Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Ash-hole Hop Stout Finished

Ash-hole hop stout is now in the keggerator, and has been for about a week now. It finished with a FG of 1.013, giving it an abv of 4.2%. It's a pretty low alc but thick taste. It's extremely dark and stout like, some oatmeal taste, but all that is overpowered by the huge hop taste. The nice bitterness of the Warrior hops, and a strong cascade fresh hop taste with some hop spiciness. I think the dry hop may have been a little too much for this one to redo next time.

On a side note, I also put 1.5L of the beer into my little whisky cask to season the cask and that came out with a HUUUUUUUGE whisky and oak overtones. I bottled that yesterday after 2 weeks in the mini cask. I got about 5 bottles that will make an interesting beer.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Ash-hole Hop Stout

So the brew went off pretty well. I tried two new things for water control. First I added an extra gallon to the sparge process, then added another gallon to the boil and ended up with almost 6 gallons, and much lower SG than expected at 1.045 (expected 1.060). Next time I'll try just the extra gallon at sparge.

It's still very dark and ominous looking, and should be pretty good. We almost had an issue with the yeast, as the yeast bag didn't inflate, and the starter didn't really catch until a couple days later. I ended up throwing the yeast in on Wednesday morning after it finally started taking. It seems to be fermenting up well now.

The other small mistake was a little carelessness on my part, when I measured out 2 oz of Warrior hops, and I was supposed to had .5 oz at 30 min, and .5 oz at 5 min, then dry hop with the other oz. Instead I added 1 oz at each step, and I'll still dry hop. This thing is going to be a hop monster!