Since everyone else is starting their recipe threads we might as well too, especially since we've not got too long before the cask arrives..
Personally I'm not particularly fussed with what we go for. I enjoy Leann Follain whiskey aged (6.8%) but also like Porterhouse Celebration (11%) and Eight Degrees chocolate stout (7%) was very tasty too.
Do we know what kind of cask we are getting? I'm assuming it will be whiskey that went into a blend but knowing whether it was previously a sherry or bourbon cask might give us an idea of what flavours to expect.
I've no experience really with recipe formation but I'd probably prefer one that goes into the barrel no more than 8 or 9%. And one that comes out with more vanilla, chocolaty flavours than any malty nuttiness which I've found a few stronger stouts can have.
I really enjoyed the Eight Degrees chocolate stout. I liked how the flavour wasn't too overpowering.
Quote
Do we know what kind of cask we are getting? I'm assuming it will be whiskey that went into a blend but knowing whether it was previously a sherry or bourbon cask might give us an idea of what flavours to expect.
AFAIK: The barrels start life as either new, or a 1 batch old Jack Daniels cask. They are filled with raw spirit from the still and left for about 6 years. They are reused as above another 4 or 5 times and so may be between 24 and 30 years old. They have to the best of my knowledge only ever stored cask strength whiskey!!
As soon as I get ours I will check the alcohol content of the whiskey in the cask! (Scientifically - before you accuse me of drinking all the liquid!!)
I did some research, as I always like to do. I talked to award winning brewer RichieH, a veteran barreler, and I have come up with this. I based it a bit around what I have done in the past plus Stone's Imperial Stout (with the addition of choc malt). What do you think? We could push for 10% with an extra kilo of grain but you will need a mash tun of approx 36l for that grain bill with 2.5l/kg. We could leave out the crystal as it might not attenuate BUt the barrel should look after everything and mellow it out hugely. Note: 90 min boil (minimum I would say to concentrate the wort)
[size=14]Capital Barrel Imperial Stout[/size]
[size=12]13-F Russian Imperial Stout[/size]
[size=10]Author: rossa[/size]
(http://www.beertools.com/images/colors/44.jpg) (http://www.beertools.com/)
[size=10]Size: 20 L @ 20 °C[/size]
[size=10]Efficiency: 60%[/size]
[size=10]Attenuation: 75.0%[/size]
[size=10]Calories: 315.95 kcal per 12.0 fl oz[/size]
[size=10]Original Gravity: 1.094 (1.075 - 1.115)[/size]
[size=10]|===============#================|[/size]
[size=10]Terminal Gravity: 1.023 (1.018 - 1.030)[/size]
[size=10]|===============#================|[/size]
[size=10]Color: 87.77 (59.1 - 78.8)[/size]
[size=10]|===============================#|[/size]
[size=10]Alcohol: 9.35% (8.0% - 12.0%)[/size]
[size=10]|=============#==================|[/size]
[size=10]Bitterness: 155.5 (50.0 - 90.0)[/size]
[size=10]|================================|[/size]
[size=12]Ingredients:[/size]
[size=10]8 kg (74.8%) Pale Ale Malt - added during mash[/size]
[size=10]1 kg (9.3%) Amber Malt - added during mash[/size]
[size=10].7 kg (6.5%) Roasted Barley - added during mash[/size]
[size=10].300 kg (2.8%) Black Malt - added during mash[/size]
[size=10].500 kg (4.7%) Chocolate Malt - added during mash[/size]
[size=10].200 kg (1.9%) Crystal 55 - added during mash[/size]
[size=10]30 g (9.1%) Magnum (14.1%) - added during boil, boiled 90 m[/size]
[size=10]150 g (45.5%) East Kent Goldings (7.2%) - added during boil, boiled 20 m[/size]
[size=10]150 g (45.5%) East Kent Goldings (7.2%) - added during boil, boiled 5 m[/size]
[size=10]3.0 ea WYeast 1084 Irish Ale[/size]
[size=12]Schedule:[/size]
[size=10]Ambient Air: 21.11 °C[/size]
[size=10]Source Water: 15.56 °C[/size]
[size=10]Elevation: 0.0 m[/size]
[size=9]Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.24 (http://www.beertools.com/)[/size]
Thanks for the recipe Rossa, it looks great! It pretty much is at the limit of what I can achieve with my mashtun and I always base my numbers on a 60% efficiency. I didn't know other people were getting as low as I was but perhaps you are being cautious with the numbers for that reason.
If I can get a sample of the yeast from someone I could do up a slant of it for everyone.
Hi Rossa
Got my mash tun manifold finished last night. So hoping to get the insulation on this weekend. Any chance you would export this recipe from beer tools and attach the exported file to the thread? Are there any special instructions required with respect to sparging or recirculating the wort from the mash tun?
What should the strike temp of the mash water be and how long should one mash for? By the way I have a huge amount of unmalted Barley that I can give people to roast at home them selves.
Shanna
QuoteIf I can get a sample of the yeast from someone I could do up a slant of it for everyone.
I was chatting to Rossa about this. I have some Irish Ale slants that I could give you. Are you around DCU this week? I could bring one or two in tomorrow.
Nice recipe Rossa. That'll definitely get you in the ball park. A few words of advice based on the RIS myself, Richie and Kev did a few years back.
- your kettle elements will take a real beating on this brew, especially if you're going to use a 90 minute boil. Mine cut out on the first batch; I was using two 2.4kW elements, so I had to switch boilers. I ended up using my trusty 3kW element boiler instead.
- on a beer this size, and given the fact that it will be aged for quite a while, you could save yourselves some money by add more bittering hops at the start and using less EKG at the end. We found that getting the right level of bitterness was more important than trying to get a strong hop flavour, which is difficult in such a malty whiskey/vanilla flavoured beer.
- our blended batches dropped a bit in the barrel, so expect a higher ABV post barrel-aging
- and there's all the obvious stuff: use massive starters, aerate very well, have a blow off tube at the ready!
Good luck lads!
QuoteQuoteIf I can get a sample of the yeast from someone I could do up a slant of it for everyone.
I was chatting to Rossa about this. I have some Irish Ale slants that I could give you. Are you around DCU this week? I could bring one or two in tomorrow.
Thanks for the tips, we will need all the help we can get! :)
I'm in DCU all week.
Either way we need to agree on this sooner rather than later.
The yeast will take time to slant and for people to grow starters from those slants. That process, even if I had the yeast today, is going to take 10 days...
East kent goldings have now gone out of stock on both the HBC and HBW, they were in stock last night...
The same is going to start happening to the speciality malts pretty soon as other clubs agree on their recipes.
True. Maybe we can buy 5kg from simply hops, maybe SD will come on board there too.
Yeah it would make sense to pair up and get a bale if the stock situation doesn't change.
I'm meeting with Dr. Jacoby and Joey today to sort out the yeast.
Give me a shout if Peter gives you the spare vial and I can pop by tonight if you are home.
Quote from: shiny on April 18, 2013, 11:14:51 AM
Yeah it would make sense to pair up and get a bale if the stock situation doesn't change.
I'm meeting with Dr. Jacoby and Joey today to sort out the yeast.
I have a spare vial for you Rossa from Peter. I will bring it home with me tonight.
I will work with Joey to get another dozen or so slants done up from the other one here which can be distributed out to the rest of the lads to make up their own starters.
Info:
The yeast is WLP004 (http://www.whitelabs.com/yeast/wlp004-irish-ale-yeast), optimal for ESB's, porters, stouts and bitters.
Quote from: Rossa on April 17, 2013, 06:59:27 PM
True. Maybe we can buy 5kg from simply hops, maybe SD will come on board there too.
I'd be up for going in on this if possible. I have plenty of American hops but I'm short on English and German. If anyone fancies getting some saaz we could add a pack of that too. 3x5Kg packs is the most efficient for postage but that might be overkill!
I need to place a BIG order (3 barrels, plus normal brewing) so I could piggy back and bump it way up.
Wicklow need grain too. Do that is them,capital and probably SD. Do we go Irish pale and order specials from hbc or go Bairds? Simply hops seems the best option for ekg. Peter, hop on board. This all needs to be done by midweek I'd say.
When do you expect we should brew this? Im hoping to do a brew of my own soon but have only 1 fermentor so need to plan my dates.
Im also looking to get some more grain if there is a bulk buy happening. If we go irish malt we will need a mill/grinder which i dont have yet.
Alright lads,
Is this the main thread we are using to co-ordinate then?
Im in the same boat as Cathal and pinning down some dates would be handy as I don't have many free days after the bank holiday. I need to order in stocks this week as well.
I have all my stuff picked out on the brewing store. The only things holding me up at the moment are the grain and the hops. I have initiated attempts to sort out the hops and I can take delivery of those if needs be but I wouldn't have a hope of being able to sort out the grain.
I wonder could we all haul in our gear to Tog for the brewday? It might be a nice day if we got to brew as a team!
Then we can all ferment at home?!?
We'd need a gas setup or two to make this happen I'd say as there wouldn't be enough electricity for all of us otherwise!
Quote from: Padraic on April 25, 2013, 01:32:53 PM
I wonder could we all haul in our gear to Tog for the brewday? It might be a nice day if we got to brew as a team!
Then we can all ferment at home?!?
We'd need a gas setup or two to make this happen I'd say as there wouldn't be enough electricity for all of us otherwise!
Were you proposing to do that on the 12th?
How much grain do you need maybe I can help you out with some?
Shanna
Quote from: shiny on April 24, 2013, 12:12:53 PM
I have all my stuff picked out on the brewing store. The only things holding me up at the moment are the grain and the hops. I have initiated attempts to sort out the hops and I can take delivery of those if needs be but I wouldn't have a hope of being able to sort out the grain.
I'm looking for 25kg minimum at this stage, I'm looking at a few different ways of getting it at the moment but if they don't work out I will just buy them from the usual place online.
I have a spare 10 kg bag that I bought earlier I this year from the maltings in Cork that you can have. Don't want money for it. If you take it just try replace it if there is another group buy in the future.
Shanna
Quote from: shiny on April 25, 2013, 10:52:34 PM
I'm looking for 25kg minimum at this stage, I'm looking at a few different ways of getting it at the moment but if they don't work out I will just buy them from the usual place online.
Mr Malty reckons about 200ml of slurry, gathered on the day of pitching to the new beer, will be enough liquid yeast. I am doing a batch tomorrow to pitch into the two brews. If you haven't got the starter going you would need to do it very soon. At least a week in advance and build it to a min of 3l (using a stir plate, 7l when not shaking regularly)...according to http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html
Does anyone need any WLP004 for this brew? I'm starting up from a slant tonight so I could do a parallel conical if people needed some. I can have it for the Capital brewers meet if they need it.
I can also do another stater from what I have but if you were thinking of brewing next weekend it could be iffy unless you had a bag of dme to build it with up asap.
I made an all grain wort last night and there is 3L of that in the fridge to use as it gets stepped up. Anyone getting any slurry would it would probably be worth having your wort ready to pitch when you get it. I was hoping to have a concentration that could be pitched into a 2L starter by the capital brewers meet, I could be overly optimistic with that though.
I put the recipe into beersmith yesterday and its only giving me 105 IBU's for my configuration. I wouldn't have minded if I was only a little bit out but that is over 30% off Rossa's numbers. If I up my magnum contribution to 50g from 30g that brings me up to 140IBU's. I just want to err on the side of caution as I think its better to be 'too bitter' than 'not bitter enough' with an imperial stout or else we will end up with something cloyingly sweet.
What do ye think?
the style range is 50-90 140 to me is tooooo much :(
I don't think we will be anywhere near 140 as no one is taking into account hop age at all so we are most likely still in the low 100's.
Fired this into BeerSmith and it's given me this as an extract beer version. Reckon it looks alright anyway.
http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/2606/imperialstout.jpg (http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/2606/imperialstout.jpg)
There's very little sense to be made of IBU levels when they go beyond the 100 mark. The acids stop being soluble in water at concentrations above 120 or so (there seems to be some dispute about the exact figure - it depends on a few factors). In any case, IBU levels don't translate into perceived bitterness very closely, especially not at these high levels. I wouldn't get hung up on exact figures. The important thing is that if you are brewing a monster beer, you should probably aim for monstrous bitterness levels.
When we brewed our 11.5% Russian Imperial Stout we got a theoretical IBU prediction of 130 in Beertools. When we tasted the finished beer the bitterness wasn't in any way overpowering. I wouldn't have been able to guess that there were ridiculously large hop additions early in the boil.
The bigger threat is probably not bittering the beer enough. Imperial Stouts can easily resemble a BP oil slick if you don't throw in enough bittering hops.
Hey guys. Im buying some speciality mslts for this barrel brew from The Homebrew Company. They only have roasted barley in whole form and i dont have a grinder yet. If I get it can one of you crush it for me next week?
I can crush it for you Cathal.
Cheers shane. I will PM you
Cathal if you are getting grain crushed do you want me to leave your hops with Shiny or go with the original plan with Padraic ?
That's no problem with me anyway.
Joey was just telling me about the Magnum he received today. Its 2011 harvest so they are approximately 20 months old at this stage. Its hard to know what way to calculate the current AA values as we have no idea what temperatures they have been stored at. By varying the temperature in BeerSmith it seems they only loose 1-2% at most despite being stored for 20 months. That's pretty impressive if true.
All you ever need to know about hop storage and were afraid to ask
I just know all mine are frozen and I vac seal in heavy gauge bags. Aroma and even oil will migrate through PE bags over 12 months
http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.1/garetz.html
Quote from: Cathal O D on May 02, 2013, 01:36:16 PM
Cheers shane. I will PM you
Ciderhead has just dropped by. I also have your hops. ;)
Ok sweet. I will give u a buzz tomorrow if thats ok
Yup thats grand.
Im doing this brew tomorrow and I just want to check a few numbers. My software says 27L for the mash and 14L to sparge. Im aiming for 23L. Does this sound right to you guys?
Also how long did you mash for and what temp?
I mashed in with ~25L (that's all i had space for) then I sparged with 14L and then 2L. That ads to 41L which is the same as what you are getting so yeah it looks bang on to me for a final volume of 23L.
I mashed my capital brew for 2 hours at 150oF but my overnight mash came out with the best numbers....
Cool. im going for a 90min mash as it loses temperature longer than that.
i found the extra grain and lack of headspace seemed to hold the temp longer
Hops !
I have a burco like that Cathal, do you have a hops strainer on that?
I used a paint strainer bag that Shane gave me but a strainer would be the job.
I cut a circle out of stainless steel mesh and made a false bottom out of it.
and if the rebels try to charge the portcullis you can pour the boiling tar down on top of them, is that safe perched there ;)
Hi Cathal O D
Would you mind posting where you got the stainless steel mesh please?
Shanna
Quote from: Cathal O D on May 13, 2013, 03:30:35 PM
I cut a circle out of stainless steel mesh and made a false bottom out of it.
Even just a pic of the inside of your burco would be good! I need to do something with it, its wrecking my head.
Here is a picture of the inside of my boiler. I use 5 two inch bolts to keep tye the mesh off the bottom. Im going to replace them with stainless steel bolts as you can see they have rusted. The handel is for lifting it out after the boil.
This is where I got the mesh.
Graepel Perforators and Weavers Ltd.
Unit 6, Ballymount Road Ind. Est., Lwr. Ballymount Rd.,
Walkinstown, Dublin 12, Ireland
http://www.graepel.ie/
Thats a great link to a supplier.
What were they like? Did they sell you an offcut? A sheet?
They were good. They quoted me for a full sheet but I got 1.5m x 1m for about €30. I also used this to make a false bottom for my mash tun. It actually sits directly on top of my copper manifold. I still have loads left over that im going to use for another project.
Hi Cathal,
A few more questions?
What wire diameter and clear mesh size did you get?
How difficult was it to cut?
How strong is it?
Shanna
Quote from: Cathal O D on May 16, 2013, 11:34:19 PM
They were good. They quoted me for a full sheet but I got 1.5m x 1m for about €30. I also used this to make a false bottom for my mash tun. It actually sits directly on top of my copper manifold. I still have loads left over that im going to use for another project.
No. 10 mesh (10 holes to the inch) x 0.56mm dia stainless steel wire with a 1.98mm app.
I tried using a wire cutter at first with limited success. A hacksaw was much better.