Failte!
Ahh, St. Patrick’s Day….That day that symbolizes the lechery and drunkeness that only Americans can muster.
Actually, it symbolizes the day that St. Patrick drove all of the snakes from Ireland; and in the mother country, it is treated more like the American Thanksgiving, where your time is spent with family, or in Church. (as opposed to the 24 hour drunk-fest that we Americans have whored the day out to be).
Either way, I still brew an Irish Dry Stout for the occasion. Since we are old(er) now and have jobs that do not necessarily allow us to queue up at the bar at 7AM on St. Pat’s, that leaves us to our own devices of drinking what we brew at the end of the day. This was brewed on 23 Jan 2010:
- 8.5 lbs Maris Otter
- 2 lb Flaked Oats
- 1 lb British Mild Malt
- 1 lb Chocolate malt
- 3/4 lb Roasted Barley
- 1/2 lb Medium Crystal
- 1/4 lb Crystal 90
- 2 oz Willamette 5.0%AA whole flower hops (60 minutes) – homegrown
- WYeast 1028 English Ale
Some brew notes:
I tightened the gap on our grain mill before this brew…this combined with the addition of a large portion of flaked oats created a stuck sparge from Hell. See below for further notes on that particular clusterF…
We mashed for 90 minutes at 155*F with 4.5 gallons, then attempted to sparge with 4.8 gallons at 180 *F. A few things went horribly wrong with the sparge. Firstly I got wrapped up in coversation on politics, and did not notice that the sparge water had reached near-boiling temperatures. Luckily, it was January, so I simply had to stick the HLT into a snowbank and stir like mad to bring the temperature down to an acceptable 180*F. Great… everything is hunky-dory… until I tried to actually sparge.
The recirculation went well enough. I ran the normal 2 gallons of wort back through the system, topped off with the obligatory gallon of sparge liquor, opened the valve to a trickle, and ran off nearly 1/2 gallon until I heard gurgling and then nothing ….
zilch…
not a drop…
“We have just lost cabin pressure”, as Tyler Durden would say.
I had never experienced a stuck sparge before, and I was kicking myself in the arse for not adding the rice hulls that Tony had graciously offered. So, we stirred.. and stirred…
and stirred…
…and prayed…
…and finally said “Screw it”…
I have a spare mash tun.. a 60 qt Rubbermaid cooler that I use solely for “big beers”. It was mostly clean, having been in my truck for 4 months. There was nothing in it, it was just being stored in the most convenient place I had available…. So, throwing caution to the wind, and truly testing the theories of Hot Side Aeration, I dumped everything from the bucket lauter tun into the cooler, dumped the rest of the sparge water on top, let it all settle, and opened the valve…
Ahhhh…liquid flow.
I got my required 7.25 gallons into the kettle, and brought it to a boil. Actually, since this brew was done outside, I was able to kick the burner on when we had close to 3 gallon in the kettle. As such, we came to a boil much sooner than I anticipated. Like 10 minutes after running off the required volume.
As a result of the quick boil, I did not add the hops for the first 10 minutes. It’s all good. Irish dry stouts are neither bitter, nor are they hoppy in flavor or aroma.
The boil went on for the next 60 minutes without a hitch. With only one hop addition, it is really kind of difficult to screw up the boil. We kicked off the burner after 60, brought it inside, cooled, and racked to the carboy (newly emptied of the Perle/Simcoe IPA), and pitched our 1/3 gallon starter of English ale yeast (WYeast 1028).
Even with an active starter it still took nearly 12 hours to have visual representation of an active ferment, though I had been hearing the first burps from the airlock since about 6 hours from pitching.
Final numbers:
OG = 1.064 with 5.75 gallons in primary (calculated was 1.064 with 5.5 in primary)
IBU = 43
SRM = dark, as in black
FG = 1.016
The oats certainly provided a creaminess, but I have noticed the head retention is severely lacking, depending on what glass I pour into . This may be a symptom of improper glass hygiene (soap residue is a head killer), or poor water treatment (all other stout characteristics are there, just not the rich, long lasting head). Tastes great, though, and at just about 5.6% abv, this is a nice session beer for St. Pat’s Day.
File this one under : “Further development still needed”
