Mash, Boil, Sparge and ... oh just forget it

garym — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 21:51:00 -0400

Never did get to experiment with this recipe ... and now I likely won't because there's a new kid in the homebrew business who has rendered it all very obsolete.

My fave Brewmeister shop up at the lights in Wiarton would kind of politely smile at my dreams of a brew from grains because I think he _knew_ what sort of a mucky bit of business it would be. He'd slip in the odd comment like, "Best to do that mess outside, eh?" ...

Anyway, to make along story short, he's stopped carrying those hopeless canned-extract kits, and I totally agree with him, they all tasted just a little like a soda-pop -- rather than the extract cans, he's now carrying the RJ Spagnols "Brew House System":http://www.rjspagnols.com kits where you don't buy an extract and add sugar, but you _work with real wort, just like God intended a beer to be!

What's more, click through on that website and the "brewmeisters at RJ(the Brew House dot com)":http://www.thebrewhouse.com/ will show you how you can _still_ use all those extra hops and grainbag trickery to get _exactly_ the sort of cold blackstuff you've been hoping to see, only this one won't play like a cola.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

Homebrew can be fun

bub — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 18:31:49 -0400

It can be simple and fun, I just use a plain unused sanitized plastic garbage pail with lid as the primary fermentor, and second one is of course a glass carboy with airlock, and I have a collection of those old quart pop bottles, with snap on caps.You pour it into a jug and serve(cause its more than one beer)Yum.

Homebrew Guiness

garym — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 17:48:36 -0400

They say the secret to a good beer is in matching the style of the brew to the minerals of the water, and the good news for fans of the Black Stuff is that our natural Sauble groundwater is really quite similar to the municipal water in Dublin. This recipe was posted to the Internet newsgroups, and while I haven't tried it (yet) it's next on my list -- mostly I just wanted to test the recipe form, and, well, someone already mentioned the black stuff

Single infusion mash at 150F for 60 minutes, and of course, hold out 1/2 gallon of first runnings, add too it a few grains of raw malt, and at kegging or bottling time boil it and add it into the main batch. And don't be afraid of the horrible smell. Use irish moss if you like, and lots of chalk if your water is low. It won't readily dissolve, so you can stir a couple of teaspoons right into the mash.

To avoid the inevitable thread on water treatment, mash pH, solubility of CaCO3, and the like, DON'T FORGET, the alkalinity of all of this chalk is only going to buffer the acidity from, the large amount of roast. DON'T go and acidify your strike water to dissolve it, or you defeat the purpose.

From the USENET rec.crafts.brewing newsgroups

5 liters

120

Some additional comments that were posted by readers to the newsgroup following this post:

Jim Bush writes:

Regarding Dan's use of Saurmalz in his Guinness clone, I have to wonder what the pH of the mash was with 3% saurmalz and I gather 10% Roasted Barley.... Also, acidulation of the mash is very different indeed from the methods Guinness uses of blending sour beer with regular stout. The concept is very interesting but I wonder about the implications of water chemistry and overall pH of the resultant wort. I would also be sure to measure the pH of the final beer from the spigot. Dan, let us know how this technique works for you as it would certainly be a very easy way if it works in practice.

I just kegged the stout today and I gotta say that it came out better than I expected. I don't have any Guinness around right now, but it is unquestionably similar. I am going to do a back to back and see what should be adjusted the next time.

We didn't take a pH reading when we mashed, so I can't speak to that. I will say that it converted in about 45 min with no problems. I didn't take an OG, but the FG was about 1.008. The pH of the beer now, before the CO2 has had a chance to calm down, is around 4.0.

Dan Listermann

Michael Jackson's Beer Companion gives good statistics about the big Irish dry stouts:

Guiness: OG 1.039, 45 BUs. Pale malt (65%), flaked barley (25%), roast barley (10%).
MurphyÂ’s: OG 1.038, 35 BUs (Target). Pale malt, chocolate malt, roast barley. [My note: I swear that there is wheat in here, but MJ says otherwise...]
Beamish: OG 1.039, 40 BUs (Challenger, Goldings, Hersbruck). Chocolate & Wheat malt.

Here are some extrapolated recipes:

Guiness: 5lb pale malt, 2lb flaked barley, 12oz roast barley.
Murphy's: 6lb pale malt or 6.6lbs light liquid malt extract, 12oz chocolate malt, 8oz roast barley (adjust the proportions of roast barley to chocolate malt any way you desire).
Beamish: 5lb pale malt, 1.25lb wheat malt, 1.25lb chocolate malt.

The average profile seems to be 5-6lbs of base malt, typically 1-2 lbs of adjuncts for head retention/mouthfeel, plus enough roast barley and/or chocolate to make it opaque red-black.

Mash at 148-149 degrees F (you want it dry). Boil 90 minutes, adding 7.5 to 9.5 HBUs of hops for 90 minutes (for example, 2oz of 3.9AA% Fuggles [2 × 3.9 = 7.8 HBUs], or instead use 3/4oz of 11.2AA% Target [.75 × 11.2 = 8.4 HBUs]; the hop variety is really not considered a very important part of stouts, so use what you have; typical recipes use high alpha bittering hops [Bullion, Target, Eroica], English traditional hops [Fuggles, Goldings, Challenger], or German hops [Hallertau, Perle, Northern Brewer]).

The key to a good dry stout is in the conditioning. You want it to be served at very low levels of carbonation, to make it smoother and creamier. I have found this best achieved by kegging, but you can try some tricks when serving bottle conditioned beer. You might try overpriming slightly (7/8 cup corn sugar per 5 gallons), then pouring the bottle directly into the glass when serving, so that you get lots of foam, and the CO2 is released. Going the
other route, you could lightly prime (1/2 cup corn sugar), so that you are assured of lower CO2, but the disadvantage is that you will not get much head.

Trevor

15.2 lbs marris otter pale ale

2.2 lbs british roasted barley

2.0 lbs flaked barley

1.6 oz of 14.8 alpha nugget hops (whole leaf)

1056 or Irish ale yeast

Irish moss (optional)

South Bruce Peninsular - Homebrew Guiness - Comments

Mash, Boil, Sparge and ... oh just forget it

Homebrew can be fun

Homebrew Guiness