I’m sick of not being able to brew beer. So, despite some horrible personal news that should have derailed all my plans, I pushed on and brewed two batches of beer. Well, one batch of beer and a mead that I’ve been meaning to make for over a year.
The mead recipe: 15lbs honey, yeast nutrients, water. Then yeast. Yay!
My Big Fat Oatmeal Stout recipe:
2 lbs quick oats
3 lbs light malt extract
6 lbs liquid dark malt extract
1-1/2 lbs 60L crystal malt
1/2 lb chocolate malt
1/2 lb roasted barley
1/4 lb black patent
4 tsp gypsum
1oz Centennial hops (boiling)
1 oz Cascade hops (boiling)
1/2 oz Cascade hops (10 minutes left)
1/2 oz Cascade hops (2 minutes left)
1/4 tsp Irish Moss (10 minutes left)
Irish Ale Yeast
Started the mead first. The eternal debate on mead is whether to boil or not. Papazian recommends a 15 minute boil to make sure. I decided to do a different route and just pasteurize it- brought the temp up to just below a boil and then transfer to my fermenter. Then I topped it off to over 5 gallons. Eazy cheezy!
Now the Stout. I couldn’t find the clip I normally use to clip my grain bag to my pot, so I just let it float in there.
My temp got away from me there- had to take it off the stove for the last 15 minutes. Then I ran hot water through the grains to try to get all the yumminess out of the grains. Then I added the light malt extract and bittering hops and started the boil
With 10 minutes left I added the Irish Moss and the flavor hops. Then with 2 minutes left I added the aroma hops, then killed the temperature and began to strain the hops out. Again I used hot water to rinse the hops as I removed them to get all the yummy goodness out of them. Got it transferred to my fermenter and let it rest.
This morning I took the initial gravity and pitched the yeast. Initial gravity was 1.102 on the mead, the stout was 1.092. Both are going to be some high alcohol beers!
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