Imperial Stout Double-W Imperial Stout

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1 week fermenting and still bubbling a bit. Did you sit in the primary for 2 weeks?

The side batch of 2 gallons, I added chocolate, clove and pinch of rosemary. We shall see.. Bubbling as well..
 
I would leave it there until the fermentation stops. Use a hydrometer! Steady readings for 3-4 days means it's done.

I would add the chocolate and other ingredients in the secondary. You may lose a LOT of the flavor and aroma if put in the primary.
 
OG 1.100 FG 1.026, 9.7% ABV. Primary for a month secondary for a month bottled today. Gonna age it for a month or two.
 
Bought all the ingredients for this recipe today. This will be my biggest beer so far. I couldn't find pale chocolate, so I just got another .5# of the 350 SRM chocolate in it's place. My LHBS was also out of Safeale S05, so I subbed in Wyeast Pacman yeast, we'll see how it comes out. Psyched to brew it though!
 
Used a double batch sparge with this and pulled 7 gallons of wort out of the mash (which only dropped 2 degrees in my insulated keggle mash tun). After boiling down to about 5.5 gallons, I came up with an OG of 1.096. Not great efficiency, but apparently from what I read, to be expected with big large grain bill beer. I didn't think of capturing more of the wort for a smaller beer, I will do that next time. Black as coal the wort was, and thick. The foam from aeration had a brown color. I believe this is going to be an awesome brew. Probably primary for 3 weeks to a month. We'll see how it does.

Thanks again for the recipe. :mug:
 
Don't let it age too much... the bitterness goes away after 9 months or so.

You wouldn't think so., but it does!

I have brewed this 3 times now, and have found the "sweet spot" for aging is about 3 months.
 
3 Months is perfect, as I was trying to make a big beer that I could start cracking open in the fall when it starts cooling off.

24 hours in, the Pacman yeast from the smack pack are kicking ass and bubbling away aggresively and my garage smells like coffee and chocolate. Thanks for the recipe.
 
3 Months is perfect, as I was trying to make a big beer that I could start cracking open in the fall when it starts cooling off.

24 hours in, the Pacman yeast from the smack pack are kicking ass and bubbling away aggresively and my garage smells like coffee and chocolate. Thanks for the recipe.
so was I! I just also figured it at needed 6-7 months aging.
 
Wow, last night I get off work, about two inches of Krausen and bubbling away. I wake up this morning about 10 hours later and am greated to wort being pushed all the way into water bucket and krausen in the blow off tube. This is my first experience with a more violent fermentation, quite impressive.

IMG_1154.jpg
 
Yep! Both of the recipes I have under my sig provide violent fermentations!

I have my last bottle of this brew in my glass. After a year, it is a bit sweet. My next beer to brew is a repeat of this one for Thanksgiving. I think I am going to up the IBU's at the 60 minute boil time. Possibly 50% more hops...

Keep me posted!
 
I think my IBU's came in a little higher, due to the fact that with 10 minutes left in the boil, I realized I had only made my first initial hop addition. So I added the aroma hops, made them a 20 minute addition and the warrior ended up going for 70 minutes instead of 60. Based on what you're saying about recipe, this may be a good thing. We'll see. On another note, I popped the top for a smell....awesome.
 
Yep! Both of the recipes I have under my sig provide violent fermentations!

I have my last bottle of this brew in my glass. After a year, it is a bit sweet. My next beer to brew is a repeat of this one for Thanksgiving. I think I am going to up the IBU's at the 60 minute boil time. Possibly 50% more hops...

Keep me posted!

Sounds yummy!!!!

We cracked our first bottle after 3 weeks of bottle conditioning. We only hit 8.5% ABV and I'm guessing cause we didn't have the capacity to boil the 8 gallons of wort we collected. We split this into 2 batches and didn't boil it down to 5. The sample we tried was a little slow on the carbonation, but I have to say, this is SUPER YUMMY.. I don't think I have had a stout quite like it. It hits the tongue sweet and frothy, cherry, almond then the hops start layering the palate. The taste lingers unchanged for many moments. Going to let the rest of this 5 gallon batch age out a bit. The second 2 gallon side batch we added clove, rosemary and M&M's! LOL (why not) I'll let you know how that turns out!! :drunk: Will be brewing this again in the near future!!! Many thanks for the post!!
 
WOW I could cut this **** with a knife! I think its lacking a bit in hopage, but wow! GREAT recpie! (note I used my own hops not his)
 
Your comments are actually quite right... the bitterness does fade. My next batch will have quite a bit more hops.
 
I am going above that, and will post the new recipe. My B-day's coming up, so I want to brew a big one for the occasion.

I am looking at 100IBU or so that this can age a bit. Currently, at 10 months in a bottle, the bitterness needed to balance it is gone.

I have some 16.6AA Zeus and 11.2AA Centennial. I'm going to go larger with the bittering hops.
 
funny thing... this is a brewsmith thing tho. i used 2.75 oz of nugget... and its at 11.2 % also at 60 mil boil, and brewsmith calculates it at 116 IBU....
 
Finished fermentation at 1.040, which is a little on the high side. It tastes awesome, with a really balanced flavor. Next time I will pitch two packs of S-05 or S-33 for a beer this large. I probably underpitched the Pacman by a considerable margin. This will be bottled and definitely repeated.
 
1.040?!? That certainly seems high how long was it aged? I mean 1.040 would be close to the OG for a really light beer. If you haven't bottled it yet I suggest you keep aging it.

Unless of course this is just an unavoidable tasting which occurred while the beer was still in the carboy. :mug:
 
It was in primary for a month. It was definitely done. I attempted to pitch some Notty to push it but it was only good for 4 points. Oh well, it did taste awesome and my wife and sister in law thought the warm, flat sample was great. My Sis-in-law said that it made her want to have a steak dinner.

Next time I'll rock two packets of S-05 or S-33 for this and future big beers. Lesson learned, oh well, still ended up with tasty beer.....dammit.
 
I am going above that, and will post the new recipe. My B-day's coming up, so I want to brew a big one for the occasion.

I am looking at 100IBU or so that this can age a bit. Currently, at 10 months in a bottle, the bitterness needed to balance it is gone.

I have some 16.6AA Zeus and 11.2AA Centennial. I'm going to go larger with the bittering hops.


Did you brew it yet??:rockin:
 
Not yet... I had a hankerin' for a DIPA. Read the article in Zymurgy, and had to create a 7.5%, big hop bomb. By the time the dry-hop takes place there will be just shy of a pound of hops in the 5.5 gallon batch.

And, there was also a need for a Belgian pale. The stout will be brewed by August.
 
Not yet... I had a hankerin' for a DIPA. Read the article in Zymurgy, and had to create a 7.5%, big hop bomb. By the time the dry-hop takes place there will be just shy of a pound of hops in the 5.5 gallon batch.

And, there was also a need for a Belgian pale. The stout will be brewed by August.

Looking forward to it... I cracked a W tonight and man its tasty! I took one to Left Hand brewery and somehow the brewmaster was sitting there beside me and the bartender poured 6 samples out. Everyone loved it including the brewmaster. He said he loved the roasty beginning and gave me a few pointers.. Bottled my hobgoblin II tonight as well.. I was thinking a belgian myself. Was looking at the westy or I saw a triple IPA out there too..
 
Cracked one open after 1.5 weeks in the bottle. It's obviously green, but the bitterness was excessive on mine. I think this was due to my low efficiency and boiling the bittering hops too long. I'm going to jam these in a closet and open them again in October to see how they're doing. Other than the bitterness, the coffee and chocolate flavors were prominent and excellent. Thanks again for the recipe.
 
Popped another one open today. It benefited from another couple weeks in the bottle. The bitterness has faded noticeable degree which is good with mine. The roasted flavor is awesome and the dark tan head stays solid at about 1/4 inch for the length of the glass. Good coffee aroma, and though mine is a little sweeter than I would hope, it in no way detracts from the solid flavors in this one. I think I will try this one again and this time repitch on a yeast cake from a Dark Lord clone I will be racking soon. That should give it the legs to fully ferment.

Also, if you were going to add oats to this to smooth it out a bit, how much would be appropriate?
 
I wanted to throw in my experience with this beer. Let me say that all the feedback in this thread was extremely helpful in brewing this beer. My heaviest beer brewed so far.

I don't have very good notes on the exact amount of water I added to the brew, but i remember not hitting my mash temperature at first so I supplemented with 1 gallon of boiling water to spike the temperature up.

I was unable to sparge with as much water as a result of this, but still did OK with gravity. 1.097 for the OG.

Fermentation was very strong to start, but wasn't as insane as I expected. It did get up to the blowoff tube, but went extremely strong for 4 days.

The temperature of the fermentation got a bit high at a few points since it's summer and I don't have AC in my house. I went on vacation and came back to a settled beer, that had about 4" of krausen stuck to the walls. Took a hydro readying after 4 weeks in the primary and it was at 1.024. Tastes great, but really really really needs a while to mature.

Thanks to everyone for their input.
 
Popped another one open today. It benefited from another couple weeks in the bottle. The bitterness has faded noticeable degree which is good with mine. The roasted flavor is awesome and the dark tan head stays solid at about 1/4 inch for the length of the glass. Good coffee aroma, and though mine is a little sweeter than I would hope, it in no way detracts from the solid flavors in this one. I think I will try this one again and this time repitch on a yeast cake from a Dark Lord clone I will be racking soon. That should give it the legs to fully ferment.

Also, if you were going to add oats to this to smooth it out a bit, how much would be appropriate?
1-2 lbs should be fine.... and I think it could work out well too!
 
I'm brewing this this weekend. r2eng, did you end up increasing the bittering hops for your later batches like you were considering? I'm thinking of upping it to the 100 IBU range.

Also, even though I have a couple packs of S-05, I will try using a large starter of WLP007 Dry English Ale yeast. Specs say it attenuates well and should be able to hit ~12%.
 
I think 100 IBU's would be good.

I haven't had a chance to brew this one again. I have been brewing for friends/family events lately, and that will continue through the weekend. I hope to get back to polishing this beer recipe soon... unless others like you improve it for me! ;)
 
Brewed a 2.5 gallon batch on Monday. OG: 1.110, pitched a big starter of WLP007. Only differences were Magnum for bittering, and I added 4 oz of flaked barley in hopes that I will get to see that deep brown head retention all the way down the glass.

Also, just for kicks I took the third runnings and boiled them down to a 1 gallon batch that came in at exactly half (1.055) gravity, and scaled down the hops to match.
 
I brewed this a while back and hit all the numbers that I wanted. However, after 5 weeks in the bottle I very disappointed in the carb level - hardly any at all. Stirred em up and will try it again in a few weeks.

That said, it tastes terrific. Once it carbs up it will be a wonderful stout. I will definitely brew this one again.
 
Thought I would update.

Mine got down to about 1.036-37 with the WLP007 and still tasted a bit sweet, so I rehydrated (to at least give a fighting chance) some US-05, racked to secondary, and threw it in the fermenter. It produced a little activity.

2 weeks later it is currently at 1.034. That is still high, I know -- but perhaps not too high given a 1.110 OG: 69% apparent attenuation and 10.0% ABV. I taste a hint of residual sweetness, but with a beer this green and warm/flat, I just can't tell if it's from a stuck fermentation, malt/caramel sweetness, or the alcohol (which can be perceived as sweet at higher concentrations).

I bottled a single beer with a 1/2 teaspoon of dextrose to see if the yeast can carb it up.
 
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