Stout FG

Not many posts here but long time lurker!

Long story short i recently came into the possession of my grandfathers old diaries, and like undoubtedly most here, got into homebrew because of him. The diary in question outlined a recipe for his own brew "Tommys Tobruk stout" a beer he brewed in the days before the battle for Tobruk in witch he fought in WW2.

Its my first real crack at stout (more a wine brewer) and i noticed all of the ingredients he had listed where still available. Ive scaled it up to a 5gal brew. Added all of the ingredients (some highly questionable such as a pound of soreen malt loaf, used coffee grinds, a pinch of boiled chewing tobacco and 5 ounces of frys cocoa powder) and started with a OG of 1.050.

Its been bubbling away for a week now and is sitting at 1.028 and is a very respectable, if still somewhat sweet, imperial stout with some excellent flavours coming through.

My question is what kind of FG am i looking for to bottle something like this? Due to the large amount of unfermentable material im on some fairly unknown ground, and as you can imagine, beer brewed in wartime hidden in petrol cans i doubt very much they worried about under conditioning or it not being quite ready yet. And the only reference in the paper is "when it stops bulging the can for 3 days solid, its ready to go".

Has anyone here had any experience with this kind of thing or do i just go to taste and fermentation stopping?

Yeast im afraid was a bit of a mystery, recipe called for "some yeast from the market" so ive used live bakers yeast to try and stay true to the original. As for hops, same story although ive gone for 50/50 sovereign and magnums (my local pub happened to have some)

I doubt it'll be a groundbreaker or the new favorite, but i had to give this a shot in the fact it may never have been drank since he brewed it on the back of a landy in north africa all those years ago. Anyone that has any advice for the FG i would be highly appreciative.

Thanks!

 

You should just run the recipe through a recipe creator (at least the fermentables). These sites will predict the FG for you. You'll have to take a guess on the yeast since you used baker's yeast, I personally would try S-04 or US-05.

If you get the same gravity a few days apart that's a sign that primary fermentation is over. 1.028 for a stout is possible but you should run the recipe in a recipe creator just to be sure.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/
https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/new
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/recipe.html

 

Thanks for that! I'll give it a whirl

 

Can you even find bakers yeast in a recipe generator? I guess it's possible to find out its attenuation though. I think I'd just do the waiting-game and see what happens. Those FG's in recipe generators are most often not much to rely heavily on.

 

Can you keep us (me) updated on how this goes? I'm quite intrigued!

 

Also, are you in the UK?

 

Will do guys! It seems to be going along nicely, and ive used bakers yeast before and had decent results.

 

Well after 9 days of bottle conditioning i couldnt resist the urge and had one last night. Flavour and mouth feel was actually really good! Unfermentables must have been to blame for the high FG

 

It would be awesome to see what the recipe was, if you're willing to share. Sounds pretty interesting.

 

Pictures? Recipe? Definitely an historical brew!