F11-06-01-24: The Slurry imperial stout

Label Inspiration: Continuing with the dredged material theme, here is a pic of two tugs keeping the scow against the Unloader. The Unloader isn't in the pic but you can see that it's already injecting the dredged material with water (lower left-hand corner) to create a "slurry" so it can be pumped out onto the island.

A homemade American Imperial Stout recipe, part of West Oak Brewery’s Inflow Series©

Originally an American Stout recipe but a late addition of DME created a more imperial-style stout. I created this recipe on my own, but I used several sources to do so. Since it was going to be a small batch (1 gallon), I looked at 2 recipes: Midwest Supplies MICRO BRU Pride of Dublin recipe kit and the Oatmeal Stout from Brooklyn Brew Shop. Several articles from Brew Your Own magazine helped as well, chief among them was “The Dark Secrets of Stout” by Ashton Lewis (Jan/Feb 2005 issue).

*One gallon (or less) batch, all-grain*

From BeerSmith:

Estimated OG: 1.103 SG

Estimated FG: 1.023 FG

Alcohol: 10.6%

IBU: 31.9

SRM: 42.7

Efficiency: 72%

Age for 30 days at least

2 lbs. Pale 2 Row Malt

1.1 oz Belgian Debittered Black Malt

1.1 oz English Extra Dark Crystal Malt

1.1 oz Pale Chocolate I (Fawcett)

1.1 oz Briess Organic Roasted Barley

0.5 oz Weyermann Carafa III Malt

1 lb. CBW Traditional Dark DME (30 min)

TOTAL GRAINS: 2.31 lbs

1.0 oz Fuggles 4.4% AA (75 minutes)

dash of Irish Moss

Brewed on June 18^th, 2015. The mashing process was a little confusing and difficult. I chose to go with the water levels found in the MICRO BRU recipe (1 gallon mash and 1 gallon sparge) instead of the Brooklyn Brew Shop one (2.5 quarts and 5 quarts). I forget what the BeerSmith water levels were, but maybe I should have used those. In the end , I had about 1-2 C of water left in the sparge pot and the 2 gallon pot I used was almost full.

 Which brings me to another point- I needed bigger pots! I’m just always afraid of scorching grains or extracts at the small batch level, you know? I should’ve checked the mash below when I am sparging by lifting it up.

I DID in fact use the BeerSmith boil time- 75 minutes. Maybe I boiled for too long. Anyway, the issue I had was that at the 30 minute mark, I still had what I thought was too much beer (not enough was biling off) so I added 1 lb CBW Traditional Dark DME at the 30 min mark. I thought that would thicken it a bit. THIS is when the beer ventured into “imperial” territory. I added Irish Mos at the 10 minute mark, but when I extend the boil, it ended up being at the 25 minute mark. Go figure.

I thought that maybe I should put the wort into a Mr. Beer keg, but I decided to use the one gallon jug I got from Northern Brewer. BIG MISTAKE!

I took a gravity reading with my refractometer:

OG 1.096 Crazy!

June 19, 2015. Temps 68-70. Starting to bubble a little this morning. In the afternoon, it picked up a little. I added Fermcap and went out for the night.

When I got home, the airlock had exploded and foam was all over the walls and ceiling. I put a blowoff tube in it instead of the airlock. I made sure to put the end of the blow off tube into a pot with StarSan in it.

June 20, 2015. Temps 70. Swamp cooler is full  of brown water from the explosion. One gallon jug is all direty. Threw another airock in because the foam has subsided. Airlock still bubbling. Temps 68-70 in the evening.

June 21, 2015. Temps 66-68 now. I guess it’s because of the smaller volume, but I’m liking that it cooled off a bit. We’ll see how it goes the next few days. Airlock barely bubbles now. The aggressive fermentation period is over!

July 5, 2015. Temps 68 in the AM. Racked to secondary. Used Mr. Beer fermenter. Looks like I’ll barely get a ½ gallon here. Stinks, especially since this was my first shot at designing a recipe.  I had some trouble with the auto-siphon. It’s hard to do that with a small siphon and small batch.

July 15, 2015. Bottled The Slurry. Temps were in the 68-70 range for the rest of the fermentation period.  The taste was ok but it was a little yeasty, especially the smell. Oh well.

ABV: 9.2%

FG: 1.026 (a little too high...I probably should've let it sit for a few more days)
Overall score: PENDING