Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Brew day is here once again.

       As a homebrewer, there are two days that I love, and one that I despise.  One of those days is the brew day, and that would be today, well to be specific, tonight.  I must get through this thing called "work" first.  As I live in Nebraska, sometimes my brew days have to be in line with the weather, especially in winter.  Mother nature decided to be nice and today should be a nice 50 degrees.  Perfect for a brewing adventure.

      A few weeks ago I was talking to a buddy and somehow we got onto the topic of apple crisp, which prompted me to think about how much I really like apple crisp, and how much I really like beer.  One thing lead to another and I thought this would be a great experiment. I started off with a basic oatmeal stout recipe and went from there.  Final grain bill has come out to this:
  • 10 lbs Maris Otter
  • 1 lb Roasted Barley
  • 1 lb Pale Chocolate
  • 2 lbs Flaked Oats
  • 1 lb Midnight Wheat
  • 2 lbs Caramel 60L
 
     I very well may cut down on the roasted barley and caramel 60L before everything goes into my mash tun tonight but we will see.  As far as hops go, I will be using 1 oz of Willamette @ 60, .5 oz Perle @ 40, and .5 oz Perle @ 10.  This brings the IBUs to ~ 30 IBUs which is about right for the base style.  This would be where the whole "to style" things ends though, especially as this should be up around 7.5% which is well above most oatmeal stouts.  My mind keeps going through a few different variations for how I will be adding adjuncts but as of now this is what I have:

  • 1 lb lactose @ 10 minutes
  • 1 Cinnamon stick @ 60 minutes with the first hop addition
  • 1 tsp nutmeg @ 60 min.
  • 4 oz Brown sugar @ 10 minutes
  • (?) oz of frozen apple concentrate in secondary.
  • Depending on taste test - 1 more cinnamon stick in secondary.
   I plan to mash at 158 as I want this stout to have a nice creamy/thick mouthfeel.  OG should come out right around 1.084 and with using London ESB years should get down to  ~ 1.026.  Hopefully this beer turns out how I'm imagining it but sometimes as homebrewers(Or at least myself) we may get a bit overzealous about our beer. As I first stated, this is an experiment, and you will be along for the ride.  I will post again tonight with an update to how the brewing went.


Happy Brewing.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

After I read this on my phone I was thinking about it on my way home. I had a pretty awesome idea. Rather than use apple juice concentrate either: A. Caramelize some apples and put them in secondary for a day or so. B. Take a gallon of Organic Apple Cider and concentrate it yourself, boiling it very high to get some caramelized flavors. C. Add some molasses or brown sugar in secondary as well. Just some ideas.

Unknown said...

I actually meant to add brown sugar to the boil but completely spaced it so some will go into secondary. I like the caramelized apples idea as well.

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