It’s been 4 years since I brewed last. Well, technically 3 years. I brewed a cider with my friend Rob, but I don’t count that since it was technically his brew. But last night that all changed!  We got together and brewed a masterpiece: Unspoken Passion Imperial Stout!

Liquid sex in a bottle.  Sounds freaking awesome doesn’t it? It is!  Trust me! You’ll want to brew this on your own!

I started the evening before the brew by bleaching out all my equipment since it’s been years since I used it. I let my fermenters soak overnight.  My tubing for transferring my wort will probably need replaced- there’s something still in it after a night long soak.

We started with our grain mix in a grain bag. Putting that in 3 gallons of water in my 15.5 gallon brew pot was… interesting. The grains weren’t covered by the water. We added an extra gallon of water and split the grains between two grain bags. I didn’t have any gypsum so we skipped that.

Unspoken Passion Recipe

Once the grains steeped for over 30 minutes we began to add the malt extract and the bittering hops. We used Centennials as that’s what I used last time.  And of course we drank beer while brewing beer. That’s a requirement.

Once the boil was done we added the Cascade hops and the raspberries.  Lots of raspberries.  Over 11 lbs of raspberries. Oh, my! It smelled amazing.

Since I don’t have a fermenter capable of handling over 8 gallons of liquid I had to split the wort into two fermenters. That went fairly well, except for the mess in the kitchen that my wife yelled at me about. But once it was done I let it cool so I could pitch the yeast.

This morning I took the initial gravity and pitched the yeast. The initial gravity was 1.090. This is going to be a big beer! The taste was wonderful, rich dark tones with lots of raspberry flavor and beautiful hop essence and aroma. Even my son Greggory liked the wort.  Next week I get to transfer it all into a secondary fermenter and let it finish fermenting, and then on to bottling!