Author: stoutmaker

Prelude to a Disruption

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Making big beers, really big beers, is not something that I have done a lot of. 

Done a few “bigger” ones like the Black Feather stout and the Woot!zenbock (which reminds me, I need to re brew that one) 
Just a few months ago we did a barleywine that has been bulk aging for a few months, and is ready to be bottled up. 
But nothing as big as the one we have planned for tomorrow. The 11.5%, 93 IBU Imperial Stout known as Disruptor. 
Looking back at one of my failed attempts at a big stout, I found that you really really need to have a fully active, ready for action yeast cake ready to attack. As big as the yeast needs to be, a starter is a waste of time. So I made a small Ordinary Bitter just to produce the yeast cake needed. 
I didn’t wanna get too big and stress out the yeast. So I kept it small. I went with:
6.75 lb 2row
.5 lb 120
.5 oz target hops @60
.5 target hops @10
Windsor yeast
That’s it.
Put her in the fermenter about 2 weeks ago so she is ready to keg right before we dump tomorrow’s stout on the cake. 
I am worried about an active Windsor cake with this much food for it. We may have thermo nuclear meltdown

Leonardo

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Finally got around to brewing the second of the Ninja Turtles beers. Leonardo. The first, Michelangelo the blonde ale was a success and I have been babying the last of the keg for a while now. 


Leonardo is an APA using centennial and chinooks. 
8 lbs 2 row
1/2 lb 20L
1/2 lb aromatic
1oz centennial @12
1 oz chinook @12
Mangrove Jack West Coast ale yeast 
Mashed at 148 for 80 min. 

Everything during mash and boil was great.  Beautiful day. 

Ended up .052. With 40 IBU.
Still like this Hopburst style.  Everything went in at 12 minutes. Even going into fermenter it was hoppy. 

But the yeast. Hrrmm. I was reading about it the day before I was brewed and there was quite a bit of talk of how long this yeast takes to crank it up. 
And lemme say, were they ever right. I pitched on Friday morning. As I write this it’s Monday morning and there are just now signs of life in there. 

Both Saturday and Sunday there was absolutely nothing going on.  I don’t know if I like that or not. I guessing it’s gonna take a long time to clean itself up. 
I hope not. I want this ready in 4 weeks

We will see


Lost post from 2010

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(This post was still in que an never posted.  Must have been a decent beer because I remade this recipe in 2012)

Its over 100 in the garage today, so might as well brew. Have a SNPA clone in the works.
-8 lbs 2row
-1/2 lb dextrine
-1/2 lb 60L
1 oz perle 60
.5 oz cascade 15
.5 cascade 10
.5 cascade 5
.5 cascade 0
with 05 yeast

forgot to click my lid down so I started mash at 155 but by the time I noticed we crept down to 151 but shouldn’t be that big of a thing.
Is there a wierder smelling hop than these perle? Like a Grapefruit rolled up in fresh cut grass.