I'm going to try making an imperial stout. I'm aiming for an around 9% beer, low on hop bitterness and high on malt / caramel / roast flavour. Are there any recommendations for a yeast to use?
Any clean yeast you like. US05 will do.
Above the yeast strain I'd suggest you make a low abv first ~4%, take the low abv beer off the yeast cake when its finished and pitch your big beer onto the entire yeast cake and shake the shit out of it.
You want a lot of bitterness for an imperial stout
I'd be interested to hear your recipe and how you got on with it. Considering doing a 2.5 gallon batch of imperial stout or porter to be ready by Christmas, maybe even try my hand at partigyle brewing.
Well as you asked, this is what I went with:
7kg Minch Hook Head Pale Malt
1kg CaraMunich Type II
500g Flaked Barley
500g Roasted Barley
500g Special B
400g CaraMunich Type I
300g Carafa II
500g Brown Sugar
Target water profile:
calcium = 95 mg/l
magnesium = 8 mg/l
sodium = 35 mg/l
chloride = 70 mg/l
sulphate = 40 mg/l
bicarbonates = 200 mg/l
Mashed at 67 degrees for an hour in 24.5l of water. Added additional 6l of water after the mash.
Boiled for 75min until I hit my expected volume.
Added 75g of target pellets at 75mins
I made a 2l yeast starter with White Labs WPL013 London Ale.
Estimated efficiency 70%
Estimated abv 9.5%
Estimated IBUs 53
I think it's gone well so far, the main issue being that this was really at the limits of what you can do in a Peco boiler. My mash was like thick porridge! I seem to have roughly hit the right numbers though.
The fermentation took off like a rocket. I haven't checked the S.G. yet but I think (hope) that it is nearly done.
What FG are you expecting? I'd bet it'll be quite high with all that caramunich and a 67 mash.
According to brew target the final S.G. should be 1.028. I'll find out tomorrow where it's at!
I'm going to brew an Imperial Stout this week. Going to try WPL005... Anyone used it before?
I haven't tried WPL005 but the WPL013 turned out well - it added a slightly soft smokey/oaky flavour. It finished up at 1.022, so high attenuation. My imperial stout as a whole is a bit too astringent at the moment so I'm leaving it a while to see if it mellows out.
Just as an update my WPL005 worked really well for me. Got a cracking 10.5% Stout, really clean flavor profile. Did not taste like a 10.5% beer. I build up a starter to pitch about 300B cells if I remember correctly.