August 2005

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It’s All in the De-t-Ales…

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Russian Imperial Stout

We had a good day for brewing on Saturday, it was a little cloudy and not too hot. Seven brewers showed up for the South Shore Group Brew, not as many as anticipated, but we had a good group anyway. The brewers were: Bob Collins, Kevin Farrell, Bill Tredo, Paul Corbett, Mike Keshura, Chris Biegel and myself. Our target beer to fill the cask this year was a Russian Imperial Stout. The recipe is a combination of recipes that Jeff McNally and I have brewed, plus a few tweaks to make it work for a 55 gallon batch. It seemed like a good idea to fill the cask with another big beer and I'm sure it will be an awesome winter warmer when it's done.

The session started out pretty good, with coffee, muffins and doughnuts to build up our strength and get us into the right frame of mind. While we were starting to get organized, we had a guest stop in. Steve Andberg from The Witches Brew stopped by to say, "Hello", wish us luck, and to drop off my jacket and checkbook that I left at his house on Thursday evening.

I guess I spent a little too much time standing around the brew shop sampling Steve's beer. Steve helped us out quite a bit with the cost of ingredients and materials to get this project off to a good start. Please stop by The Witches Brew and say "Hello" to Steve and help him thin out his inventory. Beware of the beers taps by the door, if you stand too close to them they'll cause you to forget where your house is.

Back to brewing. I started dividing up the ingredients when I realized that I had overestimated the capacity of the all-grain systems that we had available and it was going to be difficult to mash all of the grain we had. I was thinking to myself that we sure could use another all-grain brewer to help out and guess who showed up... Dean Goulding! My prayers were answered! Well... no.

It turns out that Dean was only making a guest appearance. Apparently, his apprentice brewer had a Cub Scout meeting just down the road, so he decided to stop by. Dean had driven by Bob's place, thought he vaguely recognized a few of the people that were doing some strange things with all of these kegs and pots and stuff, so he decided to stop in and see what we were up to. It's great to see a former brewers face light up when he smells the malt and hears the clanging of brew pots. Just kidding, it was great to see you Dean.

I would like to say that the brewing session went off without a hitch... but that I would be lying. Due to the size of the beer and the amount of grain we had, we ended up with a stuck mash, or two, to make the brewing session interesting. We also had a couple of specialty grain bags try to empty their contents into the pot that they were steeping in. Fortunately, we were able to catch them in time and we had little damage. Throughout the brewing, we dined on sweet and hot Italian sausage, Cajun blackened catfish po-boys, Cajun viggies and Italian veggie pie. Needless to say, we didn't starve!

We completed the brewing and cleanup earlier than expected, around 3 o'clock or so, and headed off to Francois house with our precious cargo. Once at Francois, we were ready for an easy transfer and cleanup (yeah, right!), so we could head home to sit back and relax. It started off easy, we drained a couple of the buckets into the cask and then started in on the kegs. Wanting to speed things along we decided to force the wort out of the kegs with CO2. That worked okay for the first keg, but things started to get a little sticky after that. About half of the kegs had problems with either valves that fell apart, or with pickup tubes that got stuck. We ended up dumping the beer into a fermenting bucket and used that to transfer it into the cask. Finally, we added the yeast from Coastal Extreme and oxygenated the wort with Francois oxygen tank. Whew, we were finally done!

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the brewing and transfer of the South Shore Brew Club Russian Imperial Stout and contributed to make this another successful group brew. I can't wait to see how it comes out!

"Homebrew, it's not just a hobby, it's an adventure!"

For pictures, check out the Pitcher Gallery.

Here is the recipe:

SSBC Group Brew Imperial Stout 60 gallon

A ProMash Recipe Report

BJCP Style and Style Guidelines

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12-C Barleywine & Imperial Stout, Russian Imperial Stout

Min OG: 1.075 Max OG: 1.095

Min IBU: 50 Max IBU: 90

Min Clr: 20 Max Clr: 40 Color in SRM, Lovibond

Recipe Specifics

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Batch Size (Gal): 60.00 Wort Size (Gal): 60.00

Total Grain (Lbs): 218.00

Anticipated OG: 1.100 Plato: 23.7

Anticipated SRM: 68.5

Anticipated IBU: 77.7

Brewhouse Efficiency: 66 %

Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar

% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM

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29.4 64.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.036 2

41.3 90.00 lbs. Generic LME - Light Generic 1.035 7

8.3 18.00 lbs. Roasted Barley America 1.028 450

6.9 15.00 lbs. Crystal 60L America 1.034 60

6.9 15.00 lbs. Chocolate Malt America 1.029 350

1.8 4.00 lbs. Flaked Barley America 1.032 2

2.8 6.00 lbs. Crystal 150L Great Britain 1.033 150

2.8 6.00 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt 1.033 2

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.

Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time

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18.00 oz. Tomahawk, F-10 Variety Pellet 12.00 53.9 60 min.

16.50 oz. Goldings - E.K. Whole 4.50 12.9 30 min.

1.50 oz. Goldings - E.K. Pellet 6.00 1.7 30 min.

18.00 oz. Tettnanger Tettnang Whole 4.50 9.1 15 min.

Yeast

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WLP-001 California Ale

Mash Schedule

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Qts Water Per Lbs Grain: 1 - Before Additional Infusions

Saccharification Rest Temp : 154 Time: 90

Sparge Temp : 180 Time: 45

Due to the new little addition to the family about a year ago, we decided that a local vacation was the right way to go this year (think about flying for 6 hours to England with a crying baby on your lap...). After unsuccessfully trying to trade our timeshare for Cape Cod, we were offered a resort in the Berkshires and decided that since we had never really spent any time out there that it would be a good idea. Plus, I did some research and found that there were a few brewpubs close and some that were within a little over an hour away. That sold me. So, we headed out to South Lee to stay at the Oak 'n Spruce resort and have a relaxing vacation, which included fresh beer.

First off, being in that area you can't help but run across several Berkshire Brewing Company beers at restaurants, which is a nice change. Their beers are quite good, and since you don't see them on tap around here much it's a bit of a treat to go to places which serve them up, fresh and tasty.

But, on to the brewpubs we visited. There were a couple on the list of ones that were close to us, but we started out by heading to Northampton Brewery on Monday for dinner. My goodness, what a great place! It was about 45 minutes away from us, but worth every minute. They had a beer garden on their roof, so we chose to dine outside since the weather was agreeable. It turns out that this brewery is a sister brewery to Smuttynose in Portsmouth NH (not sure the details, probably the same owners or some similar relationship). So, I immediately expected quality product and selected a few beers to try in a sampler. In addition to several beers I hadn't seen before, they also had a couple of locally-brewed versions of Smuttynose beers like Black Cat and Old Brown Dog. I chose to avoid these beers I knew and tasted others such as an Irish Red, a porter, a best bitter, and IPA and others I can't remember. The beers were excellent! The food was also awesome. I had a huge plate of Jambalaya and Rose ordered pork which looked like it weighed in at about a pound. If you're in the area (off I-91 around Springfield) then give this place a try. It was worth it.

To sum it up, the atmosphere was excellent with the beer garden on the roof and the beers were top-notch. Northampton Brewery was the best of the brewpubs we visited. I only wish I could have gone back again during our stay!

Next, we visited the Barrington Brewery in Barrington. The atmosphere was quite different than the Northampton Brewery, as it was old wooden floors and an almost roadhouse look and feel to it. Very rustic and simple. The service was friendly and great, and the menu had some really tempting items listed. I was in the mood for fish and chips so I went with that and it was quite good. The beers were decent, but I was looking for a little more flavor, or something to catch my attention. There was certainly nothing wrong with them and I would have been happy to go back, but they didn't make me say 'Wow'. It's tough to please a hophead sometimes.

Finally, we went to a new brewpub run by a couple of people previously from Victory in
Pennsylvania (one of my favorite breweries). It used to be the Fighting Parson I believe, but now it's the Pittsfield Brew Works in Pittsfield (obviously). Like the previous brewpub, the menu looked great and the food was fantastic, but the beers didn't meet my expectations. Great service, good beer, awesome menu -
I think that sums it up. The location is slightly off main st, not off the beaten path but not easy to find if you don't know where you're going (Pittsfield is the closest thing to a city I saw out there).

I wish I could give better details a bout the beers I tried at the brewpubs but I didn't take notes and it's been almost a month so the details are evading me. All made good beers, but the Northampton Brewery was my favorite. If you're in the area of any of these then they are definitely worth a visit. I'll probably go back to them myself, maybe on next years' vacation.

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Last modified: March 24, 2008