National Homebrew Club Ireland

This is the recipe for my imperial stout which won gold in the export stout category with a score of 43. I brewed this about 2 years ago, it's a big beer with lots of big flavours and so really needs plenty of time to smooth the rough edges.

Cracke In The Skye
Imperial Stout

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 20
Total Grain (kg): 10.46
Total Hops (g): 305
Original Gravity (OG): 1.105
Final Gravity (FG): 1.032
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 9.6 %
Colour (SRM): 95
Bitterness (IBU): 86 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 68
Boil Time (Minutes): 90

Grain Bill
----------------
7.300 kg Pale Malt (70%)
1.100 kg Chocolate (11%)
0.850 kg Roasted Barley (8%)
0.850 kg Wheat Malt (8%)
0.360 kg Special W (3%)

Hop Bill
----------------
60 g Northern Brewer Leaf (7.3% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (Boil)
50 g Northern Brewer Leaf (7.3% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
25 g Northern Brewer Leaf (7.3% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil)
50 g East Kent Golding Leaf (7% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil)
70 g East Kent Golding Leaf (7% Alpha) @ 3 Minutes (Boil)

50 g East Kent Golding Leaf (7% Alpha) @ 7 Days (Dry Hop)


Single step Infusion at 65°C for 90 Minutes.
Fermented at 21°C with Wyeast 1084 - Irish Ale

Looks great, thankyou for sharing, it would be amazing if all gold medal winners did, what's special w?

Quote from: CH on March 12, 2017, 09:56:14 PM
what's special w?

It's just Weyermann's version of special B.

Yeah I use Special B just never heard term special W before

(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170312/17673cb55e76ed60ee2b9ececc6d7f4c.jpg)

Was that dark chocolate or pale chocolate and how do you convert leaf amounts to pellet when measuring the hops.

Quote from: DEMPSEY on March 13, 2017, 10:50:47 AM
Was that dark chocolate or pale chocolate and how do you convert leaf amounts to pellet when measuring the hops.

It's the standard dark chocolate malt. I think to convert leaf to pellets you reduce the amount by 10% to account for higher utilisation.

Thanks for the recipe Redshift. Going to get this brewed over the next few weeks and age it for Winter(maybe longer if i can resist the temptation)

I just have a couple of questions about the grain bill.

Is the wheat malt regular or dark?
Where did you get your hands on roasted barley? Thehomebrewcompany dont seem to stock it.

Quote from: greystashlawless on May 18, 2018, 11:44:56 AM
Thanks for the recipe Redshift. Going to get this brewed over the next few weeks and age it for Winter(maybe longer if i can resist the temptation)

I just have a couple of questions about the grain bill.

Is the wheat malt regular or dark?
Where did you get your hands on roasted barley? Thehomebrewcompany dont seem to stock it.

http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/minch-roast-barley-500g-whole-p-3093.html

Cracked open my first one last night after only 7 weeks in the bottle, already superb! Can't wait to see how it develops.

Thanks Molc, embarrassingly i searched for "Roasted" rather then "Roast"

Hey KDeath, how would you describe the flavour of it? Im half tempted to add some chocolate nibs/vanilla to it.

Quote from: greystashlawless on May 18, 2018, 12:36:01 PM
Thanks Molc, embarrassingly i searched for "Roasted" rather then "Roast"

Hey KDeath, how would you describe the flavour of it? Im half tempted to add some chocolate nibs/vanilla to it.

I went with the exact percentages above and found it very chocolatey, not overwhelmingly so though - I used Minch for what it's worth. The roastiness was very subdued as well but it's in there, hopefully it doesn't disappear after aging a while.

I did also create a tincture of cocoa nibs, vanilla & tonka beans and added that to a few bottles as well (attempted 3 bean stout clone), as well as coffee & coconut to another - won't be tasting them for a while.

KDeath was the wheat malt you used dark? or regular?

Quote from: greystashlawless on May 19, 2018, 10:11:24 AM
KDeath was the wheat malt you used dark? or regular?

Bog standard, I did use Special W as well - couldn't tell you how different it is to Special B as I've never made the same recipe with either but I just followed redshift's.

Another question on this one lads..

i'm planning on brewing this at the weekend, but after putting the details into Beersmith I've discovered that my mash tun(34l Coleman cooler) is too small to do a single infusion. Did anyone else run into this problem?

From searching around online i believe the options are to:

• Split the grain bill and do 2 x 17L mashes
• Mash thicker, maybe at 2.2L/Kg

Any opinions on those two? Or any other suggestions?

Brew a smaller batch

Replace some of the base malt with extract maybe

Have got all the ingredients ordered now, so will go for a half batch. Planning on brewing the other half toward the end of the year an let it sit until Christmas 2019. Cheers lads.

Quote from: greystashlawless on May 21, 2018, 08:11:49 PM
Another question on this one lads..

i'm planning on brewing this at the weekend, but after putting the details into Beersmith I've discovered that my mash tun(34l Coleman cooler) is too small to do a single infusion. Did anyone else run into this problem?

From searching around online i believe the options are to:

• Split the grain bill and do 2 x 17L mashes
• Mash thicker, maybe at 2.2L/Kg

Any opinions on those two? Or any other suggestions?

Sorry I only just saw this. My preference would be what Qs suggested, replace some of the base malt with DME. There are so many big flavours in this you wouldn't notice the difference. Hope your brew goes well anyway.