RIS with Old Ale blend...

I have plans to brew a 1.110ish stout and use the wyeast old ale blend. I accidentally ordered two packets last year and I still want to use it. I know I'll have to grow up a starter but I'm okay with that. My plan is actually to brew this using a double decoction like an Adambier in order to give the brett plenty to consume through the year or so that I age the beer. There would a protein rest and then a 158 degree conversion rest. I have left over oak cubes from my 11-11-11 old ale that I will additionally toss into the carboy for the long secondary. I'm thinking it will be like 14 months or maybe a little more of aging time.

Does anyone have experience using brett in a beer of this gravity? I know that brett is a serious problem in the wine industry and there are many wines are at or higher alcohol than I am planning. However the main difference will be that I'm working with a cultured strain of brett and not a strain that lives at a winery that has adapted itself to 12-15% abv low pH and low nutrient wines. I figure I'll give it a shot regardless, and if it sticks with a high FG I can always dump in some WLP099 and see where that takes the beer as a final measure. Then if that doesn't work I will simply blend it with a lower alcohol batch.

I am thinking that after the long secondary fermentation I will dry hop the beer and potentially add some isohop if needed. I've done two higher alcohol stouts as a holiday beer for my family and this would be my third. I thought it'd be fun to make one like this!

If the Old Ale blend doesn't do it, I doubt WLP099 will do anything more. The Sacc in the blend will take care of the sugars that WLP099 likes, and the Brett will work on some of what is left.

You might want to mash at a lower temp to get more fermentables. There will still be plenty for the Brett to work on. With a 110 start, if you get down to 020, that will be about 12% abv. You might want to think about using a wine yeast when you bottle.

I'm hoping it doesn't get all the way down to 1.020. My hope is that if I mash higher using decoction to get there I will end closer to 1.030. Plus with the amount of specialty malts I should be good to be closer to 1.030. I usually bottle with wine or champagne yeast when I get to that level in most beers. However when cheap wine yeast doesn't work I have to pick up some wlp099 and uncap the bottles to give each a healthy pipette of yeast. I might have to buy a keg for beers like this eventually because bottle conditioning them is a pain in the butt that way I can just bottle off the keg.

Only reason I mentioned 099 for in case the old ale blend doesn't work is because I don't know the alcohol limits of the sacch of the blend. I figure it's good for 9-10% but there's a chance of it slowing down and dying out much past there because I don't know the strain. I do think the brett would be okay though to keep going rest of the way.

I'm interested in this. I'm doing a very similar beer this weekend. Just don't know if I should mash higher or lower. I thinking 151*. So, what do you want this to finish at? 1.030?

My goal would be to finish over 1.020. I figure with my previous experience with this yeast blend I hit 1.018 in the old ale. I mashed that at 157/158. It still made it down a little further than I wanted. So I'm going to do at least a single if not double decoction with this beer. If you're planning on throwing brett in I would suggest a higher mash temp and a 6-10 month aging time. My last RIS finished at 1.030 with a 1.142 starting gravity and a finish at 1.030 with out brett mashing at 152. Of course I wasn't using the same malt then as I am now and so forth. Many variables to take into consideration but I would mash higher if you're planning on using brett or I think you'll end up with a thin funky roasty stout.

This was the longest brew day I've ever had. It was my first time doing a decoction mash and it was pretty fun. My starter of 9097 didn't really take off so I just pitched what I had and a packet of 1028 london ale.

The wort smelled great and tasted fantastic. Had a pretty harsh bitter after taste, but very good. My SG was 1.1247. This should work out pretty good. I'll keep you updated.

Nice dude. Thanks for reminding me. I will pull my packet out of the fridge now that it's been a year and get some wort sterilized at school so I can get this thing going.

Sounds awesome. Keep us posted on the progression.

Alright not to hijack your thread but just an update. This thing took off big time. Like I think I read on the 11-11-11 thread. I lost over .5g on blow off. Anyway, a few weeks, a black stained carpet and angry wife later I took a gravity reading at 1.032 at about 70*.

Color: Black as night and a red/orange tinge on the edges.
Smell: very roasty/malty/alcohol
Taste: Classic stout taste up front very roasty, followed by a little chocalate, malt flavor. The alcohol taste is upfront, but not very harsh and finishes warm. Not as sweet as I would have thought. There's a nice bitterness upfront too, but not offensive like other RIS's I've had.
Mouthfeel: Thick and almost silky.

So far very good. I wonder what the brett is going to do to this over time.

Have you brewed your yet?

Have not brewed yet. I think it will be next week.

What are you thinking for hops and ibus?

I'm aiming for 95ish IBUs and I'm using Calypso hops. I have them and figured I'd use them. I figure year or so that this will sit in the fermentor for secondary fermenation much of the bitterness will subside. Plus much of the flavor of the hops will be gone I think as well.

Well I did Calypso FWH and will be adding some at 10 minutes to see if anything sticks around. I should have right around 100ibus that fade through the year long secondary. I will likely dry hop it before I bottle also. One interesting thing I did was add 6 grams of finely ground roast barley right to the kettle. I saw that as a technique listed on the Brewer's Association website spotlight on RIS. In the recipe .05lb in a 100lb grain bill was added to the kettle. After a little math I got .0125oz or about 6grams. I added them with my FWH.

2.5hr boil with 1:45 left to go. It's black as the night and smells awesome!

Awesome. Get some pics when you get it in the fermenter.

I'll take some pics once a pellicle forms. I ended up a 1.117. It originally ended up at 1.127 but I diluted it just a tad. I figure it already has the potential of being 12.5%abv no need to go higher. The brew day went fine doing the decoctions, it's just messy pulling the decoctions with a pitcher.

The yeast went gang busters by morning. I had roughly 3 gallons of head space in the fermentor and I still had crazy blow off. I had to change the blow off bottle twice due to overflowing into the container I had it sitting in to catch the eventual overflow. I will take the gravity when I transfer to secondary in a few weeks. I will be adding 2oz of french medium toasted oak cubes for the duration of secondary.

Yeah, seriously, 1.127 is crazy. Did you use an oxygen stone? I would think something that high in gravity (1.117) is going to need a serious infusion and possibly several in the first day to make sure everything gets to the level it needs to be. Granted the brett is going to do its work on the less-fermentable sugars, but from what I understand you want the sacc to do all it can in this yeast mix before the brett takes its turn.

I hit it with an oxygen stone for sure. I'm not too worried about infusing a whole lot of oxygen past the initial infusion because of the brett. I will transfer and it will pick up some O2 at that point for the long secondary. If this was a Sacch only fermentation I'd be worried about oxygen for the primary yeast but it's a mixed culture. The sacch can derive nutrients from the dead sacch and other compounds in the beer. I'm going to let the beer do its own thing. Short of my first 02 infusion I will let it go at ambient temps to do whatever it does through the year.

The only thing I'm concerned about is the high abv environment. I know that brett can live in up to 18% abv wines. However the data I've seen is that it dies at a much lower alcohol setting in laboratory studies. I think it might have to do with how they add the alcohol or something but we'll see.

I think that might be because the brett is shielded in the wine barrels and has access to extra sugars that it can feed on in the wood. Looking forward to hearing the results in a year's time.

Well after 11 days the primary fermentation seemed to be finished for the most part. My plan seems to have worked out beautifully! The gravity at transfer is 1.040 so hopefully it doesn't drop more than 20 more points from the brett.

Nice, I haven't checked on mine in a while. Do you plan on racking to a secondary at all, or leaving it in the primary?

It's in secondary now. I can't justify occupying my 10gal stainless fermentor for a year. So this thing is now in its new 6gal better bottle home for the next year or so.

I did a similar thing, used s-05 and it stalled out at 1.038, so I just added washed yeast from 9097, really only looking for the brett at this point. A bubble revival indicates to me that there's new activity. I plan on aging mine until about March.

Okay so minor update. I did a gravity check/sample taste. The beer is sitting at 1.032. So in almost two months it dropped 8 points. I hope it doesn't go a whole lot further.

Have you checked on this lately?

I've tasted it but haven't checked gravity. It is a serious kick in the teeth. Very intense flavors. I was actually thinking about doing a gravity on it soon. It's been about six months since brewing. I figure I'll wait until at least 8-10 months bottle it.

Edit: Well I decided to do a gravity check. It's sitting at 1.026. Hope it doesn't go any further. Only light I can see making it through the beer is where the bulb of my hydrometer is sitting in the testing tube. This beer is black black. The bitterness is smoothing out big time. The roast is still there big time. There's a nice sweetness with a slight cherry flavor. I can't detect the brett funk like I did in my old ale, but I know it's contributing to the flavor. Ooh yeah and I can taste the alcohol. This is shaping up to be a rather impressive beer. I have a feeling this will be a repeat brew. Luckily I have the old ale blend stored at -80C where I went to school. I just hop the profs that liked me stay for a while so I can get back into the freezer.

Well the beer is still sitting at 1.026 and I'm thinking about bottling it today. Now my bottling method may be interesting to try here. I have a RIS from two year ago that I never was able to carbonate. So I was thinking about taking 21 bottles of that and using it's residual extract compared to my 9097 stout to carbonate the 6 gallon batch. That'll give me 8 gallons worth of beer to bottle total as well as it being a nice blend of old (which tastes great just lacks carbonation) and the new batch. It's a bit of a crap shoot though for me to try and do this today. I don't really know the level of attenuation possible of the old ale blend with my older stout. So I am sort of guessing but I'm aiming for 2 vol as my high point and that should be safe.

Decided to just bottle it with dextrose and one bottle of last year's uncarbonated batch to dissolve the dextrose. I ended up with a healthy 61 bottles and it's quite good. I couldn't be happier with the flavor as it sits now. I hope to get a little bit of brett flavor but I think the big roast and fairly high bitterness will keep the brett flavors from becoming very noticeable for a while. So using a non-linear calculation for abv I ended up at 13.6%abv. The beer attenuated almost 78% using the 9097 culture mind you I mashed at 158F and the beer was 29.5% specialty or adjunct grains.

I will be brewing a similar beer to this in October. It will be an all day brew session because I will be brewing enough to fill a 15.9gal fermentor. I still have a case worth of two year old non-carbonated stout to use as top up beer if I need as well. This years recipe will be slightly more simple with just brown malt and black malts to go along with a maris otter base. The hops will be whatever nice high alpha I have on hand. It will be similar to an amped up Courage stout recipe for the grist.

Man, I'd love to taste this! Congrats on a successful brew.

Here's the recipe for anyone interested. I have a decoction mash listed but I sort of followed it. Basically I mashed in at protein rest, then raised my temp to 158 via a wort only pull. I added that back to the mash to bring up my high mash temp and then I ran into the kettle and denatured there rather than doing a mash out. I just start heating the kettle once I have 2-3 gal worth of wort. Also the little bits of victory and maris otter were just to use them up because I had them there. I figured it couldn't hurt to toss them into the beer. The flavor contributions of those small amounts were minimal if at all compared to the rest of the grist.

Imperial Stout
Type: All Grain Date: 11/19/2011
Batch Size (fermenter): 6.50 gal Brewer:
Boil Size: 10.24 gal Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 120 min Equipment: Brew Pot (10 gal) and Cooler (52 qt)
End of Boil Volume 7.28 gal Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 %
Final Bottling Volume: 6.50 gal Est Mash Efficiency 86.2 %



Ingredients
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
18 lbs 8.0 oz Brewers Malt 2-Row (Briess) (1.8 SRM) Grain 1 70.5 %
2 lbs Brown Malt (65.0 SRM) Grain 2 7.6 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 3 5.7 %
1 lbs 4.0 oz Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett) (3.0 SRM) Grain 4 4.8 %
1 lbs Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 5 3.8 %
1 lbs Wheat, Midnight (550.0 SRM) Grain 6 3.8 %
8.0 oz Black Barley (Briess) (500.0 SRM) Grain 7 1.9 %
8.0 oz Chocolate (Dingemans) (340.0 SRM) Grain 8 1.9 %
3.00 oz Calypso [12.00 %] - First Wort 90.0 min Hop 9 87.7 IBUs
2.00 oz Calypso [12.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 10 18.0 IBUs
1.2 pkg Old Ale Blend (Wyeast Labs #9097-PC) [50.00 ml] Yeast 11 -

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.117 SG Measured Original Gravity: 1.117 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.020 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.026 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 13.0 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 12.2 %
Bitterness: 105.7 IBUs Calories: 420.1 kcal/12oz
Est Color: 49.8 SRM
Mash Profile

Mash Name: Decoction Mash, Double Total Grain Weight: 26 lbs 4.0 oz
Sparge Water: 4.46 gal Grain Temperature: 30.0 F
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F Tun Temperature: 30.0 F
Adjust Temp for Equipment: FALSE Mash PH: 5.20

Mash Steps
Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
Protein Rest Add 9.19 gal of water at 134.0 F 122.0 F 35 min
Saccharification Decoct 3.62 gal of mash and boil it 151.0 F 20 min
Saccharification Decoct 1.66 gal of mash and boil it 160.0 F 20 min
Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min

Sweet! I'm bottling mine sometime in Dec. That's the soonest I can get to it. I'll let you know how it goes. What do you think kept your other RIS from carbing? I had that problem with a DIPA I did earlier in the year.

Did you end up Dry hopping like you talked about doing?

I think it had a combination of challenges. It was almost 15%, it sat a long time, and I'm not sure if I put fresh yeast in at bottling. So with the high abv and long fermentation any yeast would have trouble. Then with it sitting for so long there was very little CO2 retained and I don't think I accounted for the lower carb when adding my priming sugar. I used to use online calculators now I do it manually and figure for .3-.4 residual CO2 on the long term beers.

As for the dry hopping, I forgot. I will put a label on this year's batch to remind me to do just that before I bottle it up.

Today is brewday for this years iteration. I changed up my recipe a bit. Simplified it and made it to be sort of like an amped up version of courage RIS.

8 Gal batches

1.117 SG

70.6% Maris Otter
16.2% Brown Malt
7.4% Black Patent
5.9% Midnight Wheat

110 IBUs and a 8-9 month fermentation with 9097 added to secondary. I will primary with the house yeast from work because I never made up a starter so I need to swing by there today to get a big mason jar of slurry.

The new brew went ape****crazy. I stuck 8 gal from the first brew into the 60L Spiedel fermentor and it had krausened out later that night before I could get the second batch into there. So I sanitized a keg and did a no chill knockout for the second brew. Everything mostly calmed down from yesterday and I just added about 4 more gallons of wort from the keg. Depending on how it is later tonight I'll add the rest. I don't want to lose 2 gallons of beer to blow off.

Did you slant or just refrigerate and save slurry from 9097 last year? I haven't seen it out around us here this year, but maybe my LHBS just doesn't have it in yet.

I had a slurry saved. Plus I do have it frozen where I went to school (6 miles away) but I never got into the lab to grow it from the cryo vial.

Awesome. My RIS that I made last year, that secondaried with this culture is drinking awesome, and the Old Ale that I made in 2010 with this culture is really hitting its stride.

What did your's finish at? I got down to 1.026 which is about where I wanted. After sacch finished it was about 1.040, so brett was about 15% of my attenuation.

My RIS I primaried with 1056, which went from 1.109 to 1.038, then I added the Old Ale slurry, which dropped it to 1.025 at the time that I kegged it (which was 5 months combined primary and secondary). It may have continued to drop in the keezer, but probably not by much, and it was pretty good at that gravity.

My Old Ale, which got a 2000ml starter of 9097, went from 1.107 to 1.018 over the course of 12 months combined fermentation.

I'm curious what you mashed at for the RIS. Last year I did decoction style temp raises and did my main conversion rest at 158. I didn't seem to quite hit the 158 though. This one I just did a single infusion at 158 and no mash out. I figure it will follow roughly the same pattern. The wort had a great flavor even with all the black and brown malt.

I didn't add yeast to the bottling bucket because my experience with the brett beers is that they carb fine, just slightly slowly. In retrospect I maybe should have added yeast but not sure what would have worked in this 13% beer very well (other than wlp099).