Beamish Stout Clone- Batch 19

Wednesday evening I brewed a Beamish Stout clone, thanks to the clone recipe we got from a magazine with 150 recipies in it.  We used the extract recipe, not the all grain recipe listed below.

Beamish Recipe from Magazine

So, gathered the ingredients, put some water on the kettle, and began mashing the grains.

Beamish Stout beer ingredients

The recipe called for 3.3lbs light liquid malt extract, 1lb light dry malt extract, 1/2lb 2 row,  1/2lb wheat malt,  6oz cane sugar,  4oz crystal malt,  6oz chocolate malt,  4.5oz roasted barley,  and 1.5oz black patent malt.  The hops it calls for are .5oz Challenger (which I didn’t have, so I substituted Fuggles) and .6oz Kent Goldings for bittering hops, then 1/4oz of Hallertauer for aroma hops.

Got the grains mashing for 30 minutes at 145 degrees roughly, then sparged the grains.  I cheated a bit and didn’t use my lauder tun, as that is designed for a lot more grains than I was using.

Beer Grains mashing

Sparging Grains

After sparging, I added the malt extracts and the sugar to my wort.

Adding Dry Malt Extract

Adding Liquid Malt Extract

Adding Sugar to Wort

Now, with liquid extracts, I always have some hot water standing by to dissolve the remains inside the can, to insure I get as much of the extract as possible.  I’ve also learned to use an oven mitt when handling the can after adding the hot water (yes, I’ve burned myself before.)

Hot Water in Extract Can

Next I got my wort to a boil and added my bittering hops.  Here I have to admit a minor mistake.  I decided to substitute Fuggles for the Challengers, and since Fuggles have less alpha acid’s than Challengers, I added a touch more than called for.  Unfortunately, I forgot to look at the recipe (which called for 1/2 oz of Challenger) and assumed it called for an ounce.  So I added 1-1/4 oz of Fuggles.  Grr…..

Bittering Hops

Note to brewers out there:  Don’t brew when your overly tired!  You will make a mistake or two.

While the wort is boiling, I got my fermentation bucket sanitized and my Irish moss hydrated.

Sanitizing Bucket

Irish Moss

During the last 15 minutes I added the Irish moss and the aroma hops.  Once the boil was complete I emptied the sanitized water, strained the beer into my sanitized bucket, and topped of the bucket to 5 gallons.

Pouring Wort in Strainer

Hop Pellets in Strainer

I won’t mentioned that I accidentally knocked the strainer into the beer.  I won’t!  Honestly, I didn’t really do that.  (Ok, I did.  Sue me!)

Beer in Fermenter

Thursday morning I measured the initial gravity (1.044) and pitched the yeast.  This has the potential of around 5% alcohol per volume.   I’m seriously looking forward to trying this.  I freaking love Beamish!