Batch #3: Scoutship Brewing: Snow Day Coffee Stout!

Snow Day Coffee Stout

Brewpot = 2.5 gals of water
Preboiled another 2.5 gallons of water for fermenter.
Bag of mixed crushed grains

• .5# Caramel Malt 40L
• .5# Chocolate Malt
• .25# Roasted Barley

6.6 lbs dark malt extract 60 minute boil
1.5 oz fuggle hops 60 minute boil
1 oz Tettnanger hops 10 minute boil
Safale S-04 Dry Yeast
4oz. dark roast coffee beans

Wearing the lucky Avery Brewing Company hat...

Pots coming to a boil. Two right-hand pots were just to pre-boil water going into the fermenter. Pot on the right was for the 2.5 gallon wort boil.

Grain bag 'a-steepin'.

While the initial boiling was going on, I set about sanitizing everything else. As usual, having done all the reading AFTER the fact, I've since realized I WAAAY overdid it on the bleach. Ah well, better sanitized than sorry!

Spent grain bag. No, the fish oil was NOT an ingredient for this beer.

Northwestern Dark Liquid Malt Extract (LME). Two boxes with a bag each.

Adding the motor oil, I mean, LME!

Everything pretty much set to go. Wort temp has slowly come down to yeast-pitching temps, so all should be right with the world.

A quick original gravity reading.

Close-up of the wrong scale. OG = 1.050ish, right on track for this recipe.

Yeast!

Yeasty yeast!!

Airlock is good to go!

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Having had yet another snow day, I decided now was as good a time as any to get my next "real" homebrew (ie, not with expired ingredients and dead yeast... see any posts pertaining to Batch #2...), I got all my gear together and set to work.  First up was an intense re-reading of all the pertinent sections of the works of Charlie Papazian, which set me in good stead to continue. I also visited several online forums to see about how to add the coffee to the stout, since the instructions that came with my Rite Brew kit merely say "Brew and add before."  Before WHAT? Brew HOW? Well done, you informative bastages.

Not having a huge brew pot (yet), I had to split the batch between pre-boiled water that would go straight into the fermenter, and the remainder, which would be used to create a concentrated wort. Only in hindsight did I recognize the warning on the instructions ("Recipe designed for a full (5 gallon) boil: If doing a partial boil, only boil approximately half of the malt extract/fermentables for the full 60 minutes. Add the rest with 10 minutes remaining. This will ensure proper hop utilization.") I did NOT do this, adding all of the LME for the full 60 minute boil.  It turns out that the sheer concentration of sugars and crap in the water makes it harder for the hops to integrate with the water, limiting how much hop essence is actually extracted. Not needing a super hoppy stout, I'm not too concerned about this... but if this were an IPA with monster hops in it, I would be *pissed* at my own oversight. 

My one other big mistake was to not put the pre-boiled pots of water outside to cool off faster. I just added them to the fermenter and hoped the water would cool down in time. By the time I had finished the 60 minute boil, including the addition of the Tettnanger hops for the final 10 minutes, the water was still fairly warm, so it didn't really cool the wort all that much when I added that to the fermenter. However, I did put the whole thing (covered, of course) outside to cool down, which took several hours, but in the winter outside, that really shouldn't prove to be too bad an option. Once the temperature hit 22C, I pitched the yeast, and moved the fermenter to its official spot, tucked in between the steam furnace and hot water heater in the unfinished part of the basement. The whole thing is wrapped up in an old insulated sweatjacket, to try to even out temperature swings (we don't have the heat on much at night, but its probably warmer down there than up in the heated part of the house) as well as to protect against what sunlight comes into the basement via the small casement windows.

Updates as they occur!