pot&kettle, batch 2 with a new yeast strain...brewed...on film?

I've had a lot of requests for the crowd favorite oatmeal stout that made its first appearance at my wedding a few short months ago, and I finally was able to crank out a 10 gallon batch yesterday. I only made one change to the recipe, but it was a major one...this iteration of pot&kettle is currently fermenting with Burton ale yeast (wlp023). In response to a question about experience with this strain, I posted today on BeerAdvocate my rationale for choosing this yeast for this beer, vs. the prior dry Nottingham used in the early iteration, so I'll just copy and paste what I wrote:

I brewed an oatmeal stout last night, wanted to see if I could get a bit more english yeast character out of it vs. the dry nottingham ive used in the past. I was also looking for slightly less attenuation than the nottingham, given there are no crystal malts in my recipe, and I thought just a smidge more maltiness would fit in nicely.

I want a british 'house' yeast strain to work with, for mid-gravity british style beers... something that would be pretty expressive, but not so attenuative as to dry out the beer too much. Something that would be well suited to ESB, porters, english IPAs, etc. and the white labs description sounded like it could serve just that purpose:
http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/stra ... lp023.html

giving up a little bit of the floc character vs. 002, but maybe getting a bigger ester profile and better attenuation. I've used 005 and 013, but didn't get as much flavor as I had hoped for in those strains. the first whiffs from the starter are giving me more of what I've been looking for, so fingers are crossed.

The brew day went as smoothly as it would have, given the cameras were rolling...so, my consistent foreshadowing of how oats can lead to a stuck sparge seemed to precipitate...guess what...yep, a stuck sparge. Or, a super duper ultra slow sparge. Which is especially painful when you are being filmed as a homebrewer with any kind of credibility. Oh well, I guess the segment will better highlight the fact that things can and do go wrong when brewing...you just...well, RDWHAHB. And, diagnose the problem, so it doesn't happen next time. Next time, I won't brew a 10 gallon recipe of oatmeal stout...my system can't handle all that grain, and still allow enough head space for a serious dose of hot liquor for mashing out.

What's all this talk about 'cameras were rolling' and 'being filmed'?

Right, so... (a phrase I fear I uttered with great regularity in response to Summer's questions)...I contacted French Oak Media about a month ago to see if they had any interest in doing a short segment on homebrewing, given that I live in Brookline, and they are producing spots about the local wine, beer and spirits scene. I thought..."hey, I'm a homebrewer, and what could be more local and topical to their show than a guy who might be your next door neighbor, brewing up some beer?' Turns out, they had discussed doing this very thing, so it was great timing that I contacted them.

Among others, I've enjoyed FOM's prior pieces on Cambridge Brewing Company, Mayflower, Harpoon, Sam Adams and Pretty Things, so its quite a bit of fun to be able to somehow included in such a venerable group.

Right, so... the shoot was yesterday, and aside from the gummed up lauter, I had a great time with Ray and Summer. They are genuinely interested in brewing, and it was great fun to see the light bulbs illuminating over their heads, as they started to better understand the process of brewing. I could actually see the bulbs lighting up, as they were literally able to put their hands right in to it. They were very complimentary of the beers I shared with them, and I can tell are just all around good people. It'll be fun to see what they were able to capture from the day, but for now I'll leave you with a couple images, starting out with the glass bowls of malt and specialty grain set out, cooking-show-style, waiting for the shoot to start.

Russian Imperial Stout-2009

Jason and I whipped through a semi-impromptu brewday yesterday. We are focusing on brewing RIS' that attempt to simplify and improve upon prior attempts, dialing in the recipe and techniques that will hopefully generate bottles that we feel compelled to paradoxically both hoard from and shove in to the hands of fellow beer nerds.

Cutting out the maltodextrin, lactose, flaked barley and carapils. Going to get the sweetness/mouthfeel by tweaking other aspects of the recipe:

Increasing the oats and not using debittered black patent this time. More high SRM grain. Using Special B to compliment the D2. Adding some crystal80 to provide a rounder caramel/ sweetness flavor profile. Using a larger bittering charge for a higher IBU, as this was lacking a bit in the last iteration, and I suspect will continue to fall too far in to the background over the years. Oh, and did all grain vs. partial mash.

Our goals for this beer: beefy viscous mouth-coating body that would easily satisfy with a ~6 ounce pour. Rich french roasty/espresso coffee with malty background of dark stewed fruits, complimented with (an american medium toasted oak cubes provided) vanilla smoothness. Thinking about adding espresso beans in the secondary with the oak. Want this to be drinking great at 1 year, even better at 2-5 years.

Used a whopping 2 3/4 lbs of steel cut oats that had been slowly cooked for 1.5 hours to proper gelatinize the starches. Allowed to cool to ~145, so as to not throw off the mash temp too wildly.

I definitely overextended the proper capacity of the 10 gallon mash tun, and got a super slow trickle out of the tun after recirculating about 1 gallon of wort. Had to remove some of the grain, add in about 2 gallons of 180F sparge water, stir, stir, stir...finally got her to open up and start flowing, but by then, I suspect that only a portion/one side of the bazooka tube was actually cleared. Once the good flow was established, and the levels dropped back down enough in the mash tun, I then added the grain back. So, not an ideal sparge, at all. Took over an hour.

Seems that the oatmeal can turn to absolute glue when the temperatures run lower than 150F.

I will stick to 5 gallon batch of higher gravity brewing with my 10 gallon tun from now on.

CPI

Given the intention of extended aging, we made only bittering additions with relatively high alpha hops from the stash in my freezer for the ~90 minute boil. Where I don't think anyone would have any qualms with the simcoe or amarillo additions, I hope hope hope that the anecdotally resilient sorachi ace lemon-y aroma/flavor will have boiled off as it really doesn't have a place in a RIS.

The Nottingham yeast has served me well in the past with the wedding oatmeal stout and hopefully will allow the malt and complimentary bitterness to stand in the foreground, provide proper and full attenuation. Used two 11 gram packets in 7.25 gallons of collected wort. The wort was chilled down to 72F, and then continued to cool to 68F in a cooling water bath overnight. We will do a mid-primary fermentation addition of the D2 (boiled in 2 quarts of water to sanitize, then cooled) in the hope that this will help assure attenuation.

RIS

Imperial Stout

Type: All Grain	Date: 10/12/2009
Batch Size: 7.50 gal	Brewer: JC
Boil Size: 9.03 gal	Asst Brewer: Jason
Boil Time: 90 min	Equipment: My Equipment
Ingredients
Amount Item Type % or IBU 20 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 66.12 % 2 lbs 12.0 oz Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 9.09 % 1 lbs 8.0 oz D2 Belgian Syrup (200.0 SRM) Grain 4.96 % 1 lbs Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 3.31 % 1 lbs Black Barley (Stout) (500.0 SRM) Grain 3.31 % 1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 3.31 % 1 lbs Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 3.31 % 1 lbs Chocolate Wheat Malt (400.0 SRM) Grain 3.31 % 1 lbs Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 3.31 % 2.00 oz Sorachi ace [12.30 %] (90 min) Hops 38.4 IBU 1.50 oz Simcoe [12.90 %] (90 min) Hops 33.5 IBU 4.00 oz Amarillo Gold [9.30 %] (90 min) Hops 64.5 IBU

BrewHome Depot trip

I used some comp time today, duly earned from a weekend business trip to Brazil, for a trip to Home Depot. For a homebrewer, there are aisles and aisles of great stuff to be repurposed for homebrewing. Ok, well, mostly its in the plumbing aisle, but my original intent was to get some galvanized pipe to make some hops trellises for my burgeoning plants.

Given advice from this post on BA and after talking with my pop, I went with a ten foot section 3/4 inch galvanized pipe (~$17), a 30inch section (~$7), and a coupler ($3). I also got some 7/8-1 1/4 inch stainless clamps to afix three coir hop twines to the top of the post. I bought a heavy (5lb) mallet, which I used to pound the 30inch section in to the ground. I used a scrap piece of 4x4 that was lying around next to the trash area to prevent damage to the threads (lots of projects in the gardens yields a reliable source of scrap wood). I was able to drive it almost all the way in to the ground, then twisted on the coupler, then the 10 foot pole. Huh. its pretty stable. Cool. Hopefully it'll still feel stable when the twine is loaded with hops and the eventual summer thunderstoms hit.

I tied the three twine lengths to the fence where the hops were already climbing (and looking for more) and wrapped the sun seeking bines around them.

Well, that was pretty easy, fast, and not too expensive. I think if I had to set up a structure that could support multiple hills, I'd likely employ 15ft 4x4 pressure treated posts and run a wire across the top from which to drop twine (which would be more economical on a per plant basis) similar to what you see commecially, but for a single hill, I think this "trellis" will work very well.

Oh, and I got a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler for $38, quite a bit cheaper (almost half) than what you see the LHBS and online shops selling them for. Looks like the next Home Depot project will be to get some copper tubing for my new mash tun.

7.5 Gallon Mash/Lauter Tun, 11 Gallon Brew Kettle

44 quart (11 gallon) Bayou Classic from amazon.com serves as my brew kettle. ships for free with super saver shipping. that's tough to beat. Brought to my uncle's shop to drill a hole for a weldless spigot. He used a hole bit, with a long piece of scrap 2x4 on the workbench, extending in to the inside of the kettle. Worked great. Attached the weldless spigot, and held water, no problem. Able to bring ~8-9 gallons of 165F wort up to a boil in about 40 minutes. suprises me that it would boil at all, but it does.

7.5 gallon stainless turkey fryer serves as my mash/lauter tun (got it for ~$66 bucks, swear to god, now its showing me a price of $189.99) was made in the same way, but with the addition of a bazooka screen. no problems with the screen collapsing at all, and I have LOADED that puppy with up to 18lbs of grain, thus far. I haven't used the burner from the turkey fryer kit, that's packed away, until I can brew outside.

I do wish these had aluminum clad bottoms for better heat distribution, but the heating elements in the electric stove seem to disperse heat pretty well. wonder if scorching will be more of an issue when I finally get to use the outdoor burner...