Brew #45: Belgian Stout

Fitting in one more brewday before the start of August (lots of fun stuff going on in August!), and this will fill out the rest of my kegs for a little while. I’ve been wanting to do an Imperial Stout for awhile, so I’m doing something a little more creative in making it belgian style.. I’m looking for a big bold chocolately/roasty stout with some peppery/spice notes from the yeast.. something akin to belgian dark chocolate. This one is going to take awhile to age and mellow, probably around 6 to 8 weeks, but then should age nicely in the fridge for a year or more.

Here’s the recipe:

Belgian Stout
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Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Belgian Specialty Ale
Batch: 6.25 gal All Grain

Characteristics
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Recipe Gravity: 1.078 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 55 IBU
Recipe Color: 38 SRM
Estimated FG: 1.019
Alcohol by Volume: 7.5%
Alcohol by Weight: 5.9%

Ingredients
———–
American Pale 10.00 lb, Grain, Mashed
American chocolate malt 0.75 lb, Grain, Mashed
Cane sugar 1.00 lb, Sugar, Other
Crystal 120L 0.50 lb, Grain, Mashed
Flaked oats 1.00 lb, Adjunct, Mashed
German vienna 3.00 lb, Grain, Mashed
Roasted barley 1.25 lb, Grain, Mashed

Goldings(5.2aa) 1.00 oz, Whole, 0 minutes
Goldings(5.2aa) 1.20 oz, Whole, 15 minutes
Magnum (11.5aa) 1.25 oz, Whole, 90 minutes
Sorachi Ace (14aa) 0.50 oz, Whole, 60 minutes

Irish Moss 1.00 unit, Fining, 2tsp
Star Anise 2.00 unit, Spice, 2g
WLP550 Belgian Ale 1.00 unit, Other, 800ml starter pitched at 68f, let rise to 74f over week

Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:
Mashed @ 150f for 60m
Boiled 90m
Added sugar to last 15min of boil

Batch Notes:

I overshot my boil volume by a little over a gallon, and ran out of propane at the very end (ugh!)..

OG 1.068, fermenting at 69f, going to let temperature raise to mid-70’s over the next week.

8/16: Transferred to serving keg, it tastes pretty damn good.. roasty, but not acrid or sharp. Definitely has a medium-dry to dry finish.

A really great video!

Love it. The music, editting, and most importantly the content make this one an epic video..

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Civilzation Revolution on the Xbox360

After trading in a few games at Gamestop this weekend, I picked up this new one for only $13.50, score! First of all, I’m giving this game a score of 9 out of 10… I might even go a perfect 10 if the online play totally kicks ass (I haven’t tried it yet)

I started playing the Civilization series of games back when the original was released for the PC in 1991, and I’ve loved the game ever since. The producer, Sid Meier, is just brilliant at designing games that have tremendous gameplay. My sister and I spent hundreds of hours playing Civilization back in the day, and never got bored with it.

Obviously, a lot has changed over the past 17 years, with graphics getting 1000x better and the gameplay being constantly tweaked. CivRev has exceptional graphics and the interface has been designed to be suited toward playing the game using a controller rather than a mouse/keyboard. Also, the gameplay for CivRev has been tweaked such that you can sit down and play an entire match in an hour or two as single player and there are several options for multiplayer action on Xbox Live!

Brew #44 : Wendies Porter 3

We’ve been out of porter for too long, that last couple of batches of this recipe have been really great so I’m doing another! This time I’m backing off the chocolate just a touch and trading some of the two-row for pilsner to see if I can help my starch conversion a little bit and add some complexity… plus, I’m going back to the California ale yeast for this because the last batch was just a tad on the sweet side.

Wendies Porter 3
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Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Robust Porter
Batch: 5.00 gal, Mashed

Characteristics
—————
Recipe Gravity: 1.073 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 33 IBU
Recipe Color: 40° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.018
Alcohol by Volume: 7.4%
Alcohol by Weight: 5.7%

Ingredients
———–
American two-row 9.00 lb, mashed
Belgian pilsener 1.50 lb, mashed
German Munich 1.50 lb, mashed
Crystal 40L 1.25 lb, mashed
American chocolate malt 0.75 lb, mashed
American black patent 0.50 lb, mashed

Fuggles 0.50 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Willamette 1.00 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Perle 0.25 oz, whole, 5 minutes
Willamette 1.00 oz, whole, 5 minutes

WLP001 California Ale Yeast 1.00 unit, tube
Irish Moss 1.00 unit, clarifying

Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:

Batch Notes:
OG 1.063, pitched yeast at 72f and dropped temp to 68f in a few hours.