All-grain Batch 2 — The Wee Fuggler

American/UK Dry Stout

This second batch went much more smoothly. There was no wort on the floor, and I saved about 3+ hours in total.

This recipe I actually did all on my own with a little help from Ray Daniels. At the end of his stout chapter, he says that anyone could brew a simple stout by going with a grain bill of 90% pale UK malt and 10% roasted barley for a 1.042 OG beer. I bumped that up a little because I’m looking for more of a winter stout, but I only bumped it up a little. I ended up aiming for 1.050 x 4 gallons = 200 GUs. This meant 10% UK roasted barley = 20GUs / 29 / 0.7 = .98 = 1lbs. And 90% Marris Otter pale = 180GUs / 38 / 0.7 = 6.76lbs. I went to a store that only sold malt by the pound, so that meant 1lbs roasted barley and 7 lbs Marris Otter.

I wasn’t quite sure which hops to go with, but was intrigued by the sound of Target from Daniels’ book. I ended up going with Fuggle after learning that Willamette (the hops in Moylan’s Irish Dragoon, a solid Irish Dry and one of my favorites) is the American version of Fuggle. Because Brew and Grow only sold hops by the oz, I bought two, and planned to use one at 60 mins and one at 30 mins, which I believe ends up somewhere around 45-50IBUs.

Brewing was a breeze this time. I knew I had to load my kettle with a lot of extra water and get it started heating first thing. I probably didn’t let it get hot enough before warming my mash tun, so when I doughed in, the temp dropped down into the 140s. I managed to bump it up into the 152-154 range. I had conversion after an hour, so I only needed that much time.

I sparged with water at around 170 or so, maybe a little hotter. I didn’t keep track of how long it took me total to sparge, but it all went according to plan. I had about 7 gallons total in my boil kettle (from which I transferred the mash and sparge water), and after I had poured it all in, I just had to wait for the water to come out. I shut the valve a little prematurely at around 4.5 gallons, and when I reopened it, a lot of water splashed out with some grist. I managed to catch some and Vorlauf it after a second, so I ended up with about 4.8 gallons or so preboil with a gravity of 1.048. This was 1.040 measured at 118 F.

The boil went as expected. Hopping was much smoother than last time, as I sealed my hop bags more securely and none spilled out. It took about 20 minutes to chill the wort, which I think was the same as last time.

I filled the beer into my new Speidel fermenter, which was on sale on MoreBeer. This thing is awesome. Check it out:

Shatterproof plastic, with a spigot, and a large lid that enables yeast harvesting. I hit my target of 4 gallons almost exactly.

I pitched yeast harvested from my first batch. Which is the only place where there was any difficulties. I rinsed the yeast the day before and had two mason jars with about 50ml each of yeast with water on top. I had boiled some light wort and cooled it, but I wasn’t sure how far ahead of time I should pitch it, so I ended up pitching it into the mason jars at like 2am the night before when I got back from a Cass McCombs concert. When I woke up it had exploded out of the mason jars (of course). Fortunately that doesn’t seem to have been a huge problem. There was enough yeast left that I could collect it all in a larger container and throw in some more wort later in the day. So far, it seems to be fermenting nicely. I plan to leave it in the Speidel over the next week (during which I will still be here) and then over the holiday week (during which I will be in New Orleans and my apartment will not be heated). I’m worried that the temperature will drop a little far and slow fermentation, but by the third week, almost everything should be fermented out. And I don’t think the apartment will drop much past 50F…it’s pretty well insulated. Even if it gets to 40F, it should be fine.

So far, I’ve been fermenting at temps between 60 and 66 or so, which the average somewhere around 63-64F.

(Which reminds me that I didn’t talk about fermentation temps in my last post. I fermented my first batch at around 66-68F or so. A little higher than this batch.)

We shall see how this one turns out. I’ll post an update once I get a chance to taste it.