Screwy's Recipe 63 - Snowy Daze Barley Stout (all grain)

Another brewday was here and I still had a couple of hours to decide what style of beer I would be brewing and to finalize an ingredient list. With the cooler weather here now in the Northeast, and the fact that my pipeline was pretty well stocked with wheat beers and assorted pale ales, I decided to go with one of my perennial favorites a nice Chocolate Barley Stout. I've spent a lot of time brewing this style of beer using DME and steeping grains and have gotten the recipe down to where I can consistently brew a great tasting stout that's ready to drink in 4-6 weeks. Now I was ready to try my hand at designing and brewing an all grain version of the same Chocolate Barley Stout extract recipe, a very flavorful and easy drinking brew coming in at 5.3% ABV.

Screwy's Snowy Daze Stout

A very long time ago, maybe as early as 1720s according to some accounts, the term stout was given to represent a strong beer. Although the meaning of stout has changed over the years that followed because it was often used to describe many different styles of beer. At one point in history you could even order a Stout Pale Ale, as back then the word stout meant strong so if any style beer of the day had what it takes (6.6% ABV or higher) it could also be called a stout. By most accounts the most popular beer of that period was a known as a Stout Porter which really described a dark Porter beer that had a high alcohol content.

Victorian Era Ad For Ale

It wasn't until the 1840s when Guinness decided to rename their 'Extra Superior Porter' to 'Extra Stout' that the name became synonymous with a strong dark beer style. When researching history of Stout beer you'll see that it originated from another dark beer style called a Porter. There were different strength porters too, with the stronger brews being called Stout Porter, and they were served to English dock workers who were also known as porters. The ales houses of the day, or Porter Houses, provided some much needed food and drink to all those hard working dock workers so it comes as no surprise that they served Porter House Steaks too. So there you have it, hungry and thirsty Englishmen known as porters going off at the end of their work day to porter houses to eat porter house steaks and washing them down with stout porter ale.

I drink Guinness now and have for a good number of years and while I like it's dark color and creamy barley taste I wouldn't call it a very strong beer. But a lot of people to this day are under the impression that a stout beer means a very strong beer and in fact there are many stouts brewed today that really do have a high ABV but they don't have to. I think it's because of the history of the word stout itself that people today still think of stout beer as a very strong beer.

East Kent Goldings, 2 Row, Roasted Barley, Chocolate and Crystal Malt Mix

I was pretty excited about brewing this recipe because it was my first try at building an all grain stout ale recipe. I had stumbled across a really informative post on the HomeBrewTalk forum a couple of years ago about building the perfect stout recipes. The poster seemed to know what he was talking about and after reading what he had to say I was able to find other information online that seemed to support his recipe.

In this stout recipe I decided that the only hop influence needed would be for bittering because I wanted to make sure that the full aromas and flavors of the roasted barley would shine through. I chose East Kent Goldings because of their earthy and spicy character and mild aroma and I added half as first wort hops and then added the other half to the boil with 30 minutes remaining. 

Mashing Stout Recipe Grains For 60 Minutes

I preheated my 5 gallon mash tun with 2 gallons of 170F water for about 20 minutes before dumping the water out and replacing it with grains and strike water. The grains were at 68F so I added 14 quarts of 165F strike water to the tun and then stirred in the 11 pounds of grains needed for the recipe. I then topped off the tun with enough 165F water to fill it up to the 4.5 gallon mark. I then adjusted the temperature by adding a little hot or cold water as needed and gave the grains a really good stir to break up any clumps and eliminate any chance of channeling.

First Wort Hopping 3 Ounces Of East Kent Goldings

Big clumps of grain mean less grains are going to come into contact with the mash water, you can actually still have dry grains inside the clumps when mashing. Channeling means the sparge water doesn't come in contact evenly with all the grains to rinse all the converted sugars off of them and into the boil pot. Instead during the lauter water flows from the top of the mash tun straight down to the spigot via the channels and out into your boil pot leaving precious sugars behind and giving you lower conversion rates and weaker wort. These two things in themselves are the easiest things to correct and a brewer's failure to correct them are probably the single biggest reason for all grain batches lower conversion rates, but they are easy to avoid just by stirring the mash really well.

Fly Sparging Stout Wort After A 60 Minute Mash

So far this recipe was just a theory and it really came to life for me when I first unscrewed the cover of the mash tun and got a whiff of the earthy, chocolate and coffee aromas that were quite powerful. The recipe's grain bill uses only 12% dark malts, 9% Crystal malt and the remaining 79% uses 2 Row as the base malt. I was almost a little skeptical on just how much of the roasted grain aromas would come through but after brewing my extract Stouts I was sure this ratio of dark grains to 2 Row wouldn't be a problem.

By this time the entire brew area took on the aroma and smells familiar to anyone who has ever been to a Starbucks or worked in a coffee plant were they roasted imported green coffee beans to a deep dark color. When lautering the hot wort I got a nice warm comforting feeling from the aromas coming off of the mash and wort as the boil pot filled that was perfect on the first cold day of Fall.

Recirculating A Half Gallon Of Freshly Made Wort

Once the wort was running free of bits of grains I drew off my SG sample and put it in the refrigerator to cool down and then spent the next 30 minutes fly sparging and lautering the hot aromatic wort into my 20 quart boil pot. The wort's OG reading came out to 1.056 which was about 3 points lower than qBrew had calculated which to me wasn't too far off the recipe's calculated 1.059.

Original Gravity Reading Of 1.056

I remember being really excited about brewing my first all grain stout recipe, it was something new and challenging and I knew it would come out awesome. The mash had gone well and I took my time with the lauter and fly sparge making sure the strike water temperatures were good and the grain bed kept covered with no less than an inch of strike water the entire time. Now it was on to the next phase which would ultimately take me closer to brewing the perfect stout, the boil. It took my stove about 20 minutes to bring the 160F wort up to a boil. I left the hop sack in the boil pot the entire time and boiled the wort for 30 minutes.

Stout Wort With First Wort Hops And 30 Minute Boil

With my 20 quart boil pot filled to the brim with both wort and hop additions added a nice rolling boil for 30 minutes things started to get interesting. I had been warming and shaking up my two yeast viles and had already sanitized the 2 LBKs I'd be using to ferment this batch. I also had my wort cooler soaking in sanitizer so I was all set for the coldside brewing that was soon to follow. I think of my beer brewing processes in terms hotside and coldside brewing. The hotside includes everything from openning the grainbags to cooling down the wort before pitching yeast. The coldside includes everything after that including the fermentation, conditioning and bottling or kegging of the beer.

Adjusting Yeast Temperature And Consistency Before Pitching

At the start of my brewing session just as I was preparing the mash tun I took the tubes of WLP004 yeast out of the refrigerator and set them in a bowl of OneStep to so they could gradually warm up to pitching temperature. Both tubes had been refrigerated and kept cold at the LHBS and I did the same when I got them home. Over the next several hours as the grains mashed and the wort was lautered and boiled I would give both tubes a shake or two to mix up the yeast cells with the beer inside the tubes. I wanted the yeast to have a nice creamy consistency when I eventually pitched them into my wort. This is a good way to make sure there are no clumps of cells lumped together and that as many yeast cells as possible get emptied from the tubes when pitched.

White Labs WLP004 - Irish Ale Yeast™ Pitched At 70F

I use a wort cooler connected to my sink to cool my wort down to the yeast's pitching temperature. On average the 8 coils of 3/8 inch copper tubing with cold tap water flowing through it can cool the 5 gallons of 210F wort down to 65-70F in as little 20 minutes. The summer months are more challenging than the winter months are for cooling wort because the tap water in summer may only be as cool as 75F. That's when I fill one side of the utility sink with cold water and frozen water bottles and run a vinyl tubing from the cooler's return line directly down the drain of the other sink. That's just one of the many advantages there are when installing a double sink, the extra capacity is easily reconfigurable to meet the needs of many brewing processes.

Size 5.00 gallons: Estimated IBU=37, SRM=37, OG=1.059, FG=1.015, ABV= 5.7%

Recipe:

Click to download this recipe file for qBrew
8.5 pounds US 2 Row

1.0 pound Crystal 20L

0.5 pound Chocolate Malt (British)

1.0 pound Roasted Barley

3 ounces Kent Goldings (U.K.) (pellets)

11g Danstar Windsor Dry Ale Yeast Rehydrate and pitch at 70° F

..or...

White Labs WLP004 - Irish Ale Yeast™

Mash at 155° F for 60 minutes.

Boil for 30 minutes.

Aerate, pitch at 70° F and ferment at 68-72° F until final gravity is reached

Raise to 72° F over 2 days then hold for 5 days

Keg at 30 psi for 2-3 days and serve at 36° F
I use Mr. Beer fermentors and they hold around 2.4 gallons of wort but I used all 11g of yeast that's typically packaged for 5 gallon brews.

  Click to download Screwy's latest qBrew database   

Directions:   

Infusion Mash: (Soak mash tun in 8 quarts of 170° F water for 20 minutes, preheat and dump it)

Heat 21 quarts of filtered water to 165° F

Pour 14 quarts of 165° F water into mash tun

Mix in 11.0 pounds of crushed grain mix at 68° F

Pour the remaining 165° F water to fill mash tun to 4.50 gallon mark

Stir water and grain mixture and adjust to 155° F and mash for 60 minutes

Fly sparge with 168° F strike water to set mash bed to 168° F

Lauter for 30 minutes adding 19 quarts of sweet wort to 20 quart pot

Full Wort Boil:

Add 1.5 ounces Kent Goldings (U.K.) hops to boil pot when lautering as first wort hops

Add 1.5 ounces Kent Goldings (U.K.) hops with 30 minutes remaining to boil

Add 1/4 tablet WhirlFloc with 9 minutes remaining to boil

Use wort chiller to cool wort to 70° F

Primary Fermentation:

Use autosiphon to prevent excess hop and grain debris from getting into fermenter

Fill the Mr. Beer fermenter with wort to just above the 8.5 quart mark

Aerate wort and pitch rehydrated yeast at 70° F

Ferment to final gravity, raise to 72° F over 2 days and hold for 5 days

Secondary Fermentation:

n/a

Keg/Bottle:

Keg and force carbonate at 30 psi for 2-3 days at 34°F

..or..

Keg with priming sugar, purge with Co2 and naturally carbonate for 7-14 days at 68°F

..or..

Bottle or batch prime and carbonate at 68° for 7 to 14 days

After the first 12 hours the fermentation had taken off vigorously. When I looked in on the progress the next morning I was happy to see that a thick healthy layer of krausen had already formed at the top of both fermentors. With minimal lag time this was a good sign that the fermentation was off to a great start. By the next day the fermentation had completely filled the headspace of both fermentors and one of them was beginning to overflow into the the drip tray. Over the course of the fermentation I had to remove and clean the fermentors a couple of times but overall less than a cup or so of beer was actually lost.

12 Hours Later A Thick Healthy Krausen Had Already Formed

With the final gravity reading holding at 1.016 I figured it was time to bottle this stout up, even though the qBrew calculation said the final gravity should finish at 1.015 this reading was close enough for me.The results were in and I liked them. According to my measurements this stout came in at 5.3% ABV with 190 calories per and 22 carbs per 12 ounce bottle. The other good news was the apparent attenuation was also around 70% which for me is just perfect for this style of beer.

Final Gravity Reading Of 1.016

I had cleaned, rinsed and sanitized fifty 12 ounce bottles and my bottling bucket, bottling wand and racking tubing so now I prepared my priming solution. I used StarSan as my sanitizer for the first time, up until now I had only been using OneStep and I have had good results using it all this time. I decided to try StarSan mainly because it was cheaper to buy and faster acting than OneStep which requires a 10 minute soak to be effective. I poured the StarSan solution into my bottle rinser and then gave each bottle 2 or 3 good squirts just to make sure the entire inside surface was coated with sanitizer. Before placing the bottles on the bottle tree to drain I dipped the neck of each bottle into the StarSan solution about an inch to make sure the cap area was covered too.

StarSan, Bottle Rinse And Bottle Tree

I boiled about 5 tablespoons of pure can sugar in a cup of water and stirred it until the sugar was dissolved to prevent scorching or burning the sugar. After cooling the priming solution down to pitching temperature I added it to the bottling bucket along with 2 tablespoons of pure vanilla extract and then racked the fermented beer on top so it all mixed together as the bucket filled. Once the bucket was filled I used a large sanitized plastic spoon to gently swirl the beer and sugar solution together to make the mixture more consistent, which in turn would make the carbonation levels between bottles more consistent too. Interestingly enough I found that adding pure vanilla extract to the beer at bottling actually enhances the chocolaty flavors of the Chocolate Malt in the recipe, who would have guessed.

Adding Vanilla Extract At Bottling Enhances Chocolate Flavors

When bottling I first put 50 bottle caps in a small bowl filled with StarSan and then using a bottling wand attached to my bottling bucket I filled each bottle to the very top. After removing the bottling wand the level of beer in each bottle fell about an inch leaving just enough headroom for the carbonating beer inside. When each bottle was filled I placed a bottle cap on them and using my finger to prevent spilling any beer I inverted the bottles 2 times before setting them on the table to be capped after they were all filled. Using a bench capper made capping the bottles quick and easy and in no time at all I had 2 cases of bottles capped and ready for carbonation.

The bottles have been carbonating at 68F for almost two weeks now and this weekend end I plan to put a couple of bottles in the refrigerator for a day or two and them sample them. By this coming weekend the beer will have been brewed 4 weeks ago and should be ready to drink. I like to start sampling my home brewed beer after waiting at least 2 weeks for them to finish naturally carbonating and if they taste great then they'll be gone all the sooner.

Snowy Daze Stout Naturally Carbonated And Delicious

 This stout is definitely one of my favorites of all times, the flavors of the Roasted Barley and Chocolate Malts just come through amazingly clear. Ready to drink in only 4 weeks the mouthfeel is medium bodied with 2.5 volumes of Co2 for carbonation and actually makes drinking a few in a row easy to do. The most striking thing when you lift the glass is the roasted barley malt followed immediately by a definite but not too overpowering hint of chocolate. I can only explain the clarity of these flavors as being so clear because of the amount and type of yeast I pitched and the all grain ingredients used in the recipe. All in all this is now my most prized house beer recipe, a well balanced and not overly sweet or bitter Stout style that continues to get great reviews from everyone who's tried it.

Screwy's Recipe 62 - Screwy's Noble Wheat

This 5 gallon recipe is designed using the Weizen/Wiessbier wheat beer style guidelines for gravity, bitterness and color. It includes Muntons Wheat Dry Malt Extract as the backbone of the recipe with some steeped Crystal 10L for improved head retention and body. I'm targeting the Paulaner Hefe Weizen wheat beer style I and some friends have been drinking lately.

I included two pounds of Pure Clover Honey to boost the alcohol content and enhance the aroma of cloves imparted by the Safbrew WB-06 wheat beer yeast strain. I would like to have used German Hallertauer hop additions for bitterness, flavor and aroma but I had to substitute Crystal hops instead because the German Hallertauer hops weren't available.

Honey, Wheat DME, Crystal Hops, WB-06 And Crystal 10L (Not Shown)

This recipe is geared toward a 5 gallon batch but and I've also included the recipe in qBrew download format so it won't be hard for others to tailor it to different size batches if needed. It's an extract with steeping grains recipe so it doesn't require more than 4-5 hours to brew depending on your brewing pace. I like the wheat beers because they're ready to drink in about 3-4 weeks and they taste great.

Screwy's Noble Wheat SRM 7

I loaded qBrew with my Recipe #58 and made a few slight changes to my previous wheat beer recipe substituting Crystal 10L for the CaraPils I used the last time. I also had to use Crystal hops in this recipe since my favorite Halleteur hops were not available on brewday. The Crystal pellet hops I used had a lower percentage of alpha acid so I had to adjust the boil times in order to get the correct IBU range, something that qBrew does very easily. Once the new recipe was tweaked I saved it as Recipe 62 - Noble Wheat.qbrew and emailed the list to Princeton Homebrew for pickup later that day.

Estimated IBU=9, SRM=7, OG=1.062, FG=1.016, ABV=6.0%

 Click to download Screwy's latest qBrew database   

Recipe:

Click to download this recipe file for qBrew
Recipe: Size 5.00 gallons: Estimated IBU=9, SRU=7, OG=1.062, FG=1.016, ABV=6.0%
2 pounds honey

1 pound Crystal 10L

5 pounds Muntons Wheat DME - 55% Wheat/45% Barley

1/2 ounce Crystal pellet hops boiled for 60 minutes

2 pounds of Honey for 30 minutes

1/2 ounce Crystal pellet hops boiled for 20 minutes

1 ounce Crystal pellet hops boiled for 7 minutes

11.5 gram Safbrew WB-06 dry yeast

Pitched at 70F and fermented at 70F until final gravity is steady for 2 days

Directions:
** Steep grains in 3 gallons of 153F filtered water for 30 minutes **

Remove grain bag from 20 quart boil pot

Stir in DME top off with filtered water and bring to a hard boil

Add hops at 60 minutes

Stir in clover honey and boil for 35 minutes

Add hops and boil for 20 minutes

Add Whirlfloc and boil for 9 minutes

Add hops and boil for 7 minutes

Place in ice bath, or use wort chiller until wort temperature cools to 70F

Aerate and pitch yeast at 65-70F
Ferment at 68F temperature until final gravity is steady for 2 days
Add 1/2 ounce Cascade hops for finishing and let soak for 5 days

The Grains Steeped For 30 Minutes Before Adding DME

I filled up a 20 quart boil pot with about three gallons of filtered water and set it on the burner, this would be my steeping pot. When the water hit about 160F I put the steeping grains in and checked the temperature to make sure it stayed at 153F-155F for the entire 30 minutes of the steep. During this time I rounded up all the bowls, spoons and thermometers I'd need for rehydrating the Safbrew wb-06 dry yeast.

Boiled Filtered Water Cooled To 95F And Dry Yeast

Of course I kept the bowls covered the entire time, except when stirring the yeast slurry, so that no bugs or other things like mold spores and wild yeast can get in. The bowls were soaked in One-Step for 10-15 minutes and I boiled filtered water for 15 minutes and then cooled it down to 95F before sprinkling in the dry yeast. I also soak the yeast packets and scissors in One-Step for at least 10 minutes before cutting open the packets.

Safbrew wb-06 Rehydrated In 95F Water Before Pitching

 Since reading Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff's newest book 'Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation' I've learned a new respect for the yeast I use in my homebrewing. On page 124 of the book they wrote how important it is to rehydrate dry yeast before pitching it into wort, in fact they included the following line 'Failure to rehydrate dry yeast properly will result in the death of approximately half the cells'. It's so easy to do and such a standard part of my brewing process now I always rehydrate any dry yeast before pitching it.

Adding 5 Pounds Of Dry Wheat/Barley Extract Mix

Once the steeping was done I added the 5 pounds of wheat DME to the boil pot and stirred it in really good before the wort began to boil. I found that doing it this way reduced the chances of having a hotbreak boil over while making the DME clumps easier to dissolve into the wort.

20 Quart Pot With Wort, DME, WhirlFloc And Hop Additions

As the wort boiled for 60 minutes I added in my hop additions. During this time I also rehydrated the dry yeast and sanitized the LBKs and cooling coils. I also kept another 16 quart pot of filtered water boiling on a back burner. As the water level dropped in my main boil pot I would use the extra boiling water to replace the water that had evaporated from the wort.

Cooling Wort Down To Pitching Temperature

My hotside brewing had gone as planned so it was time to start cooling down the wort and getting it ready for pitching the rehydrated yeast. I had topped off the boilpot with boiling water about 10 minutes before flameout to make sure I had enough wort in the boilpot before cooling it down. My racking cane, tubing, LBKs, spoon and yeast were all ready, waiting for the wort temperature to get down low enough to begin racking to the fermentors.

Transferring The Cooled Wort To The 2 Mr. Beer Fermentors

 I also put a couple of frozen water bottles into my fermentation chamber to cool it off before putting the filled LBKs inside it. Right after pitching the yeast I move the LBKs into the fermentation chamber to help prevent the temperature inside the fermentors from getting too high. I found that doing this, in combination with rehydrating the dry yeast and providing plenty of aeration reduces the lag time and gets the primary fermentation off to a vigorous start.

Original Gravity Came Out 1.054

The interesting thing about the OG of this batch is that it came out 8 points lower than qBrew had calculated. I'm thinking that possibly the 1.045 rating on the wheat DME and the 1.035 rating for the honey may have been too high. Even with the lower gravity reading this beer should still develop alcohol levels in the 5% range which is pretty respectable for a nice wheat beer.

According to the experts yeast do best when the oxygen levels in the wort are between 8-10 parts per million. In reality most homebrewers introduce between 4-6 parts per million of dissolved oxygen into their wort by either shaking or whisking the fermentor and wort causing it to foam up. With a lot of effort the dissolved oxygen levels can get as high as 6-8 parts per million or when using an aquarium pump and air stone.To hit levels of 10 parts per million you really need to have a bottle of oxygen handy.

Plenty Of Aeration To Assure A Vigorous Fermentation

I peeked in on the LBKs after 12 hours of fermentation and was happy to see that both fermentors had taken off as expected. The combination of the right amount of fresh yeast, proper rehydration and a well aerated 70F wort had all worked together nicely to keep the yeast healthy and the fermentation strong.

Short Lag Time And A Strong Primary Fermentation In 12 Hours

For the next few days I'll keep an eye on the temperature inside the fermentors. I now that during peak primary fermentation the yeast can cause the temperature of inside the LBKs to go up and the increased heat if left unchecked will mean higher levels of esters which in turn will introduce stronger banana flavors in this wheat beer. This is like the fifth or sixth time I've brewed this beer so I pretty much know already how it will taste once it's ready to drink. I figure at 70F the fermentation should be done in about 8-10 days and adding in another 2-3 days for the yeast to do their cleanup and another 10-14 days to naturally carbonate the beer to 3.5 volumes of Co2. By next month I'll be drinking a really nice wheat beer just as the fall weather takes hold here in the northeast.

Final Gravity Held At 1.014 For 3 Days

The final gravity reading came out about 2 points lower than qBrew had estimated finishing at 1.014 instead of 1.016. To me this beer finishing off at 5.3% ABV is just about perfect because I usually like to drink a couple of them at a time without worrying about getting too hammered.

Transferring The Beer To The Bottling Bucket

I cooled down the boiling water and sugar solution to 70F and and then racked the wheat beer on top of it, I also sanitized my Teflon spoon and gently swirled the beer and sugar solution together to mix them up really good. From there I used the bottling bucket and bottling want to fill the 12 ounce bottles. I rinsed the bottles out with hot water and then gave them 3 quick squirts of StarSan before placing them on the bottle tree to drain until filling.

Bottles Sanitized With StarSan

I filled the corny keg directly from the fermentor adding a priming solution of 9 tablespoons of pure cane sugar boiled in a half cup of water to the keg first. The bottling solution was at 70F when I added it to the keg and the beer from the fermentor mixed in with it as the keg filled. Once the keg was filled I hit it with 20 psi of Co2 to set the seal and then vented it a couple of times to purge out any oxygen.

9 Tablespoons Of Pure Cane Sugar For 2.5 Gallons