Russian imperial stouts were my first true love in craft beer. This one should be my last extract brew for now; looks like we're switching to BIAB. Things I'm sure will surprise nobody: I'm writing this up six weeks later, and my notes are so rudimentary I noted neither the base recipe (John Palmer, I think?) nor the exact brew date. Sigh. Oh, and of course the name is another Monty Python reference. It didn't occur to me till weeks later that I should have gone full pun and called this Final Wort. This was our first brew using WLP090, a super yeast and extra-fast fermenter.

Ingredients

  • 1 lb chocolate malt, ground
  • 0.5 lb caramel 80L malt, ground
  • 0.5 lb roasted barley, ground
  • 6.6 lbs light LME
  • 6.6 lbs amber LME
  • 1 lb 8 oz dark LME, which was definitely not in the recipe; I'm a cook at heart, not a baker, okay?
  • 1.5 oz oz Cascade hop pellets at :60
  • 2 oz Cascade hop pellets at :10
  • 1 pack of White Labs WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast
  • 1 gallon purified bottled water
  • Distilled water to 5.5 gallons

Brew day: February 8, 2017 (or thereabouts)
Bottling day: March 11, 2017 (or, ahem, thereabouts... OK, yes, I should take better notes)
O.G.: 1.110 (not even kidding)
F.G.: 1.034
Estimated ABV: 10%

Process

I steeped the ground grains in a grain bag in 2.5 gallons of water at 163 for 20 minutes, then added the light and dark malt extracts. The first hop addition, 1.5 oz Cascade, went in at :60. Ten minutes before flameout, I added 2 more ounces of Cascade and the amber malt and whirlpooled sparingly. (I'm still getting the hang of the brewing process, and there's, uh, ample room for improvement.) I chilled the wort to 80 F, transferred it to a sanitized 6-gallon bucket without filtering, added room-temperature water to 5.5 gallons, aerated, and pitched the yeast.

Observations

  • 2017-02-16T19:00: This batch took a little bit to get started, then bubbled away very vigorously for over a week. Unlike recent hop-heavier brews, it didn't make much of a mess, but it certainly needed the blowoff hose.
  • 2017-03-11T18:30: Note to self: Uncarbonated RIS tastes better than most flat beers, probably because RIS don't tend to be all that fizzy in the first place. On bottling day, I added ½ cup corn sugar for priming, then bottled.
  • 2017-03-15T19:00: Patrick opened a swingtop bottle of this and had it explode all over, well, everything. Several other bottles were found to be leaky; I had real trouble with the capper on bottling day. This is a pretty tasty batch and pours with that oozy viscosity I love in RIS, but the flavor is still overwhelmingly, well, malt extract. I look forward to trying BIAB.