Going back to the naivety and excess
ambition… the sensible thing to do when using new equipment for the first time
would have been to brew something straightforward, with as few variables as
possible. 3kg of pale malt, a single hop addition, no drama. However, it was
the middle of winter and I wanted to brew the kind of thing I loved, so I
decided to have a go at doing an oatmeal stout. I’d been having a bit of beer
banter on Twitter with a musician friend who loves coffee (he travels with an
espresso machine wherever he goes), so I decided to do a breakfast stout that
was luscious and thick from the oats, but with a big coffee kick to it. I thought it would be a bit less disheartening to mess up a complicated first AG brew than if I ruined another really simple brew.
So, with that justification out of the way, I needed a recipe. I initially started looking for a clone of
Mikkeller’s Beer Geek Breakfast – which I love – and stumbled on a recipe for
Founder’s Breakfast Stout, which I’ve never tried. In addition to the coffee,
they add unsweetened chocolate baking nibs and dark chocolate – the recipe is
here on the BYO Magazine website. It sounded pretty good, so that was my
starting point. I dutifully went out and bought what I thought were the right
ingredients – as I couldn’t find ‘unsweetened chocolate baking nibs’ (which I
assume are a US-only sort of thing), I replaced them with some grated 100%
cacao that I found in Waitrose.
When it came to assembling the malt bill, I
realized something wasn’t right – I only had 3kg of Maris Otter to the 6kg I
needed. If it had been one of the speciality grains, it wouldn’t have been the
end of the world, but suddenly this big stout was looking a lot more diminutive.
In a bit of a panic, I threw together every bit of malt or fermentable that I could find that wouldn't affect the colour or roasted flavour too much:
-
1kg Golden Promise that I’d
accidentally bought in place of Crystal Malt when doing Brew 3
-
300g Crystal Malt (the remnants
of the bag that went into the initial bill)
-
500g light dried malt extract
-
400g flaked oats (again, the
remnants of the bag that went into the initial grain bill)
 |
| The first mash-in for the new tun |
I resisted the temptation to add any sugar
as I didn’t want to thin the end beer out too much. I also realized later that
the recipe required special, debittered black malt (e.g. Carafa Special III),
whereas I used standard black malt through pure ignorance.
So, here’s the actual recipe:
Mash:
3kg Maris Otter
1kg Golden Promise
1kg Jumbo Oats
500g Crystal Malt 60L
450g Chocolate Malt
340g Roasted Barley
250g Black Malt (NOT Carafa Special III)
Boil:
500g Light Dried Malt Extract @ First wort
35g Nugget hops (12% AA) @ 60mins
13g Willamette hops (5.5% AA) @ 30mins
13g Willamette hops (5.5% AA) @ 0mins
1 dessertspoon Irish Moss @ 15mins
55g Sumatran Mandheling coffee beans (fine
ground) @ 0mins
70g Green & Blacks Organic Dark Cook’s
Chocolate @ 0mins
43g Willie’s Supreme Venezuelan Black 100%
Cacao @ 0mins
1 vial California Labs WLP001 (California Ale)
50g Sumatran Mandheling coffee beans (coarse
ground) – 7 days in secondary
 |
| The sparging set-up |
The set-up was a classic three-tier – boiler at top acting as a hot liquor tun, mash tun in the middle, fermenter at the bottom to collect wort, which is then poured back into the (empty) boiler when full. 15 litres of strike water went into the grist at 75, giving a mash temp of 65, which held firm for an hour (I was prepared for a loss of a degree or two, so was pleasantly surprised). I had been aiming for 68, but didn’t think I’d lose a full 10 degrees to the grain – more naivety! In addition, the mash was probably a shade too thick - there were a couple of stuck sparges along the way (solved by blowing into the tap.
The hop additions were straight-forward –
35g Nugget on 60 mins, 13g of Willamette on 30 and 0 mins. The chocolate, cacao
and coffee went in right on flameout as well, and turned the dark wort
absolutely jet black – just the colour I wanted. The biggest downside to using
the coffee like this was that it immediately clogged up the tap on the boiler –
getting the wort from boiler to fermenter took a very, very long time, as the
tap kept jamming with coffee grounds. (getting the coffee out of the tap
afterwards was nigh-on impossible – tell-tale coffee grounds appeared from
nowhere when I was heating the strike water for the next brew!)
 |
| Clockwise from top left, all my boil additions - a mix of cacao, chocolate and ground coffee; Irish Moss; a vial of WLP001; Willamette; Nugget; and more Willamette to finish! |
The OG ended up at 1.068 – below where it
should have been if the recipe had been followed (1.078 is specified in that
recipe), but not disastrous – and as I didn’t make a yeast starter and simply
pitched a vial of WLP001 into the wort, it’s probably just as well. I was a bit
worried when the yeast gushed out of the vial on opening, but apparently this
can be a good sign – and there were no ill effects in the finished beer. The
primary ferment was at about 20-22 degrees – and that was with the help of a
heat mat that my parents use for their wine fermenting, and was down to 1.028
within three days and finished up at 1.022. ABV a shade over 6% - less than I’d
been hoping for, but not bad considering the farce with the grain.
 |
| Wort draining into the FV - fantastic colour! |
I racked it onto 2 more ounces of coarsely
ground Sumatran coffee beans and left it to picked up their flavour for 7 days.
Then, as I fancied oak-ageing some of it, I split the batch into two, bottled
half of it and racked the other half into carboys containing oak chips that had
been soaking in Jack Daniels for a few days – I’ll blog about how the oaking
worked out later.
It went into bottles before the SF trip in
February and I resisted the temptation to open any until the start of March.
The colour is perfect – dark black, with a tan head, although it doesn’t stick
around for very long (due to the coffee oils?). The body is a bit disappointing
– I was hoping it would be feel a bit thicker with all those oats in there,
although I’ve since read about using glucan rests with oats, which I need to
read up on. The coffee and chocolate flavour are spot on though, and getting
better as it matures – it’s a shame that it doesn’t have a bit more booze to
back them up, but that’s my own fault. A bit more sweetness might help too,
which could be achieved either by changing the mash temperature or adding a
little lactose to the boil. I'm very happy with it though, overall - a huge leap ahead of the extract brews, despite the numerous basic errors.
I’ve christened the beer Black Rain, after
one of the aforementioned coffee-loving musician’s songs – I’ve given him, Mel and a few other
friends some bottles, so am looking forward to getting some feedback. If anyone
reading this would like to do a swap, please let me know! I’m hoping to brew
another batch of this in the coming weeks that puts right some of the problems
mentioned above - Item 1: Make sure you have the right grain bill before you
start.
