Let's See Where This Goes Dry Stout

Just started the water for my first partial mash. Gonna be a dry stout.

5.5# LME
2# Roasted Barley
1# Crushed Barley

Mashing the barley for 60 mins at 145*.
Boiling 10 L with half the LME for 60 mins.
2oz EKG for a 60 min hop addition.
Add rest of LME at flameout, stir and cover for 15 mins.
Stick it in a snowbank to cool until about 70 degrees.
Top off to 20L with 65* water, pitch rehydrated Notty, cover and leave alone for 3 weeks.

Scared, excited, worried, hardly slept last night.... Bahh! Cooper's kits are so easy!!!

Just started timing the mash...... Wasn't prepared for how much grain was going to work out of the muslin bag into the wort....

So I let the 10L boil cool to about 90*, then added my top up. Even in -10C weather, stuck in a snow bank it took 90 minutes to get from boiling to 90*. An immersion chiller will be built before next batch Brought me to 23L of 66* wort. Pitched re-hydrated Notty into it. Gonna leave it alone for three weeks and see where I go.

Wish me luck.

OG was 1.045, Brewers Friend says it was 31.44 IBU's and 38.51 SRM.

Tasted delicious, a bit like a black coffee with lots of sugar. I'm assuming the sweetness will leave as it ferments?

LTownLiquorPig said:

I'm assuming the sweetness will leave as it ferments?

Click to expand...

Definitely.

Good luck!

24 hours in and bubbling away nicely.

Bottling this now, with 1/3rd cup corn sugar.

Finished up at 1.012-1.013. Seemed a little lighter in colour and a not as bittwe as I'd hoped. We'll see what some aging does. Was tasty, just not the stout I was trying to get to.

I know this may be a little late, and unsolicited, but I must Science!

The reason your wort cooling took 90 minutes is you put it into the snow bank. While this will help your initial temperature drop, it will do nothing for your sustained heat transfer. meaning, you built an insulating layer of air between the snow and kettle. While this isn't a big deal, it is a waste of time.
A better solution is to leave your covered kettle out in the elements (wind and cold, maybe a little snow fall) and let the various modes of heat transfer do their thing. Bonus points if you have a black kettle (or nearly black) to fully take advantage of all 3 modes.

Let me splain, you loose heat 3 ways, convection, conduction, and radiation. Normally we don't think about radiation because it is essentially convection but not really. That's where the black kettle comes in, it will help, but not a whole lot (I don't think). Anyway, when you put the kettle in the bank you had lots of conduction until the first bit of snow melted, but then you had a chunk of stagnent air between the snow and the kettle. While heat was still being transfered, it wasn't optimum. The reason is the stagnent air does not transfer heat as effectively as moving air. Think of how cold you get in a windy winter storm as opposed to a calm winter day.

Now, if you put the kettle in the elements you will get some conduction through the bottom to the ground (a huge heat sink) and you will have convection to the wind. This should increase the heat transfer rate significantly. Bonus points for having a high emissivity (black) kettle.

I hope this helped.

Worst is, as a one time avid winter camper, had I given it an eighth of a second thought I would've realized the snow was going to end up insulatig. Have switched up to ice baths in the sink for now.

Tastes pretty good, but a little thin and not as bitter as I was hoping for.

Our first brew was last year this time... We used a rubbermade tub full of snow and had the same issue as you... Our last batch we brewed we came to our senses and added water to the snow to get some movement, about a 60min reduction in cooling time... Sounds like a good brew!

It's come together a little better now. Should be delicous-er in another week.