I still remember the fantastic smells that used to come out of the St. James Gate brewery from the days when I lived in Kilmainham. The smell was sometimes a sour, lactic smell (boiling the famous “Guinness Extract” perhaps?). On other days the smell would be like putting your nose into a freshly opened bag of Weetabix. Lovely stuff.
This brew is my first attempt at a dry Irish stout, coming similar to Guinness or Beamish. The recipe has a very simple grain bill consisting only of pale malt, roasted barley, flaked barley and a little wheat malt. I’m hoping for plenty of mouthfeel from the flaked barley, but without much sweetness. I like my stouts on the roasty side, so there’s plenty of roasted barley in there to give the coffee and burnt toast flavours I’m looking for.
I’ll keeping this sessionable, as befits the style – none of the commercial dry Irish stouts are over 4.5% ABV. I plan on bottling conditioning this.
Recipe Specifications
Boil Size: 27.92 l
Post Boil Volume: 23.92 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 19.00 l
Bottling Volume: 17.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.046 SG
Estimated Color: 80.3 EBC
Estimated IBU: 40.1 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 72.6 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Ingredients
3.200 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter, Crisp (6.5 EBC), 65.3 %
1.000 kg Barley, Flaked (3.3 EBC), 20.4 %
0.500 kg Roasted Barley (1300.0 EBC), 10.2 %
0.200 kg Wheat Malt, Ger (3.9 EBC), 4.1 %
26 g East Kent Goldings [6.50 %] – Boil 60.0, 24.2 IBUs
26 g Fuggles [4.30 %] – Boil 60.0 min, 16.0 IBUs
0.50 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins)
1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05)
Mash Schedule: Bubbles’ Single Infusion, Full Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 4.900 kg
Mash In Add 13.72 l of water at 74.6 C 68.0 C 60 min
Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun , 19.61l) of 77.0 C water
Mash Day 06/02/2015 – Had a bit of trouble with mash temperatures. Overshot with the cold water I added to bring the strike temperature down. And had to boil a kettle of water to bring the temperature back up. Mashed around 66C. Mash smelled great. Pretty slow runoff from the mash tun, caused by the flaked barley, perhaps?
Brew Day 07/02/2015 – Pretty enjoyable brew day because I got started early in the morning, and with so few hop additions, the boil was pretty low maintenance. Slow runoff from boiler. Got nearly 20 litres into the fermenter. Rehydrated sachet of US-05 and got signs of fermentation within 24 hours. Fermented pretty cold.
04/03/2015 – Bottled with 130g of glucose, but didn’t bother to calculate carbonation. Got 8 x 750ml and 23 x 500ml bottles from the batch. Took final gravity reading because I fermented this pretty cold. Got an FG of 1.006-1.008. Tastes pretty good.
17/03/2015 – It being St. Patrick’s Day, I just had to open up a bottle of this. I’ve been homebrewing since 2010 and I’m never organised enough to have a nice stout ready for the festivities. It tastes extremely good, even though it’s only been in the bottle for 2 weeks. The flaked barley gives it great body for a 4.5% beer, but without sweetness, exactly as flaked barley is supposed to do. It’s got a good firm bitterness, but balances the malt nicely. However, it’s not quite as roasty as I was expecting. I thought a half kilo of roasted barley would give a lot more dry roasted flavours. I do think it needs some small improvements. It lacks something in the flavour department which would make it sing – some Munich or biscuit, just a little bit, to give the malt profile an extra dimension. Not very traditional, I know. I might also try replacing half of the roasted barley with black malt, to give more dryness. Great first attempt at a dry stout, though.
18/03/2015 – A little light on flavour, perhaps. Using an American ale yeast probably didn’t help – I might have better results with the Guinness strain, WLP004. Definitely needs more roast too – black malt next time.
Bubbles Brews Beer! 