Brewed: Double Bogey Russian Imperial Stout

By scot in Home Brewing on Monday, April 2nd, 2012

29.25# of grain dumped into mash tun

I have been slow on the blog lately as the weather ridiculously nice weather has pulled me away from the computer. That’s a good thing. I found time to brew on April Fools’ Day, April 1st, 2012. Not a joke, not a prank, I really brewed.

Double Bogey is a Russian Imperial Stout that I brewed over two years ago as my second our third batch of beer. I did age a gallon on oak aged bourbon too. The batch wasn’t all that good: the beer never developed and was always thin. The brew day was a partial boil as I didn’t have the capacity for a full boil (5 gallon pot) and used 4 or 5 bags of dry malt extract. You guessed it, a noob brewing a big beer and lots of sugars: boil over. Because of the partial boil, I had to dump a couple of gallons, or more, of water in the carboy to reach five total gallons. Easily my worst brewing experience. I was bound to not duplicate the mistakes.

Cooling it down

I also picked up some knowledge from my first bigger gravity beer: 203 IIPA. This batch taught me the lesson of decreased efficiency when making high gravity beers. The conversion for Double Bogey put me at 20 pounds of base malt, based on some calculations I used 25 pounds to make sure I hit my gravity. This brought my total grain bill to 29.25 pounds of grain. By far the most grain I had ever used in a beer. I needed two buckets to carry the grain in order to get it ground (yeah, still don’t have a grain mill, pissed me off). The 70 quart mash tun (see picture) was close to capacity: 9.25 gallon of water and the grain push it to the limit.

I ended up collecting 8.25 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.078 to be used in a 90 minute boil. Ended up with 5.25 gallons with a gravity of 1.098. The brew day went well with no complications. The 75 minute mash and 90 minute boil added an extra 45 minutes to the day while cooling of the wort took longer than usual. The water from the house seemed a bit warmer than normal. Think I am going to try and add tubing to run it through ice before it goes into the chiller, decreasing the initial temperature more.

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: S-05 (2)
Yeast Starter: none
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.50 (5.25 actual)
Original Gravity: 1.093 (1.098 actual)
Final Gravity: ?
IBU: 78.0
Color: ? SRM
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Primary Fermentation: 30 days @70*F
Secondary Fermentation: 4 months @60*F

Grain Bill:
20.00# 2-Row (25.00# actual)
1.50# Roasted Barley
0.75# Chocolate Malt
0.75# Special B
0.50# Crystal 120
0.50# Wheat
0.25# Flaked Oats

Mash 152*F for 75 minutes.

Hop Bill:
1.75 oz Warrior (15.0%) @ 90 min
2.00 oz Fuggles (4.5%) @ 20 min

Extras:
1.0 tbsp Irish Moss @ 15 minutes left in boil
1.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 minutes left in boil

Double Bogey will take some time to age but I am very interested to see if my skills have increased enough to make a better Russian Imperial Stout than the first time around. Enjoy!

Update:
2012-04-03 – yeast is chewing this beer up, almost creating such a high krausen that it is almost coming out of the 6.5 gallon carboy

Useless Fact: Snails have teeth. They are arranged in rows along the snail’s tongue and are used like a file to saw or slice through the snail’s food.