • 1 oz. Centennial (5 min) at 9.9% AA (6.8 IBUs)
• Water Profile (ppm): [Black Full] Calcium (41); Magnesium (3); Sodium (29); Sulfate (37); Chloride (49)
• Pitched WLP004 (1.8L starter)
• OG (calculated): 1.064
• OG (actual): 1.075 (see above)
• FG (actual): 1.012
• ABV: 8.3%

Tasting

Iteration 8 poured dark black, with a thick, light tan head, with thick compact bubbles, almost like a nitro beer.

Iteration 8 has a nose that reminds me of bittersweet chocolate, much like a baker’s kitchen. The taste reminds me of toasted chocolate milk, if that’s even possible. I get a heavy dark chocolate mocha and some slight alcohol warming in Iteration 8, most likely due to the much higher ABV than Iteration 7. The foam in Iteration 8 persisted throughout the glass.

Overall, I’m fairly pleased with Iteration 8. I definitely hit the chocolate candy bar notes I wanted from blending Chocolate Malt with Pale Chocolate. It’s got a nice full mouthfeel that further accentuates the chocolate flavors. This is far from the perfect stout, but even still I had trouble deciding what I would change if I were to brew this again. One thing I would be interested in is how the beer would change with a different base malt. I would like to try this beer with Maris Otter for the base malt to boost some of the flavors and round out the base with some more bready thickness that I often get from Maris Otter. Outside of that, I would consider either subbing out Flaked Barley for Flaked Oats and increasing the amount, or simply bumping up the Flaked Barley. I’m certainly curious to see where this beer goes next. I think it’s very solid as is currently, and any changes moving forward may hinge on brewers’ personal preferences.

Recipe Progression

This post is one in a series following six brewers collaborating to each make a small adjustment to a single recipe in order to improve it, then pass it along to the next brewer. We hope to learn more about the art of recipe creation as we see how other brewers approach the same recipe. The rest of the series can be found here.

Author: C. McKenzie

Brew Day

I’ve tasted each version of this stout from the beginning and although each has only had one change made to it, each change has resulted in a surprisingly different beer. Although I’ve gotten to taste each version and have been talking with each brewer during their process, I was excited to get this stout’s recipe back in my hands. Unfortunately, my brew day was delayed by a shipping disaster; Iteration 6 made it all the way across the country and into my state before it was reported as a damaged package. Needless to say, this was a giant bummer.

Eagerly anticipating the arrival of the second attempt at shipping Iteration 6 cross-country, I sat down and looked at what had been changed so far, already thinking that I was wanting to change something outside of the malt but not knowing how to approach it since I had yet to see the latest version of the recipe. Once the beer arrived and I tasted it, though, I had a pretty good idea what I wished there was more of in the recipe.

The much delayed brew day arrived, and I mashed in, overshooting my target mash temperature by one degree. My mash tun was filled to the brim, so I had no means of adjusting the temperature down (by the addition of ice or cold water) and let the slight variance ride. After an hour, I returned to collect the wort.

The rest of the brew day went basically as planned, boiling the wort for an hour and adding hops at the appropriate times.

Even with my immersion chiller, I had trouble getting my wort chilled to near my target fermentation temperature. It’s been hot here for a couple months already, so my groundwater just wasn’t doing the trick at any reasonable rate. Once I felt comfortable that the wort was cool enough that thermal shock wouldn’t shatter my glass carboy, I transferred the wort and put my carboy in my fermentation chamber to chill.

When I returned a couple hours later to check on the progress of the temperature, I found that not much had changed. The thermal mass of the wort in the fridge and the heat of the garage outside the fridge were enough that my fermentation chamber was struggling to drop the wort even a few degrees. As I was planning on pitching my yeast starter at high krausen, I didn’t want to wait until the next day to pitch my yeast. I pulled out my trusty plastic storage bin that, until recently, I had used for fermentation temperature control (via water/ice baths). I filled it with water and ice, put my carboy in, and swirled my carboy to help facilitate the heat exchange. It wasn’t long before the temperature had dropped significantly enough and I was able to pitch my yeast.

Recipe

When I tasted Iteration 6, I was surprised by its lack of aroma, especially compared to previous versions. Fighting hard to find what scents were there, I did note roasted character, toast, and dark fruit. The flavor was definitely more present than the aroma, but at first surprised me with how subdued it was compared to other versions. What I at first thought was lack of body and subdued flavor was actually (I realized after several more sips) a smoother character to the flavors. In fact, most everything from the prior iterations was there—the roasted character, some dark fruit, and a hint of chocolate once it warmed up. Those flavors were just not as hard-hitting as before.

After tasting this beer, I thought I might want to bring some of those bolder flavors back. The beer definitely needed more aroma. Before knowing what the previous brewer had changed, I was already leaning towards adding more hops, changing the hops, or changing the yeast (if the previous brewer had changed the yeast and that was the cause for the missing aroma/flavor.

As I kept drinking, though, the realizations I mentioned above began coming through, and I began to consider hops as my main focus this time in order to compliment the slight fruit character and as a counterpoint to the slight roast. Citrusy hops would have been at odds with the strong roast character from the previous versions (initially why I went with more English hops in Iteration 1), but the smoother roast character in Iteration 6 changed that for me.

When I looked at the recipe for Iteration 6, I saw that the previous brewer had, in fact, changed the yeast. Once I decided that I did enjoy the smoother roast flavors it yielded, I decided to keep that and change the hops. I considered simply adding hops for more aroma and flavor instead of changing them, but if I were going to go with a more citrus-forward hop, I didn’t think that the Willamette would pair well with that. Because of that, I ended up dropping Willamette from the recipe and added Centennial in its place to get some more citrus and floral flavor. I decided not to change the Nugget not only because it was the bittering hop and I wanted to focus more on flavor, but also because I tend to get a fruity flavor from Nugget, despite how it’s classically described, and I wanted to keep that around.

Those decisions resulted in the following recipe:

• Mashed at 155⁰ F
  • 69.2%. 2-Row
  • 10.8% Victory
  • 7.8% Roasted Barley
  • 7.8% Flaked Barley
  • 4.4% Chocolate
• Boiled for 1 hr.
  • 1 oz. Nugget (60 min) at 13.3% AA (44.3 IBUs)
  • 1 oz. Centennial (5 min) at 9.3% AA (6.2 IBUs)
• Pitched WLP004 Irish Ale Yeast
• OG: 1.064
• FG: 1.021
• ABV: 5.6%

Tasting

This beer poured with a solid amount of tan head that stuck around for quite a while. The color was definitively black.

The beer had an aroma of chocolate (somewhere between milk than dark), roasted notes, a hint of coffee, and perhaps a hint of floral notes in the aroma. Either the hops are starting to come through in this beer, or I was searching hard for elements I knew might be there due to my knowledge of the ingredients—admittedly, either was possible.

The mouthfeel was thick and viscous, but not in an overwhelming way. The flavor was one of dark chocolate, toast, and a hint of coffee. Unlike my uncertainty about the floral notes truly coming through in the aroma, floral and citrus notes from the hops definitely came through in the finish of this beer.

What I Would Change

Overall, this beer is taking shape well. The change in yeast made in Iteration 6 had a huge impact on how the flavors of this beer are expressed. Truly, it almost seems as if everything is a little more muted in both the flavor and aroma, but it’s somehow working well to keep the roasted flavors in the malt smooth and out of the realm of harsh or burnt flavors.

At this point, I think the malt bill is pretty solid—though there are flavors that were present before that are no longer present with the change in yeast, namely the toastiness that the Victory was lending is less present than before, and I might want to see that level of toastiness return. That said, I’m not entirely sure if that’s a malt change or a yeast change at this point. The change in yeast has definitely improved the beer overall, making the roasted flavors taste a little rounder, but it definitely stripped the aroma and some flavors from the beer.

What I do know is that the hop change was a definite improvement and that if I were to brew this again, the one change I know I would make would be to continue playing with the hops. I think that in addition to the Centennial addition at 5 minutes, another addition of Centennial or another American hop late in the boil or at flameout would push the hops to be more present. However, I think it would be a delicate balance and wouldn’t want to add much more than that, because I think any more would detract from the malt flavors with the current malt bill and yeast selection.

Recipe Progression

This post is one in a series following six brewers collaborating to each make a small adjustment to a single recipe in order to improve it, then pass it along to the next brewer. We hope to learn more about the art of recipe creation as we see how other brewers approach the same recipe. The rest of the series can be found here.

Author: M. Rasmussen

Brew Day

There was a lot going on with this brew day. I brewed an 8 gallon batch because I’m in the process of teaching a couple of friends how to homebrew. I was documenting as much as I possibly could— far more than I normally document. My regular brewing partner was brewing 5 gallons of a blonde ale right next to our 8 gallons of stout. And, of course, there was pizza and plenty of beer in the mix. That being said, this was one of my more successful brew days when it came to hitting all of the numbers.

I use a BIAB setup with a 16 gallon kettle, BrewBag, propane burner, ladder + pulley system, and a plastic wide-mouth fermenter. I’ve only ever brewed an 8 gallon batch a few times, so I was very meticulous when crafting the recipe in BeerSmith and throughout brew day. I’ve yet to get into buying grains in bulk, so my brewing process started out with a trip to the local homebrew store to pick up the grain bill and some yeast. I usually like to do a full yeast starter, but since I didn’t know the recipe until the day before brew day, I had to shorten my process a bit. I got a vitality starter going the night before brew day so the yeast would be awake, plentiful, and in their groove when they hit the beer.

I also collected my gear and measured all of the water the night before to make brew day that much smoother. After setting up the brew station, I dosed the water with 5oz of gypsum, 2.5oz of calcium chloride and 1.5oz of lactic acid to hit a pH of 5.4, according to my Bru’n water spreadsheet.

Once the 10 gallons of mash water got up to temp, it was time to dough in. The mash smelled incredible. All of the dark and roasted malts created one of the richest and chocolatey mashes I’ve ever been around. I hit the mash temperature dead on.

After ten minutes of mashing, I checked the pH and it was right on target. Throughout the 60 minute mash, I went back a few times to stir and reheat to maintain the most efficient extraction possible. After the mash, I raised the bag, rinsed the grain to get back up to my pre-boil volume, and squeezed the bag.

I overshot the pre-boil gravity by 2 points, so I added a little bit of water to dilute the wort.

The boil went smoothly. I use Fermcap to keep my risk of boil-overs as low as possible. With this rich and sugary of a wort, it was almost not enough. I never actually boiled over, but it got up to the rim a few times. I added the Nugget hop charge at 60 minutes, whirlfloc and my stainless steel immersion chiller went in at 15 minutes, and then the Willamette charge went in at 5 minutes.

I checked the gravity right before I cut the flame, and I still came in one point high. My groundwater was nice and cold that morning, so the wort was chilled within 20 minutes. I use a spray aerator during the transfer to my fermenter to introduce oxygen. Once the beer was transferred, I took a few seconds to admire the beauty of such a dark wort.

After sitting in my fermentation chamber for a few hours, the wort was at my fermentation temperature of 66 degrees, so I pitched the yeast. I noticed signs of active fermentation the next morning. Krausen fell and activity slowed down about 60 hours later. The beer sat at 72 degrees while I was out of town for the weekend. Ten days after pitching the yeast, I started the cold crash, and the next day I kegged the beer.

I pulled a hydrometer sample to check the final gravity right before transferring to the keg. BeerSmith estimated an FG of 1.018, but the hydrometer was reading 1.024. I tasted the sample, and it definitely didn’t taste as sweet as the hydrometer suggested. So I grabbed my refractometer and plugged that reading into four different post-fermentation refractometer calculators. They all gave me the same FG of 1.018; I think I’ll forgo using that hydrometer in the future. I’m much too impatient to carbonate the traditional way, so I set my regulator to 50 PSI and let it sit overnight. In the morning I reduced the pressure to 10 PSI, relieved the pressure in the keg and let it sit while I went to work. Twelve days after brew day, I poured my first glass.

Recipe

Tasting notes from Iteration 5:

Appearance: Dark black. Resembles pitch or tar. Opaque, even when held up to direct light. Upon pouring, a thin head formed around the rim of the glass. The small head was tan and dissipated very quickly. Upon drinking, there was a nice lacing of off-white bubbles down the sides of the glass.

Aroma: Just after pouring (at 38°F) I got hints of vanilla, hazelnut, and chocolate. It was reminiscent of American sweet/milk stouts I’ve tried. There was also a bit of alcohol sharpness on the nose at first. After warming about 10 or 12 degrees, the aroma transformed into heavy notes of caramel, blonde roast coffee, and stone fruits—mainly plum.

Flavor: The main flavor at first was a heavy hit of roasted malt. There was a slight warming from the alcohol as it finished. It was a decently smooth flavor, but there wasn’t a lot of complexity. I didn’t pick up any flavor from the hops. As it warmed, the stone fruit, caramel, and chocolate notes from the aroma came out to play.

Mouthfeel: Carbonation level was perfect for a stout. It had a nice medium body, but I still would have liked a little more.

Aftertaste: Slight astringency at first. Most likely from the heavy use of roasted malt. As it warmed, the astringency mellowed out into a coffee-like bitterness. The caramel notes were more expressive once the beer reached 50°F.

Overall, I thought this beer was pretty decent. It had the makings of a really good stout, but there were a few things that fell short of making it a memorable beer. The heavy roasted notes, lack of hop character, slightly thinner body, and lack of overall complexity were all on my mind as I thought of what to change about the recipe. The grain bill had been changed in every iteration except one, so I didn’t want to fiddle with that again until the other aspects had been addressed. It didn’t take me long to decide that I wanted to use a different yeast. The Chico strain has so many strengths, but I felt that this beer was desperate for a yeast strain that was made to accentuate the level of dark/roasted malts in this bill.

Recipe:

• Mashed at 154° for 60 minutes
  • 69.2% 2-row
  • 10.8% Victory
  • 7.8% Flaked Barley
  • 7.8% Roasted Barley
  • 4.4% Chocolate (300°L)
• Boiled for 60 minutes
  • 1.6 oz Nugget (60 min.) at 12.4% AA (45 IBUs)
  • 1.7 oz Willamette (5 min.) at 4.6% AA (3.6 IBUs)
• Pitched a vitality starter of White Labs Irish Ale Yeast (WLP004)
• OG: 1.065
• FG: 1.018
• ABV: 6.2%

Tasting

Iteration 6 tasting notes:

Appearance: Just as black and opaque as the previous version. No surprise there. There was a thick, off-white head. Not nearly as tan as before. Head retention was still pretty low. Dissipated quickly but still laced the glass nicely.

Aroma: Raisin and stone fruit—plum again. Faint roasted notes with hints of coffee and vanilla. After warming the vanilla and stone fruit is more expressive, and there are some esters from the new yeast.

Flavor: Much more complex. Still very malt-forward, but the punch of roasted malt is lessened. I tasted darkened toast or a slightly burnt biscuit. The flavor reminded me of the chocolate bread that you get at The Cheesecake Factory. There was still a slight warming from the alcohol when swallowing. After warming up, the caramel notes that I got so much in the previous version came out. I got vanilla and some milk chocolate flavors as well, but no coffee notes.

Mouthfeel: Pillowy and fluffy. Carbonation was light, just as a stout should be. The body was still medium, maybe medium-light.

Aftertaste: Slight astringency when still cold. Not quite as sharp as the previous version. Maybe this was the hop character peeking through the malt? After warming up, the astringency dissipated and the aftertaste was sweet and smooth.

I’m very happy with this beer. It’s a decent stout straight from a cold tap, but this is the kind of beer that begs to be served at 50 degrees (Fahrenheit). The change in yeast did exactly what I expected by bringing out more complex aromas and flavors. I still would like to be able to taste and/or smell the hops in this beer, and I think one or two tweaks to the grain bill could be made to increase the body & head retention and bring out more chocolate & coffee flavors.

Recipe Progression

This post is one in a series following six brewers collaborating to each make a small adjustment to a single recipe in order to improve it, then pass it along to the next brewer. We hope to learn more about the art of recipe creation as we see how other brewers approach the same recipe. The rest of the series can be found here.

Author: R. Goyenko

Brew Day

This brewday was a bit different since the deadline to brew was on April 1, and I had a vacation a week before that. We tried to arrange for the beer to get there before the vacation so I could brew before I left. It almost happened through the collective effort, but the previous beer wasn’t there before I left, so I ended up brewing after my deadline, but everything else went smoothly with this brew.

I do BIAB, so the setup is simple—a brewing bag, a big pot, some blankets, a burner, and a fermenter. At this point the procedure is established. I put the recipe in Beersmith with my changes to the recipe and adjustments for the water chemistry.

I measured out the grains and milled them.

Then the water – I used about 8.3 gallons for this batch. The previous recipe was a bit sweet and finished at a final gravity of 1.020, so I decided to lower the temperature slightly to the temperature used in previous recipes: 154⁰F, which I came pretty close to.

I mashed in, and after about 10 minutes, I measured the Ph of water. It was pretty close to what Bru’n’Water predicted—a bit on a high side, but ok.

After one hour of mashing, I got the bag out and drained the wort. The pre-boil gravity came in at 1.050.

Here comes a bit of a diversion: I’ve started doing one gallon, experimental batches from the grain left from the main mash. I don’t squeeze the bag, and I wash it with hot water to gather 1.5-2 gallons of wort. I change something with that wort so I can compare it to the main boil. In this case I infused the secondary wort with 4 oz. of Special B malt.

In the meantime the main beer was boiling.

I measured and added the hops at the times in the recipe. After the boil, I chilled the wort quickly (it was still very cold outside, so it chilled in about 10 minutes). I measured the OG, and it came in as expected at 1.064

I transferred the wort to the carboy (I have a cool old glass one which I won in a lottery in beer swap raffle) and pitched the yeast.

I forgot that I needed yeast for my experiment brew, but luckily I had some San Diego Super yeast (WLP090) in the fridge. That’s what I like about the experimental batches – since it’s an experiment I can change two things or even screw it up, and it’s not a big deal.

The OG on the experimental batch was 1.060 (a bit lower since it was sort of a non-traditional parti-gyle, but not too low because I infused with Special B it and boiled off a bunch of water).

I finished pretty late at night and checked on the beer in the morning; it was still dormant after about 7 hours. After I came back from work, though, it was bubbling happily (I love bubbling beer—it’s such a joy looking at this living thing).

After 6 days, signs of fermentation stopped and the krausen dropped. The gravity was at 1.020. I measured 3 days after that and the gravity was the same.

I decided to bottle this beer even though I usually keg—I figured I would need to bottle a bunch anyway, so it would just save me some hustle.

I measured dextrose to make it to 2.1 volumes of CO2, transferred to the bottling bucket, and mixed gently. Washing the bottles beforehand is always the worst part for me.

The experimental batch finished lower at 1.015 from the lower OG of 1.060, and I bottled it as well.

Recipe

Tasting notes from Iteration 4:

Aroma: Strong dark fruit aroma from malt – raisins, figs, dried plums. Strong and pleasant dark malt aroma with chocolate, toffee, and some coffee flavor. No hop aroma or it’s hiding behind the stronger malt.

Appearance: Dark brown, looks reddish if you put it to the light, moderate head of cream/tan color that lasts for some time, some lacing on the glass walls. Foam stays for a while.

Flavor: Full bodied, with medium-low bitterness from hops. The flavor is similar to aroma – malty, dark fruits, a bit of bitterness from hops, but the balance is towards the malt. Finish is medium-sweet.

Mouthfeel: Carbonation is medium, full body.

I also had a friend from my homebrew club provide his thoughts, which were as follows:

“Great body and carbonation. Tan, dark brown. Dark chocolate and crust aroma, good level of roasted barley flavor with a dry malt profile probably from the roasted barley. Little bit of chocolate. Does finish sweet with citrus bitterness.”

After tasting this beer I thought through what I would change. It’s very good beer; I like the aroma a lot, and the flavor is good too. The one thing I think could improve is that it tastes and looks more like brown ale than a stout. I think it needed a more robust roasted flavor–roasted barley I think would help with both the appearance and roastiness of the beer. So, that’s what I decided to bring back up. I know that’s what previous brewer brought down from, but I reasoned that since Iteration 3 was much lower in gravity—if the gravity on mine were higher, it could sustain more roast.

• Mashed at 154° for 60 minutes
  • 69.2% 2-row
  • 10.8% Victory
  • 7.7% Flaked Barley
  • 7.7% Roasted Barley
  • 4.4% Chocolate (300°L)
• Boiled for 60 minutes
  • 0.89oz Nugget (60 min.) at 14.0% AA (41.5 IBUs)
  • 1 oz Willamette (5 min.) at 4.8% AA (3 IBUs)
• Pitched Safale US-05
• OG: 1.064
• FG: 1.020
• ABV: 5.8%

Tasting

Iteration 5 tasting notes:

Aroma: Dried plums, raisins, dried stone fruits, ash aroma, dark roasted coffee, chocolate, highly roasted breadcrumb.

Appearance: Dark brown, almost black, big dark tan head that persists, nice lacing. Bubbles are small and look velvety.

Flavor: Dark roasted malt, burnt coffee grounds, malt sweetness is on lower side, hops are subdued, finish is medium-dry.

Mouthfeel: Medium body, creamy, a bit of astringency, medium carbonation.

My friend provided the following tasting notes:

“Raisins/plums or dark fruit aroma. Slightly less carbonation and mouthfeel—a little thinner. Much darker color. A little bite from roasted barley, but good balance of malty sweetness, esters, and roasty flavor.”

I also took this beer to my BJCP training class and had it evaluated by 12 people, some who are training and some who are certified BJCP judges. Their scoresheets can be found here: BJCP Scoresheets for Iteration 5

Overall I think the beer came out pretty well. The appearance improved and there is more roastiness, but I think it might be too much. If I were to brew this again, I might dial the roasted barley down from 7.7% to around 6% so there is less harshness and in hopes that the maltiness and related flavors/aromas would come through better.

Another thing I think would benefit this beer is more hops so they come through more assertively.

Thoughts on the one-gallon experimental beer:

Carbonation is higher, higher in body, has more intense dark fruit/figs from malt, less fruity flavors/cleaner flavor. Finishes drier, has some more harshness I think from Special B.

My friend’s thoughts: “Lots of carbonation, great body. Less estery. Black in color. Cleaner beer, drier, and little harsher in roasted flavor.”

I think this shows the difference in yeast, as it has much cleaner/drier flavor and not too many esters. Special B added some interesting notes, but it’s a bit much; I think that maybe substituting some of the roasted barley for special B would work.

The difference in yeast is also pretty interesting. I think it shows how simply changing the yeast can dramatically alter the aroma/flavor.

Recipe Progression