Imperial Stout Russian Imperial Stout (2011 HBT Competition Category Winner)

Yakima 728
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Brewed this as a lager with WLP830. The pitch was massive but well worth it. Can definitely say that this is a brew that does not need carbing to be amazing. It's filling our lagering room with malt, hops, yeast, and spice aromatics.

Also going to brew this again this weekend with Denny's Best yeast.
 
CSI said:
Brewer did a bad thing...brewing this as a lager with WLP830. The pitch was massive but well worth it. Can definitely say that this is a brew that does not need carbing to be amazing. It's filling our lagering room with malt, hops, yeast, and spice aromatics.

Also going to brew this again this weekend with Denny's Best yeast.
Click to expand...

I'm getting psyched to brew this one this weekend as well. Gonna try the partigyle for the first time, doing this and then adding some crystal to raise the body in the second runnings for a porter. I plan on using S04 for yeast. Thanks for the awesome recipe, I can already tell it's going to be awesome:mug:

If I bottle this you can has some of my homebrew marubozo
 
mbobhat said:
I'm getting psyched to brew this one this weekend as well. Gonna try the partigyle for the first time, doing this and then adding some crystal to raise the body in the second runnings for a porter. I plan on using S04 for yeast. Thanks for the awesome recipe, I can already tell it's going to be awesome:mug:

If I bottle this you can has some of my homebrew marubozo
Click to expand...

I can say that this recipe is subtle up front but singing-smooth complex on finish. I get the dark malt up front like a stout. The heavy mouth-feel hides a lingering sweet breadiness that's followed by the a little bit of spicy lupulin and a final subtle aftertaste of D-180. Oops, let the cat out of the bag. :)

Great as a lager. Can't wait to brew this with Denny's Best yeast.
 
I'm not sure how much stock to put into rating sites but BeerAdvocate seems to have the most reviews. Of the top ten ales/lagers there were 7 that were from US brewers. Only one Belgian (at number 7). Of the ten, 2 were Russian Imperials, (both US). This is the kind of innovation and quality that US brewers were once known for (and are again!). Brew on...
 
I brewed this bad boy about a month ago (7th batch ever :D). Tonight was supposed to be bottling night but the final gravity is quite high, about 1.046. Granted, OG was very high (1.117) so maybe it's not going to go down any further... Also worrisome is that the 8th day gravity was about 1.048 so basically nothing has happened in 3 or so weeks.

I don't have much room in my small apartment (nor access to glass carboys) so I only do primary fermentation in an 8 gallon bucket and then bottle. For fermentation I used two packs of S04 and boy did they go to town... I had to put the fermenting bucket in the bathtub for the first 24 hours with the lid partially open to avoid an explosion in the storage room (and this was with a blowoff tube!)

On the bright side, the sample from the bucket tastes awesome! Only issue I might have is that it's a bit sweet (not surprising given the gravity) but perhaps that would take care of itself over a few months in bottles.

What do you fellow brewers think, should I just bottle and hope for the best or maybe add some yeast, or let it sit in the primary bucket for a few more weeks? Is there a chance that if I bottled without additional yeast, the beer would be unable to carbonate because I've somehow exhausted all the yeast from those two S04 packs?

Thanks for any input! :mug:
 
bpm07 said:
I brewed this bad boy about a month ago (7th batch ever :D). Tonight was supposed to be bottling night but the final gravity is quite high, about 1.046. Granted, OG was very high (1.117) so maybe it's not going to go down any further... Also worrisome is that the 8th day gravity was about 1.048 so basically nothing has happened in 3 or so weeks.

I don't have much room in my small apartment (nor access to glass carboys) so I only do primary fermentation in an 8 gallon bucket and then bottle. For fermentation I used two packs of S04 and boy did they go to town... I had to put the fermenting bucket in the bathtub for the first 24 hours with the lid partially open to avoid an explosion in the storage room (and this was with a blowoff tube!)

On the bright side, the sample from the bucket tastes awesome! Only issue I might have is that it's a bit sweet (not surprising given the gravity) but perhaps that would take care of itself over a few months in bottles.

What do you fellow brewers think, should I just bottle and hope for the best or maybe add some yeast, or let it sit in the primary bucket for a few more weeks? Is there a chance that if I bottled without additional yeast, the beer would be unable to carbonate because I've somehow exhausted all the yeast from those two S04 packs?

Thanks for any input! :mug:
Click to expand...

I agree with your exhausted yeast reason and I would add two more packs of rehydrated dry yeast because you don't want bottle bombs. Or just warm or rouse your wort and add 1 packet or make a starter? Maybe your yeast all flocced out?
 
bpm07 said:
I brewed this bad boy about a month ago (7th batch ever :D). Tonight was supposed to be bottling night but the final gravity is quite high, about 1.046. Granted, OG was very high (1.117) so maybe it's not going to go down any further... Also worrisome is that the 8th day gravity was about 1.048 so basically nothing has happened in 3 or so weeks.

I don't have much room in my small apartment (nor access to glass carboys) so I only do primary fermentation in an 8 gallon bucket and then bottle. For fermentation I used two packs of S04 and boy did they go to town... I had to put the fermenting bucket in the bathtub for the first 24 hours with the lid partially open to avoid an explosion in the storage room (and this was with a blowoff tube!)

On the bright side, the sample from the bucket tastes awesome! Only issue I might have is that it's a bit sweet (not surprising given the gravity) but perhaps that would take care of itself over a few months in bottles.

What do you fellow brewers think, should I just bottle and hope for the best or maybe add some yeast, or let it sit in the primary bucket for a few more weeks? Is there a chance that if I bottled without additional yeast, the beer would be unable to carbonate because I've somehow exhausted all the yeast from those two S04 packs?

Thanks for any input! :mug:
Click to expand...

Bottle rockets at that gravity...you could try the turbo charged re-pitch. You'll need an exponent of the original pitch due to the current ABV.
 
Thanks, CSI and mbobhat! So it seems that bottling now is out of the question because the bottles might explode, and the recommendation is to pitch more yeast.

What do you mean turbo-charged re-pitch... Is it just pitch-a-lot-of-yeast-and-hope-they-don't-all-refuse-to-work-due-to-the-high-ABV? Would two more packs of (rehydrated) S04 do it?
 
bpm07 said:
Thanks, CSI and mbobhat! So it seems that bottling now is out of the question because the bottles might explode, and the recommendation is to pitch more yeast.

What do you mean turbo-charged re-pitch... Is it just pitch-a-lot-of-yeast-and-hope-they-don't-all-refuse-to-work-due-to-the-high-ABV? Would two more packs of (rehydrated) S04 do it?
Click to expand...

You could pitch a bunch of yeast a high krausen, but then you'd have to make a starter, I would try two or if you want three dry packets rehydrated and see what happens. Just pitch a lot and make sure it is inside and room temprerature until it really gets going.
 
bpm07 said:
Thanks, CSI and mbobhat! So it seems that bottling now is out of the question because the bottles might explode, and the recommendation is to pitch more yeast.

What do you mean turbo-charged re-pitch... Is it just pitch-a-lot-of-yeast-and-hope-they-don't-all-refuse-to-work-due-to-the-high-ABV? Would two more packs of (rehydrated) S04 do it?
Click to expand...

Because the ABV is already high and the oxygen is likely depleted you'll need to make a special starter. If you're shooting for 1.028 from 1.046 with current ABV of 9% plus. You'll need a hearty yeast. I'd suggest using WLP001. Make a 3000ml starter using one vial of WLP001. This should give you about 340 billion healthy cells. Oxygenate it right after inoculating the starter. 6 hours later oxygenate it again. At 24 hrs crash and flocc. Pour off the starter beer then pitch once warmed to the RIS temp. It'll drive your FG down to 1.028 or lower.
 
bpm07 said:
Thanks, CSI and mbobhat! So it seems that bottling now is out of the question because the bottles might explode, and the recommendation is to pitch more yeast.

What do you mean turbo-charged re-pitch... Is it just pitch-a-lot-of-yeast-and-hope-they-don't-all-refuse-to-work-due-to-the-high-ABV? Would two more packs of (rehydrated) S04 do it?
Click to expand...

Another thought, and one I plan to do with mine, pitch the beer on another yeast cake made from a smaller beer, I have a 4 gallon mild in my carboy, which should be ready in a week, and I'll pitch my RIS on top of that when I bottle the mild.

EDIT: I should say Re-Pitch on lower gravity yeast cake. I figure why not use a fresher (1.040 OG for the mild) yeast cake to try to condition it more quickly. It also frees me up a carboy, which is part of the real reason!
 
mbobhat said:
Another thought, and one I plan to do with mine, pitch the beer on another yeast cake made from a smaller beer, I have a 4 gallon mild in my carboy, which should be ready in a week, and I'll pitch my RIS on top of that when I bottle the mild.

EDIT: I should say Re-Pitch on lower gravity yeast cake. I figure why not use a fresher (1.040 OG for the mild) yeast cake to try to condition it more quickly. It also frees me up a carboy, which is part of the real reason!
Click to expand...

That will certainly get the gravity down.
 
Again thanks for the different ideas! I only have 1 fermenting bucket and hence no yeast cakes I could pitch this on. My LHBS doesn't carry WLP so I picked up a Wyeast 1056 smack pack and plan to make a 3L starter as recommended.

Having never made one before, I wonder if a 3L starter is just a one-time boil of 3L of water together with 3 times the DME usually used for a 1L starter, or if it is a three-step process of making individual 1L starters with floccing and decanting in between. I did some googling and results seem mixed. Which did you mean in your suggestion?
 
bpm07 said:
Again thanks for the different ideas! I only have 1 fermenting bucket and hence no yeast cakes I could pitch this on. My LHBS doesn't carry WLP so I picked up a Wyeast 1056 smack pack and plan to make a 3L starter as recommended.

Having never made one before, I wonder if a 3L starter is just a one-time boil of 3L of water together with 3 times the DME usually used for a 1L starter, or if it is a three-step process of making individual 1L starters with floccing and decanting in between. I did some googling and results seem mixed. Which did you mean in your suggestion?
Click to expand...

For a 3000ml starter I use a 4000L flask with 2800ml sterile water and 300g DME for a 10P solution. You could step it but infection is always a risk outside of a lab environment.
 
CSI said:
That will certainly get the gravity down.
Click to expand...

This got my 1.048 down to 1.036, but no further. Went ahead and bottled mine though and it is amazing. My OG was 1.115

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Home Brew mobile app
 
I brewed this in April 2013 with a portion of a Rochefort cake from a clone I did. I wasn't controlling ferm temps back then and think the fermentation got too hot. After a month on the cake I transferred to a corny for 6mo to bulk age. Unfortunately I'm getting a good deal of fusel alcohol in the finish off a pour from the keg. I've read that over time fusel can dissipate into esters. I'm thinking of moving the keg out of the keezer and leaving it to bulk condition for more time hoping the hotness cools down a little.

The good news is that I brewed the same recipe in May 2013 and have been bulk aging on Wild Turkey soaked oak cubes for 5+mo. I'm hoping that one turns out a little better.

Time will only tell if the hotness goes away.
 
What was your mash temp? Im thinking 154 would be good to keep it a lil dry with some sweetness still

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Home Brew mobile app
 
I'm thinking about brewing this but am unsure on mash/sparge volumes. I saw in an early post (page 6) the author recommended 1.5 quarts per pound of grain? That's in line with how i usually brew, but in this case, with a 20.75lbs grain bill that's looking like ~31 quarts or ~7.75 gallons.

That's all fine and good - i have the capacity in both my tun & kettle - but the preboil volume is only listed as 7.32 gallons! Is that much mash water lost to the grain? Because it seems even if you lost a gallon you'd only have a bout a half gallon to sparge with...


Can anybody fill me in on their specifics when brewing this? How much mash water? How much sparge water? Thanks!
 
Still_dreamin said:
I'm thinking about brewing this but am unsure on mash/sparge volumes. I saw in an early post (page 6) the author recommended 1.5 quarts per pound of grain? That's in line with how i usually brew, but in this case, with a 20.75lbs grain bill that's looking like ~31 quarts or ~7.75 gallons.



That's all fine and good - i have the capacity in both my tun & kettle - but the preboil volume is only listed as 7.32 gallons! Is that much mash water lost to the grain? Because it seems even if you lost a gallon you'd only have a bout a half gallon to sparge with...





Can anybody fill me in on their specifics when brewing this? How much mash water? How much sparge water? Thanks!
Click to expand...


Your going to lose more than a 1 gal from grain absorption. I lost 2.5 gals. I guess it could depend on your crush and type of cooler you use. I also bumped up my starting boil volume since I boil off 1.75 gals in an hour. You could also lower your water to 1.3 qts pp if you wanted to give you more to sparge with.
 
Ok. So your recommendation is to mash the full 7.75G volume, and then sparge whatever is needed to make up a ~8G preboil volume. That's how I usually brew but with a beer this big I was looking for confirmation from someone who had brewed it already. Thanks for your feedback! Much appreciated!
 
Still_dreamin said:
I'm thinking about brewing this but am unsure on mash/sparge volumes.

Can anybody fill me in on their specifics when brewing this? How much mash water? How much sparge water? Thanks!
Click to expand...

I pulled up my notes from last summer and here's what I wrote at the time, "Due to large volume of grain and size of mash tun I chose to just use as much water as needed to properly wet the grain." I did not note exactly how much water I actually used.

I usually wait and figure sparge water volume based on the amount of wort in the boil kettle after draining off the mash. This one threw me off as I noted that I overshot my sparge water and ended up with 8 gals. in the boil kettle. I boiled that down to 7 gal. before adding hops and starting the actual "boil".

SG was 1.084 and ended up with ABV at 8.93%. Very complex, delicious beer.
 
Still_dreamin said:
Ok. So your recommendation is to mash the full 7.75G volume, and then sparge whatever is needed to make up a ~8G preboil volume. That's how I usually brew but with a beer this big I was looking for confirmation from someone who had brewed it already. Thanks for your feedback! Much appreciated!
Click to expand...

We brewed this on 12/10. The mash-in was a high 1.5:1 (7.75 gallons). Even so it was still a fairly dense mash. Fly sparged, (bar), another 3.5 gallons in. Lost 4.1 gallons total. Ended with 7.15 gallons at boil.
 
Brewed this on 7/20/2013 and aged in keg until 2/2/2014 for the Superbowl. Everyone liked this beer! Very mellow flavor. Only one person thought it was bitter and he was drinking my Sweet Stout prior to tasting this beer.

I will brew this one again very soon and let it age until next winter...hopefully we can resist drinking it that long.
 
I want to brew this the weekened after next.
I'm going to use Target hops for bittering as I have 1/2 a LB here and a S04 yeat cake from another beer.
I'm also going to up the grain bill and just do and drain without sparging so that there will be enough sugars left for a second 5 gallon batch.

Has anyone actually done a partigyle/second runnings beer from this brew?
What type of beer did you brew?

I was thinking about capping it with 1/2 a pound of chocolate malt and then hopping it with styrian goldings and fuggels. Maybe keep some of the S04 yeast cake for it too or else a new pack of Windsor. Possibly add some honey depending on the OG.

Will probably be quite similar to the RIS, just a lot weaker.
If any of you have suggestions for something different I would love to hear it.
 
Shenanigans said:
Has anyone actually done a partigyle/second runnings beer from this brew?
What type of beer did you brew?
Click to expand...

I still have both higher alcohol beers in carboys and i need to bottle them, I did a partigyle with this early in december. I used exact recipe but tweaked the amounts a little due to partigyle. I'm not sure if it is correct or not. The third runnings I made a mild that I bottled after a week. OG 1.040. I added some extra 1/2 lb crystal and 1/2 chocolate malt before third runnings. It started out a little bit weak but the chocolate malt really is making this better and better every day in the bottle. Not overly sweet though, because of the lower mash temp around 152ish.

So I used a crapton of grain, somewhere around 30lbs pale malt, another6-7 lbs specialty. You can do it smaller of course. I had to use my old huge cooler and I kind of messed up the drain so that was a pain with slow draining.

For the specialty grains I upped the amounts with an educated guess that about 2/3 of it will come through first, so I think I upped it by x1.5 or so. Like I said my recipe was the same except I tried to match the partigyle which for me came out to.

8.8% Roasted Barley
5.1% chocolate
5.6% special B
2.5% carapils
Dry yeast S-04 (you got enough to worry about)

Now the Third runnings had a bit of roastiness but mostly choc malt. So I'm hoping my RB was not too high. I think with age it will get better anyways, which is why I thought this would be a good one to try for the first time.

Oh and second runnings I did a chocolate porter (added cocoa to the flameout) I tasted it when I transferred to secondary and the chocolate cocoa powder was messing with my taste buds, but other wise I think with clearing up it will be very nice and subtle. BOTH smelled AMAZING coming out of the airlock.

Lastly, for the runnings part, the first 5 gallons for the RIS was exactly what I was targeting around 1.095. so I just added some top off water and then boiled it back down to concentrate. Took a bit of math and I would suggest using a software to calculate your ibus with your hop additions.

Oh and the best part, the last beer I just boiled 30 minutes with double the Fuggle hops. Then a week later transferred the RIS to the yeast cake of the mild. We'll see how it turns out. The wait continues...

EDIT: Kegged the RIS and bottled the others. The RIS I put with some corn sugar in the keg to let it carb up and age some more. It tasted very good, complex, with a slight alcoholic tinge which is probably from the 5 hrs between taking out of ferm chamber and putting in freezing cold garage it was producing so much heat! Blew the top of the ale pail a couple times. I'm hopefully gonna save this until my wedding come September. May transfer to another keg if there is alot of yeast from natural carb.
 
I just kegged this a little shy of 6 months, delicious! Finished a little drier at 1.020 but I missed my SG by 10 points.
I'll probable let it sit for another month and tap it around St Paddy's day.
 
mbobhat said:
I still have both higher alcohol beers in carboys and i need to bottle them, I did a partigyle with this early in december. I used exact recipe but tweaked the amounts a little due to partigyle. I'm not sure if it is correct or not. The third runnings I made a mild that I bottled after a week. OG 1.040. I added some extra 1/2 lb crystal and 1/2 chocolate malt before third runnings. It started out a little bit weak but the chocolate malt really is making this better and better every day in the bottle. Not overly sweet though, because of the lower mash temp around 152ish.

So I used a crapton of grain, somewhere around 30lbs pale malt, another6-7 lbs specialty. You can do it smaller of course. I had to use my old huge cooler and I kind of messed up the drain so that was a pain with slow draining.

For the specialty grains I upped the amounts with an educated guess that about 2/3 of it will come through first, so I think I upped it by x1.5 or so. Like I said my recipe was the same except I tried to match the partigyle which for me came out to.

8.8% Roasted Barley
5.1% chocolate
5.6% special B
2.5% carapils
Dry yeast S-04 (you got enough to worry about)

Now the Third runnings had a bit of roastiness but mostly choc malt. So I'm hoping my RB was not too high. I think with age it will get better anyways, which is why I thought this would be a good one to try for the first time.

Oh and second runnings I did a chocolate porter (added cocoa to the flameout) I tasted it when I transferred to secondary and the chocolate cocoa powder was messing with my taste buds, but other wise I think with clearing up it will be very nice and subtle. BOTH smelled AMAZING coming out of the airlock.

Lastly, for the runnings part, the first 5 gallons for the RIS was exactly what I was targeting around 1.095. so I just added some top off water and then boiled it back down to concentrate. Took a bit of math and I would suggest using a software to calculate your ibus with your hop additions.

Oh and the best part, the last beer I just boiled 30 minutes with double the Fuggle hops. Then a week later transferred the RIS to the yeast cake of the mild. We'll see how it turns out. The wait continues...
Click to expand...

Sounds great; 3 runs is probably too much for me though, I'd be more than happy to get a decent second beer.

I've been reading a few different articles and forums and think I will go for an English nut ale similar to what I explained above. Instead of the honey I'm going to do something a bit more traditional and make an inverted sugar syrup form some dark brown sticky 'Basterd' sugar and depending on the OG of the second runnings I'll add anything from the equivalent of 250g to 1Kg of sugar. I'll also use a packet of Windsor yeast because it has a lower attenuation and will hopefully help prevent it getting too dry from the sugar or possible tanins.
I've been using S04 too much recently anyway :cross:

Also depending on the OG I will hop it from 25 to 40 IBUs with Fuggels and Styrian Goldings using a similar schedule to the famous Hobgoblin clone. All my EKG will be gone for the RIS.
Can't wait to get started!:rockin:
 
Sounds great. One more thing I would add just a bit of phosphoric acid to your sparges if you are using regular filtered tap or a combo of tap/ distilled. That will help keep the pH down and not extract tannins. You won't be dissapointed with this beer and whatever comes out 2nd!
 
mbobhat said:
Sounds great. One more thing I would add just a bit of phosphoric acid to your sparges if you are using regular filtered tap or a combo of tap/ distilled. That will help keep the pH down and not extract tannins. You won't be dissapointed with this beer and whatever comes out 2nd!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip but I don’t have any phosphoric acid on hand.
I do however have a few pounds of saurmalz, maybe I’ll throw in ½ a pound when I am capping with the chocolate malt. Never used it before but at only 1 to 2% of the grain bill it shouldn’t do any harm.
 

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