1st Imperial Stout. Any suggestions?

This will be my 12th batch ever made, and only my 2nd "Hi Gravity" beer . (Above 1.060 OG).

My first Double IPA I made I made several mistakes and I don't want to make more with this one.

Any suggestions for Imperial or even high gravity beers?

do you have a recipe in mind?

If you're doing a stout, the maltiness is a major factor in success. You might consider a partial mash.

For anything imperial, make sure you pitch enough yeast. High ABV is very stressful to yeast, and if you do not pitch enough, you may not reach full attenuation,'which will leave you with a sweet taste.

For beers above 1.090 it is almost impossible to over pitch ( within reason).

One last thing, a RIS will benefit from extended aging, whereas an IIPA will not.

lazarwolf said:

do you have a recipe in mind?

If you're doing a stout, the maltiness is a major factor in success. You might consider a partial mash.

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I guess I should have also stated I have already brewed and pitched my yeast 8 days ago.

I brewed an extract from MOREBEER.COM. JP's imperial stout (or something close to that name). I got a very high OG of 1.112, but that's because I made a 5 gallon batch and I believe MOREBEER.COM has their kits scaled for 6.5 Gallon batches.

I pitched 40 oz. of Wyeast London ESB slurry from the previous brew. The HIGHLY focculent (spelling?) strain made it very difficult for me to separate the trub from the yeast, so I ended up decanting the water / beer of the trub / yeast and got 40 oz of fairly dense material to pitch.

Mr.malty calculations show I probably didn't even need half of what I pitched, but more never hurts when dealing with yeast.

So as of now I have it sitting in the primary bucket from last Monday and need some advice as to when I rack.

I have yet to even open the bucket to take samples for gravity or color/taste or even to see if it made it without infection (not that I would expect an infection, but anything is possible).

I get mixed advice for when to move the beer off the trub and yeast. Do I leave it on for longer due to the high gravity, do I move it off you mellow in the carboy? I'm not sure what to do at this point.

I also know that it takes a looooooong time to condition, bith in the carboy, but also to condition and carb in a bottle. I've read that additional yeast is needed at bottling time because the yeast I pitched will die from the high alcohol content. Do I pitch a different strain and risk bottle bombs from carbonation from both the sugar still left over from the primary fermentation that the original yeast failed to convert and then more priming sugar calculated by popular online homebrewing web sites? Does a champagne yeast strain continue were the original yeast stopped, or does it just convert the priming corn sugar? Do I pitch the same strain and hope it doesn't get killed off before priming with the corn sugar? Do I just bottle with calculated corn sugar and hope SOME of the original yeast made it and will convert the priming sugar?

Do I continue to worry or just relax and have a homebrew?

Arrgh! I get very anxious when I don't know the answers and make expensive mistakes.

Please help me.

Im not sure the fullers strain can ferment out a 1.100 beer. Id make sure you rouse it every 3 days or so. You may need to pitch a starter of a more attenuative/alcohol tolerant strain (us-05, wlp007, for example) if it craps out at 1.040 or so. Id move it out of the bucket once gravity is stable, and the final gravity is reached. it shouldnt be more than 3 weeks or so. After that. You can transfer it to a glass carboy with minimal head space and let it sit for a few months.

giraffe said:

You can transfer it to a glass carboy with minimal head space and let it sit for a few months.

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I only have 6.5 Gallon Big Mouth Bubblers and no equipment to purge O2 out of the vessels. I don't want oxidation, and I don't think it's good to keep the beer on the trub for a while.

I guess I have to decide between trub contact or "possible" O2 contact. If I transfer after fermentation is complete, I could let it age in the Big Mouth Bubbler (as I always have with all my other beers) and risk oxidation (which I've never had, but then again, I haven't had beer in a carboy longer than 2 weeks).

I could always just exhale my CO2 from my gapping open maw into the carboy to provide the CO2 I guess...

You should be good for a week or two still in primary after fermentation has finished.

I'm not 100% sure, but, I'd think oxygen would be less of a worry if you just went straight from there to bottles (with CO2-absorbant caps) and planned on a few months of bottle conditioning, than bulk aging with large headspace?

Mmm. Maybe I'll start another thread about carboy head space?

I think you are overestimating the concerns about contact with the trub. It should be fine for 4-6 weeks at minimum. Likely longer. Do not take it off the yeast until your final gravity is reached.

If you are going to bulk age it for months, you want to avoid oxidation. This is a beer that needs aging, If you dont have a secondary vessel or keg you can put it in, you can bottle it, and age it in the bottles.

Now my next problem / question: the yeast I used is wyeast London ESB yeast. It has an alcohol tolerance of 9%. The Original gravity was 1.112. The attenuation is between 67-71%. I expect the yeast to be killed off by the alcohol.

How is the priming sugar (corn sugar) going to get converted?

Or would all that fermentable sugar from the boil prime the bottles with an addition of a different yeast strain, and of so, how much yeast so that the beer doesn't go flat or produce bottle bombs?

Can anyone steer me in the right direction?

I can share some of my own experience brewing a RIS. Started with extract batches and about a 1.090 to a 1.096 O.G. Using Wyeast 1056 American Ale (which is up to 10% tolerant) those early batches would always finish in the 1.020's within a couple of weeks. I always transferred them to a secondary and added oak chips soaked in bourbon for another week. I always pitched in some champagne yeast 3-4 days before bottling. Early on I sprinkled the yeast in dry, later batches I re-hydrated before pitching. Then I bottled conditioned. Those batches always got better and better as they aged! ( ;

Recently I've moved to all grain so am re-learning how to make this recipe. I will skip over my first attempt and fast forward to my second. The O.G. was 1.110 (Holy $hit I've never had a gravity that high yet!) I let it ferment for a couple of weeks then checked the gravity and tasted that sample. I think you should always taste those gravity samples! It's important and can tell you a lot for this reason. After two weeks the gravity dropped to 1.048 and it still tasted very very sweet to me. So I left it alone for another month. The air lock continued to bubble away during the next month too. After 6 weeks in the primary it dropped to 1.038, tasted much better and crunching the numbers in one of those ABV calculators should be about a 9.5% beer! Awesome! So I moved it to a secondary and am just going to let it sit there until... spring break I am thinking.

Bottom line is use the hydrometer, trust your taste buds and be patient

JLeuck64 said:

I always pitched in some champagne yeast 3-4 days before bottling.

I let it ferment for a couple of weeks then checked the gravity and tasted that sample. I think you should always taste those gravity samples!

Bottom line is use the hydrometer, trust your taste buds and be patient

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So far, all I've done was brew and pitch yeast. I've aways tasted the hydrometer samples I've pulled using the thief. I'll let this sit out a few more weeks, then do a reading.

I wanted to know the benefit of racking to a carboy over bottle conditioning. I've always racked to a secondary just because I wanted to get it off that yeast cake and trub amd finish up with the yeast in suspension (plus harvest the yeast for other beers in the works).

I would benefit right now with a long secondary only because I'm running short on bottles, and tieing up 48 bottles for almost a year would leave me in a bind.

Honestly I think early on in my brewing experience I was trying to be too greedy when racking from the primary directly into the bottling bucket. I always sucked up some trub and those batches looked cloudy to me and had quite a bit of sediment in the bottom of bottles. So I started moving each batch off to a secondary for a week before bottling. It will improve the clarity a bunch, especially if it is a lighter beer. There are pro's and con's to this technique and it's probably been argued to death but I had good results doing it.

Now I am not against change... and since some time has passed and many more batches of experience has been added to my skill set I am considering just leaving some batches in the primary and then racking to the bottling bucket. The reason I am considering this is because I have started using dry hops for quite a few recipes. What I am finding is it might just be more efficient to add the dry hops to the primary after fermentation is finished rather than racking to the secondary. So, I going to give it a try and see if I like it or notice any differences. Always willing to experiment and it sure keeps me entertained!