“What are you cooking in the oven?”

Even wondered what it takes to brew the best home brewed beer in Ireland?

The 2013 National Homebrew Club’s winner, Chris Todd from Belfast, has been brewing beer on and off for the last ten years, always with kits. Five years ago he and his fiancée Moira got back into it with a Coopers Stout, before switching to extract with their own custom hop additions, but in the last year both got the all grain bug, and brew every 4-6 weeks now.  Both like American hoppy styles and are partial to Dogfish or Odell, and in the same vain our native Whitewater Hoppelhammer. Porters and stouts are also a favourite and Chris enjoys the occasional weissbier. However they are always keen to try new and interesting variants.

The inspiration of their competition-winning formula was a desire to create something for the Christmas period. After reviewing recipes on various forums they settled on the winning stout blend for Ormeau Dark at the end of October 2012.

Chris confesses that they had a couple of goes trying to get the quantities right with the unusual cocoa powder addition.

Sourcing their crushed grain from the one of the competition sponsors, the Malt Miller, they use a stainless pot for mashing and pour in heat the strike water at to 72°C on the hob, netting a mash temp in the 64-66°C range.

Doughing in, mashing in the kitchen oven, and sparging.
Chris admits the oven is a little unconventional!

To maintain that temperature, the pot goes in the very old domestic non-fan oven where the temperature is controlled for the hour by the dial! They didn’t use any brewing software to make this velvet but Chris has confessed to using some free online versions since.

Some simple batch sparging at 72-74°C yields 15-16 litres, and a boil brings this to 12 litres. Primary is in a standard plastic brew bucket at 16-17°C and in the case of this winning batch it was split into two glass demi-johns for secondary where half was dry hopped and other half left to condition normally. A teaspoon of table sugar for carbonation per bottle and as simple as it sounds results in velvet on the tongue.

We are all looking forward to the commercial version of this brew!

Chris receiving his award from Dean McGuinness of Premier International and Paul Wood of Sayso.ie

Chris is a member of the National Homebrew Club and you can find him on the forums as sub82. He has been kind enough to share the recipe for Ormeau Dark here.

– Ciderhead (John O’Connell)

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