Homebrewin' thread

I failed to brew this weekend, but after a couples weeks waffling on what I wanted to do with my winter ale, Mrs. Snape hit me with a good idea: screw the winter ale. Make a breakfast stout instead!

So hopefully NEXT weekend I will be brewing a rendition of the Founders Breakfast Stout with oatmeal, dark chocolate, Kona coffee and Sumatran coffee. I may or may not riff on their limited-release Canadian Breakfast Stout by adding some maple syrup. It'll come down to how much I want to spend, because the amount of maple you need to make a dent vs. cost of said maple is a bit daunting.

I actually haven't started it yet, because I am lame and I suck.

(The real answer is yes, though. I would totally do that.)

This ain't coffee, folks. Finally brewed my breakfast stout. Based off of a clone recipe of the Founders Breakfast Stout, which includes chocolate, two types of coffee and oat flakes. At secondary I'm going to shift directions toward the Kentucky Breakfast Stout, which is the same beer aged in bourbon barrels. I can't do that obviously, but I can add French oak chips soaked in bourbon (and probably a little straight bourbon in the bucket as well).

The recipe calls for Kona coffee, but the only true Kona coffee I could find was a 12 oz. bag for $29.99. Ummmmm, thanks but no thanks. So, I chose some Costa Rican stuff that sounded good. Sumatran for the first addition, Costa Rica at secondary. Lots of coffee in this beer.

LazBro yeah, true Kona is expensive, though you might've found a blend. But Costa Rican sounds good.

You probably could get one of those mini barrels I've seen at liquor stores, but probably not worth the effort. Add wood chips and a slug of bourbon.

Racked the beer to secondary on Sunday and added about 2 ounces of ground Costa Rican coffee, an ounce of dark French oak chips soaked in bourbon, and an extra few shots of bourbon for good measure. The bourbon was the Jack Daniels Single Barrel, 47% ABV. My father usually has a deeper roster of bourbons, but this was all he had when I went to collect. I guess my whiskey-swilling BIL got there first.

It's black as night with dark brown foam - visual characteristics of many a great beer - and with a deep roasty and coffee aroma. This is the stage where I have a tendency to "forget" to bottle my beer (lazy), but I can't do that this time. Those wood chips and coffee grounds are time bombs. They can't sit there forever less they overpower the beer. I must be vigilant and bottle this weekend.

Efficiency wasn't great in the first rack. Lots of must hurt my volume, so I think I'm looking at around 10-11 liters, but I'm always surprised so we'll see. Also it came a little shy in the ABV, which I expected at low 8's. It was sitting at 7.7% at secondary, plus a minor uptick, like maybe 0.1% from the bourbon.

Welp, we had our local homebrew club meeting yesterday. To promote more entries for the Ocean State Homebrew Competition in April (which we ran last year, and will help out this year), we're doing an in-club brew competition for March. Rather than picking one BJCP category and flooding it with entries, we're going regional for our competition. We picked the British Isles, and any style that falls under that.

I haven't brewed in 2 years now, but one that I did before that I really liked was a Scotch Ale, aged with scotch-soaked oak chips. This time I want to try soaking the chips with Laphroaig, to add a smokiness with the sweet.



Okay, so question for you brewers and beer lovers alike: Following the BJCP 2015 guidelines for a wee heavy (17C), it says the beer should not have a peat smoked taste. Would adding smoky scotch wood chips harm me, even if it's the taste I was going for? Should I consider submitting under another category? Below is the link for the BJCP style guideline, if you're unfamiliar with it, or with the new version of it (much different from the 2008 version).
I could also split it up in two, and try different scotches. 

www.bjcp.org/docs/2015_Guidelines_Beer.pdf

I agree with you, though I understand why they'd be so strict about it. The general idea is to aim for something and be able to nail it down perfect. 
Within my club, we used to hold brewing competitions, and would just say "stout" or "fruity beer", and would try all sorts of fun stuff. But to better our process, and to do better in competitions, we started following BJCP (then the 2008 version). There was one comp, and someone made a perfect hefeweizen. Cloudy, slight banana taste, good head retention. Only problem is, it was supposed to be an ale. To me, it was the best one, but yeah, the guy completely missed what he was trying to brew. So it would be hard to reproduce, because something did go wrong somewhere.  

Introducing...

Which Light Shall Never Penetrate  (Byzantine)
Oatmeal Coffee Stout with Bourbon; 7.8% ABV; Bottled January 2016

Brewed by request for Mrs. Snape. Based on the Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout, this hefty oatmeal stout was brewed with high-end semi-sweet cocoa powder, Sumatran and Costan Rican coffees and dark French oak chips soaked in bourbon (and maybe an extra shot or 3 of bourbon for good measure). The aroma is an intoxicating melange of roasted coffee and alcoholic warmth, but the flavor is smooth, first again of roast, char and chocolate, giving way to a lingering finish of pronounced oak and subtle bourbon. I'd go as far as to call it woody, but not unpleasantly so. It's one of the more complex brews I've delivered. Body is a bit light for me, as most all mid-to-low gravity stouts are, but I'm happy with the carbonation here. Just enough to wake up the palate and avoid that flat taste, but not a bubble more than that.

Of course, stouts improve considerably with age, so I'm excited to see how this develops in the bottles over the next few weeks. I'd say "and months" but let's be serious.

15 bottles of my latest IPA are now on the shelf, bringing our total stores to 25 liters of homebrew and maybe 20 odd 12-ouncers. One of the nice things about IPAs is that there's no real aging involved. Once it's carbonated, it's good to go.

Heaviest this shelf has been in a long time. It's beautiful.

The great thing about making it to your taste is that, competition or no, you really can't lose. This sounds delish.

Yeah, at that size the fermentation could take awhile. Did you do a starter on the yeast?

Gonna be a biggun, that's for sure. Great for aging.

Cracking a new beer and tuning in to the latest BCS. Now that's a great night.

Introducing...

The Ghosts That Wait for Spring  (The Safety Fire)
West Coast-style IPA; 8.5% ABV; Bottled February 2016

Brewed in honor of ... uh, my love of IPAs, I guess. This tweaked version of my Fault and Fracture IPA starts with the same malt base but changes the hop bill considerably to bring out more citrus characteristics. Floral aroma, huge with orange and pineapple in the front, with that trademark West Coast bitterness running in the back. A slight alcoholic bite. It's very good, and perfectly carbonated.

Oh my goodness! Thank you for posting! This is incredible, and it's not something I'm likely to have stumbled across elsewhere.

They provide a lot of great information here. It's very thorough and usable. Unfortunately we don't get a lot of Brewdog over here, at least not in the Dallas market, so I don't have a lot of opportunity to try them and pick favorites. I might try to do one of their stock IPAs, just so I can approximate how they taste when really fresh.

Gobsmacked by just how many different beers they've brewed over the years.

Wish the list was alphabetized or something. Chronological is not a very practical order for this purpose.

So my homebrew club's beer competition was last night, and I took first place! There were 5 submissions, and the categories were 14 and 15: Scottish Ales and Irish Beers.
I had to force carbonate with plastic bottles and my CO2 tank, since I didn't have enough time to properly bottle carbonate them. I'm still keeping the rest of the beer in the secondary for another month as well.
The biggest flaw is there's a heavy alcohol taste to it, which will settle off once it's aged properly. I'm going to enter it into a real competition that's in April, so I'm hoping that the alcohol taste will mellow out, though I doubt it will. Another mark against me, by the one BJCP certified judge in the group, is that the fermentation temperature could have added to that alcohol taste (fusel alcohols). So he recommended I get a temp wrap and thermal controller for keeping the carboy at the right temp. Since it was too cold to keep in the basement, I kept it in my dining room, which was anywhere from 56-65 degrees, so hopefully in the future, I avoid that problem.

There was a great irish stout that tasted like a smoked beer. I voted it as my favorite, but it came in second. It was spot on, and the guys that did that one are new to the club, but know their stuff.

[edit] Oh, I did a wee heavy (which is cat 17C, but to make it fit, I submitted as a Scottish Export (14C)). The mezcal oak chips actually helped mellow out the alcoholic taste, so even though I thought I was going to get hit for having a smoked taste, it helped in the long run.