Enter the Dark Arts. N00b Mockumentary

If you are a n00b like me then you probably have a ton of questions swimming around your head. Personally, my questions tend to be rather dumb and any decent person would feel stupid just asking them. Good thing I am not too decent but as most folks are, I decided to document my first beer brew to help out others in the same boat as myself. Its going to be a quick brew, its going to be a dirty brew, and its most certainly going to be a dark one.

I recently got itchy and tired of waiting for my meads to be drinkable and so queried the gods of brewing on this forum. The goal was to make something, anything really that was drinkable within 3 weeks. Thanks to the friendly folk who helped me out on this thread, here is what I came up with...

Recipe: Stout
5 #s Breiss "Special Dark" LME
2 #s flaked barley
1 # black roasted barley
2oz Kent goldings
S05 yeast

I will walk you through the trials and tribulations of this venture. If the creation of the wort has anything to say, this is going to be one dark evil beast of a stout.

I began by heating ~3 gallons spring water to around 150 degrees and then steeped the barleys using a grain bag. Steeped this for 30 minutes and it immediately began to darken.

Removed the grain bag and brought everything to a boil. Added the hops and boiled for 55 minutes. I found that I lost as much as 1.5 gallons of volume during this boil and found myself periodically adding water during the boil. Yeah. Its pretty dark already. Not even any malt added yet.

Added the Breiss "Special dark" malt and stirred it in for about 5 minutes. It has a color rating of 90. Now this thing is a dark beast. This stout has now become known as Dark Abyss Stout and it is possible that Cthulhu himself has taken an active role in the darkness of this brew.

Topped off to 5 gallons in the ferm bucket. The wort was so hot headed that I had to put it on ice to chill out for a while.

Next time, chill the wort right in the boiling pot in an ice bath, and then when it gets to 90 degrees, pour it into the fermenter, and then top off with cold water. It is faster, because it's much easier to chill a smaller volume than a larger volume. Otherwise, you have 5 gallons of too-warm wort, instead of 3 gallons of too-warm wort!

Yeah. That is something that crossed my mind after the fact. The metal boiling pot probably would have cooled better as well. Still, trials AND tribulations of the documentation must include the tribulations too

Question. Is there any particular reason you hopped it before adding the extract? I know with a stout you really are only going for bitterness, but I am still curious.

DrunkleJon said:

Question. Is there any particular reason you hopped it before adding the extract? I know with a stout you really are only going for bitterness, but I am still curious.

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That was based on recommendations I received. As hot as I was boiling it, it was recommended to do this to avoid any damage to the LME flavor from excessive heat.

sonofgrok said:

That was based on recommendations I received. As hot as I was boiling it, it was recommended to do this to avoid any damage to the LME flavor from excessive heat.

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Right. It's very well accepted to add the LME late in the boil, to avoid caramelization type of flavors ("maillard reactions") as well as excessive darkening. Of course, with a black stout I don't darkening would be an issue! But a "cooked extract" taste isn't good, so adding the bulk of the LME late in the boil is a great way to avoid that.

LME doesn't have to boil, as it's been processed already. But the point of a boil in an extract batch is for the hops utilization. So, the hops are added as usual for the boil.

Wort cooled off so I took a hydrometer reading. 1.042 on the dot. Somehow Yooper predicted this exactly...

I usually just soak my yeast in spring water for a 20 minutes and pitch it. For some reason this time I decided to sweeten a little bit of wort and soak the yeast in that for a bit (not sure this actually accomplished anything of value). Then I pitched it.

Put the lid on the fermenter, gave it a dunce cap (airlock), and stuck it in its dark little corner to think on what its done. Barring anything catastrophic, next big update will be in 2 weeks when its done doing its deed. (yes, that red arrow is actually in my brew closet. It gets really annoying).

Thank you. And thats why I come to HBT. Learn something new every time I visit.

Did you aerate the wort? Just asking because it is standard practice to aerate the wort after you cool it to put oxygen back into solution for use by the yeast in the lag phase (rapid reproduction). Without aeration, you could wind up with incomplete fermentation since the yeast will not have enough oxygen to reproduce enough to be able to ferment out the sugars completely.

Spicemon1972 said:

Did you aerate the wort? Just asking because it is standard practice to aerate the wort after you cool it to put oxygen back into solution for use by the yeast in the lag phase (rapid reproduction). Without aeration, you could wind up with incomplete fermentation since the yeast will not have enough oxygen to reproduce enough to be able to ferment out the sugars completely.

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I vigorously stirred the heck out of it with a big spoon. Does that count?

I've not heard of aeration by stirring with a big spoon (hopefully a sanitized spoon!). From your post, you topped off and cooled in your fermentor so transferring the cooled wort into the fermenter would not have happened. I don't think that stirring will introduce the needed oxygen, but I'm not 100% sure and will defer to Yooper or another of this site's very knowledgable gurus for the answer.

sonofgrok said:

I vigorously stirred the heck out of it with a big spoon. Does that count?

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Yep, that works great!

Stirring/pouring/splashing/shaking/etc all do about the same job.

Its officially bubblin' so something must have gone right. Vigaspooneration was hopefully successful then. That is the new technical term for sanitized vigorous spoon aeration according to the international encyclopedia of technorama existing in my head.

sonofgrok said:

Its officially bubblin' so something must have gone right. Vigaspooneration was hopefully successful then. That is the new technical term for sanitized vigorous spoon aeration according to the international encyclopedia of technorama existing in my head.

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That's why I keep coming back day after day. Always learning new things - Vigaspooneration. I am going to drop that into conversation and watch people's heads spin.
Cheers, sonofgrok!

Bottling today so its update time.
I want to start out by saying "Every new brewer should be mandated to first use an opaque ferm bucket instead of a carboy!" I made wort, pitched yeast, and when I opened it two weeks later... I found beer. No worrying about CO2 bubbles or krausen being "infections" and no wondering to myself "Should I throw this out?".

Ok so here is the bottling set up, the sanitized bottles (I am using 1 liter EZ Cap bottles because I like Chimay. Don't judge me.), and getting read to prime. Yes, I am using honey to prime DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN. Using super scientific calculations, I decided to use 1/2 cup honey and 1 and 1/2 cup boiling water (2 cups total priming goo).

A couple notes that went wrong already for other new brewers to avoid. I fermed in my bottling bucket because it was all that was available at the time. This meant I had to siphon it to another bucket to take it off the trub and then BACK to the cleaned bottling bucket prior to bottling. I have a high chance of oxidation thanks to this but was careful with transferring and sanitation so will hopefully be ok.

And here is the final product all bottled up. The beer tasted like... well flat beer. Which I understand is a good thing. I got 16 bottles (1 liter each) out of it. Next update when its time to open one!

Well done! One thing to note, when using dry yeasts like us05 you don't need to aerate. I still do for good practice, but it isn't necessary.

I'm not sure why, sonofgrok, but everytime I read your posts in this thread it sounded like a cowboy in my head.

SpookyAlmond said:

I'm not sure why, sonofgrok, but everytime I read your posts in this thread it sounded like a cowboy in my head.

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Fair enough. I do live in the southwest and the man with no name is my avatar. In real life, I have a very benign, classic midwest lack of accent though

I wish this thread existed when I did my first brew.

While apparently written with the intent to amuse, the information is well presented and easily understood.

Thanks sonofgrok

BigGoat said:

Well done! One thing to note, when using dry yeasts like us05 you don't need to aerate. I still do for good practice, but it isn't necessary.

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You always need vigaspooneration!

Final update time. It has been 9 days since bottling. Time to crack open a homebrew. The (rather intelligent) suggestion from Revvy is to allow 3 weeks at 70 degrees for a brew to carb. My FG was a little high when I bottled and I have been nervous about bottlebombs and I have also been itching for a brew so I decided to crack one now.

Here we go...

Whew... nice pop at opening. Rich dark color. Nice, slightly dark head. Unexpected chocolaty aroma. Bubbles coming up out of solution which is unexpected because only carbed for 9 days and refrigerated for 7 hours...

Tasting. Absolutely delicious. Better than any other stout I have had in recent memory. Thanks for the help with the recipe Yooper! Nice and bubbly... almost TOO bubbly (Oh crap *Runs and cold crashes the rest of the bottles*). Chocolaty tones despite no use of chocolate. Good and malty but not too malty. Just enough bitterness. And dark... so dark...

Its a beautiful thing...

Well folks, we made, and drank... some beer. This is sonofgrok signing out.

Final note. Left a very nice lacing on the glass.