Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! On Christmas break so that means the brew kettle gets to see some action. (Hopefully more than once over break.)
The brew session took place this past Thursday with Mark being the host. It had been previously decided that a big boy would be up for consideration with the weather being on the cooler side – minus the snow so far. (No complaints on the lack of snow.) The thought was to brew something on the stronger side to keg and keep for next Fall / Winter. Thus, the Imperial Bourbon Barrel Stout is making another appearance.
The original IBBS was a 8 gallon brew for an 8 gallon oak barrel that I had secured from Woodinville Whiskey Co located in Woodinville, WA. This was some years ago. After housing a few larger dark beers initially, the barrel is currently used for the Fieldpointe Sour – which is very tart and horsey. It’s not so bad once you get past the initial taste or two.
Mark got his hands on some Beer Barrel Bourbon distilled by New Holland Brewery in MI. I picked up some toasted oak chips and soaked 2 oz of chips in 4 oz of BBB. These will be added to the keg at packaging. This is not going to be the same as being in the barrel but it should suffice.
As previously mentioned, the brew session took place at Mark’s place. Since this brew has a larger grain bill, it was too big for the RoboBrew electric system. Time to clean the dust off the 10 gallon brew kettles and check the propane levels in the tanks. This equipment has not been used for quite a long while. The electric system with built in pump works fantastic for average grain bill beers < 13 lb. A concern was that I had eliminated my old turkey frier style burners when the garage was cleaned earlier this Fall.
When the plans had been discussed about a month or so ago, I pulled the trigger on a HellFire Burner and Stand from Blichmann Engineering. (Blichmann makes some good hardware. I have a 10 gallon mash tun and 7 gallon conical fermenter.) With shipping delays still the norm these days I was expecting the same for this order but it arrived within a week of the order date. Nice.
This was going to be the inaugural brew on the new burner. Since propane needed to be used, the brewing was done outside on Mark’s patio. It was nice of him to preplan for this activity as he had removed all of the summer patio furniture. How convenient!
This brings me to the Dorothy Door Report: The Dorothy Doors were open. This access is very nice for moving between the basement man cave to the outdoor back patio. The steps are rather steep and the top door frame a little low – the occasional bump of the head reminds those who pass through to keep low – but is a convenient travel portal.
During the mash and boil, Mark and I played two handed Sheephead. He did not get any of my nickels because he set me up on the first hand. While I managed the brew duties, Mark sat around and “stacked the deck” by giving me two fail suits while he kept most of the trump. He did mess up because I did take one trick – rookie. Because he did not let me cut the deck and had set me up, I did not fetch my nickels from my truck so he got nothing from me. That will learn him. (He does a much better job at tracking cards. Me – not so much. Thus he is slowly depleting my supply of nickels. But not today.)
While card playing and waiting for him to play (sometimes he takes as long as Jeff does to play a card) I noticed that Mark has a whole house humidifier on his furnace. I mentioned this discovery to Mark and game play was suspended to investigate the operational status of this unit. It turned out that the unit was still operational and was engaged for winter use. Mark’s wife is dealing with some breathing concerns and the thought was that adding some humidity to the house air may be beneficial to her. Usually humidity is added by our indoor brewing but this doesn’t happen enough to really make a difference. In addition, Mark’s wife thinks hops smell like stinky feet. You try to be nice and helpful. Go figure. So, the humidity level was set to full output on the furnace unit and we petitioned Mark’s wife throughout the brew session whether the upstairs felt like Florida. Of course we did not disclose as to why we were asking. Not wanting any part of our antics and game playing (she said so) positive feedback was not received. Apparently our repetitive asking was not as entertaining to her as it was to us. Eventually she was informed as to what we were up to but still was unimpressed with us and our amazing discovery. Oh well. Back to the brew.
The new burner worked well. The mash hit temp just fine and held pretty well for the hour it sat outside in the cooler weather – around 40° F – with the burner off. I guess the mass of all the grain – just about to the top of the 10 gallon tun – held the temp nicely. Not having used the burner before, it took just a bit of fine tuning to get it to perform well for the boil. The HellFire burns very clean and is quiet unlike my old turkey frier types that were noisy and often left a lot of soot on the kettle underside. Not a cheap burner – especially now with metal prices – but well constructed and very efficient. I hope to use it again this week for another brew and for many more down the road – or in my garage – which is more convenient than brewing down the road.
Because the original IBBS was for a 9 gallon boil (8 finished), the recipe was scaled back for a 6 gallon boil (5 finished). The original version had 6 lb of dark LME in addition to the ingredients listed below. Otherwise everything else remained the same. The projected ABV is around 11% – although it will be a bit lower than that because there were about 6 gallons at finish. I didn’t have a way to calibrate the final kettle volume so I guessed – and it was dark out by then. And I’m the world’s worst guesser. And it was dark out. (Mark was too cheap to turn on the outside patio light.) Not that is would have mattered. Anyway….
Here is the brew as we put it together:
Grain
- 14 lb – 2 Row
- 1.5 lb – Dark Munich
- 1.5 lb – Crystal Malt 90°
- 1.25 lb – Roasted Barley
- 1 lb – Chocolate Malt
- 0.75 lb – Black Patent
- 2 lb – Flaked Oats
Hops
- 1 oz – Columbus (60 minutes)
- 1 oz – Challenger (45 minutes)
- 1 oz – East Kent Goldings (30 minutes)
- 1 oz – Fuggle (15 minutes)
Yeast
- 1 pack – Fermentis US-05 (1 Liter Starter)
Adjuncts
- 1 lb – Rice Hulls
- 2 oz – Oak Chips (Medium Toast)
- 4 oz – Bourbon
Projected Specs
- OG – 1.111
- FG – 1.028
- Color – 41.26 SRM
- ABV – 11.11%
- Bitterness: 103.9
The trick will be to keg this on the oak and bourbon and then forget about it for about a year. Time will tell how it goes.
