Imperial Stout Brewday Photos

Here are some pics from my labor day brew session. It had been two months since I'd last brewed and I needed to scratch the itch. Since the pipeline is still pretty well stocked I decided to make an Imperial Stout that could be cellared and consumed in 2010.

Here are the whole Columbus hops that I got from Rebel Brewer. Only going to use half of these in this batch.


The specialty grains that I used (decided to only use about 1/2 of the roasted barley)


Crushing the grain. It was pretty big grain bill for a 5.5 gallon batch. My biggest yet at 22.25 lbs. Picked up the corded drill on sale at Lowes and it paid dividends right away. Was using a cordless drill for a little while with limited success but the corded drill had no problems at all.


Here is the entire grain bill crushed. The ale pale was nearly overflowing!

A closeup of my crush quality. The Barley Crusher is still set at its factory setting and I regulary get 65% - 75% efficiency. Imperial beers are lower than lower OG beers ofcourse. On average I'm @ 70% and I'm happy with that. There are still a few whole kernels left but the last time I tried to tweak my crush I ended up with a stuck sparge. Screw going through that again!


Time to head outside where my hot liquor tun was heating 9.75 gallons of water to 185 degrees. Here is a shot of my brew stand freshly painted and polished.


After letting the strike water heat up the mash tun the water temp reached 170 and I douged in.


Hit my mash temp right on. I'm happy that I finally have Beersmith dialed in to my system. What a wonderful tool on brew days.

First wort hops into the boil kettle.


First runnings from the mash collected in the boil kettle. Wasn't really able to get any good pictures of the boil because of all the steam.


Time to cool the wort!




Boil started with 7.2 gallons and I collected nearly 6 gallons in the fermenter. One last photo before going into the fermentation chamber.


Overall it was a great brew day. I'm hoping this recipe turns out as planned and ages nicely. Probably going to wait a few months to bottle this one. Once I do it's going up north where I can't get to it very often and will condition for 6 months. Hopefully its a tasty brew!

Great photos, and man what a nice system. I too brewed an imperial stout on Labor day. Did you follow a particular recipe?

I see you mashed at 157; seems like that an imperial stout should be plenty dextrinous as a function of its huge grain bill. Most single infusion recipes I've seen use a temp somewhere between 150-154 F. What are your thoughts?

I am looking into making a RIS soon after my brown ale is finished fermenting. That way I can rack on top of my Irish ale yeast.

Got a few questions for you schweaty. Since you use brewsmith just wondering about your recipe and if you could post it? Nice brew rig too. I was gonna make a 3 tier system and now I'm leaning towards making a single tier like yours. I still use propane and want the ease and comfort of a single tier system for a possible change to electric. Do you have plans on for brewrig build? What I mean is, did you build it yourself and if so do you have plans (schematic)? If not then I believe I can figure it out from your photos. Thanks for the post.

Great looking system you have there bro! The stout looks good enough to drink right out of the kettle. It'll be nice to pop one of those bottles open on a cold February night next year!

That's a very impressive setup.

Really nice brew stand. Very similar to my setup. They're great, aren't they?

Very nice setup, I am jealous.

Nice. Thanks for sharing the pictures and for the help. You see, I was on the fence about my next brew, but no more. RIS it is.

greenbirds said:

Great photos, and man what a nice system. I too brewed an imperial stout on Labor day. Did you follow a particular recipe?

I see you mashed at 157; seems like that an imperial stout should be plenty dextrinous as a function of its huge grain bill. Most single infusion recipes I've seen use a temp somewhere between 150-154 F. What are your thoughts?

Click to expand...

For starters the yeast I originally intended using was WLP007 - Dry English Ale yeast. That was probably my first mistake because I didn't really want it to be a dry imperial stout. I was shooting for high IBU (96.7, so it wouldn't fade in the aging), high alcohol (10% ABV) and a malty sweetness go with the roasted and chocolate flavor. Anyhow, the WLP007 is a highly attenuating yeast coming in at 70-80%. According to the White Labs site it cuts down the residual sweetness quite a bit. I am shooting for a final gravity around 1.020 - 1.022 and the 80% attenuation as advertised by WLP007 would put it at 1.017.

I've done other beers that I mashed in the 155 range that attenuated out way too much and because they lost their sweetness I thought the beer wasn't as good as it could have been.

Also, most stouts use Crystal 80 and/or Crystal 120 which have a large portion of unfermentables because of the carmelization. The same is true for chocolate and roasted barley, which together account for roughly 10% of my grain bill. I was concerned with lower mashing temps resulting in a more fermentable wort and thus ending up with a dry imperial stout.

Add into the mix that this is the first stout I've ever done. I normally don't even drink stouts but I had an Imperial Stout that was really sweet and enjoyed it much more than dry stouts.

If worse comes to worse I can always add some sugar to the secondary to help thin out the body and boost the ABV. Hopefully I won't have too though

The grain bill looked like this:
14 lb. Maris Otter - 62.92%
4 lb. Munich - 17.98%
1.25 lb Roasted Barley - 5.62%
1 lb Caramel Crystal 60 - 4.49%
1 lb Chocolate Malt - 4.49%
1 lb Oats, Malted - 4.49%

the_Roqk said:

I am looking into making a RIS soon after my brown ale is finished fermenting. That way I can rack on top of my Irish ale yeast.

Got a few questions for you schweaty. Since you use brewsmith just wondering about your recipe and if you could post it? Nice brew rig too. I was gonna make a 3 tier system and now I'm leaning towards making a single tier like yours. I still use propane and want the ease and comfort of a single tier system for a possible change to electric. Do you have plans on for brewrig build? What I mean is, did you build it yourself and if so do you have plans (schematic)? If not then I believe I can figure it out from your photos. Thanks for the post.

Click to expand...

I can post the entire recipe if you'd like but I was waiting to see how it turned out first The grain bill is in a previous post above.

Unfortunately I don't have plans for the system I just drew it out in my head and took some measurements. I could give you the dimensions if you'd like.

Lil' Sparky said:

Really nice brew stand. Very similar to my setup. They're great, aren't they?

Click to expand...

Yeah, but I'm not brave enough to do 10 gallon batches just quite yet.

I did model my stand off of your design and Bobby_M's design. I'm happy with the single tier but if I ever decide to to fly sparging I'm going to need to put the boil kettle on the ground to drain the runnings from the mash tun. Not a big deal I suppose but lifting it back up might be a problem.

The labor day brew was the first time I had a boil that I didn't recirculate the entire time. I was always afraid of scortching on the bottom of the kettle. After doing a RIS without recirculating I am no longer worried! If I can boil 7 gallons of 1.080 wort without scortching I am pretty sure I have nothing to worry about.

schweaty said:

For starters the yeast I originally intended using was WLP007 - Dry English Ale yeast...

Click to expand...

Schweaty, I am in the same boat. I don't drink a lot of stouts, but once in a while a good imperial is just right.

I used WLP007 as well. With a huge beer like imperial stout, it will be interesting to see if this yeast can attenuate to the figures White Labs gives: "80% attenuation will be reached even with 10% ABV beers." What kind of starter did you make?

Here was my grain bill (for 2.5 gallons):
11.0 lbs 2-row pale - 81.5%
0.75 lbs Roasted barley - 5.6%
0.50 lbs Special B - 3.7%
0.25 lbs Flaked barley - 1.9%
0.25 lbs Caramunich - 1.9%
0.25 lbs Chocolate - 1.9%
0.25 lbs Pale chocolate - 1.9%
0.25 lbs Rye malt - 1.9%

It will be interesting to compare our results. Even though the grain bills are much different, we both have 81% base malt (munich included for you), along with 4% fermentable adjuncts (flaked barley/rye for me & malted oats for you). The rest is crystal or roasted malts.

My OG was 1.110, so 80% would be 1.022. Even though I mashed at 151, I will be surprised if it gets below 1.025. If yours ends up being too dry for your taste, you could add some lactose once it's finished.

greenbirds said:

Schweaty, I am in the same boat. I don't drink a lot of stouts, but once in a while a good imperial is just right.

I used WLP007 as well. With a huge beer like imperial stout, it will be interesting to see if this yeast can attenuate to the figures White Labs gives: "80% attenuation will be reached even with 10% ABV beers." What kind of starter did you make?

Here was my grain bill (for 2.5 gallons):
11.0 lbs 2-row pale - 81.5%
0.75 lbs Roasted barley - 5.6%
0.50 lbs Special B - 3.7%
0.25 lbs Flaked barley - 1.9%
0.25 lbs Caramunich - 1.9%
0.25 lbs Chocolate - 1.9%
0.25 lbs Pale chocolate - 1.9%
0.25 lbs Rye malt - 1.9%

It will be interesting to compare our results. Even though the grain bills are much different, we both have 81% base malt (munich included for you), along with 4% fermentable adjuncts (flaked barley/rye for me & malted oats for you). The rest is crystal or roasted malts.

My OG was 1.110, so 80% would be 1.022. Even though I mashed at 151, I will be surprised if it gets below 1.025. If yours ends up being too dry for your taste, you could add some lactose once it's finished.

Click to expand...

My starter was 2.5 liters on a stir plate.

I probably should have gone for the gusto and aimed for a gravity around 1.110 as well. This way I could have mashed low and rested easy. I'm sure I won't have to worry about it being too dry with such a high mash temp but you never know. This yeast might be as good as advertised. I probably should have gone with WLP002 and mashed in the low 150's. Oh well you live, learn and brew some more!

I am thinking of one:

14 lbs pale malt
1 lb roasted barley
1 lb chocolate maybe .5 of 350L and .5 of 500L
1.5 lb oatmeal or flaked barley
.75 lb 80
.75 lb 120
.5 lb Special B

Not fixed on the hops, yet, but will be aiming for 50 IBUs or thereabouts. Any thoughts on the grainbill? I'm thinking of a S-05 cake. I would like it dryer, adjusting as suggested by lactose if necessary.

Very jealous of your setup!

Schweaty, any update on this one?

It's been several weeks since I brewed this and I've got it in the keg. I'm letting it age for as long as possible but have been pulling small samples along the way. Most of the people who try this have never liked stouts (me being one of them) or never tried them and they all enjoy it alot. I'm sure when it hits its stride in 4 more months it will be excellent. I posted the recipe and beersmith data in the recipe section.