I've been wanting to brew a strong fruit stout for a while now, and during a recent trip to Quirky Homebrew, we improvised a strong stout recipe (with the help of Luke, from the Quirky staff) to throw some cherries into. After the first boil is over, I'm going to sparge the grain a second time and try to get a dry Irish-style stout. And in the spirit of How can I dress up an Irish stout?, I think I'm going to toss in a can of peach puree we've had sitting around for a while now. Dry peach stout? Maybe. We'll find out.

This was my second parti-gyle mash process, and it's going more quickly than batch 089 did, in part because I'm not moving dechlorinated water slowly around in an attempt to avoid decreasing the efficiency of my Campden tablets. It doesn't hurt to be typing these notes up during the mash and the boil, either.

Both of these are intended to be heavily hopped: in part because the fruit will add additional sweetness, and in part because hops are wonderful. Batch 098B is going to be dry-hopped, as well, if the hops-to-malt balance is off in the malt direction.

BeerXML for these recipes, generated by BrewTarget:

I'm calling these batches Bashing Two Bricks Together and I Believe in Peach, after a comment made by Rev. Gumby in Monty Python's Church of the Divine Loony.

Ten gallons of fermenting stout.

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Ingredients in this batch

Grain bill for both batches

    • 12.500 lb. Maris Otter pale malt
    • 1 lb. flaked oats
    • 8 oz. biscuit malt
    • 8 oz. Briess roasted barley
    • 8 oz. Dingeman chocolate malt
    • 8 oz. rice hulls
    • 8 oz. Simpsons crystal rye malt
    • 8 oz. Simpsons Double Roasted Crystal malt

First runnings went to batch 097A, second runnings went to batch 097B.

Additional ingredients for batch 097A, Bashing Two Bricks Together

  • 1 lb. dark brown sugar
  • 2 oz. Warrior hops (15.5% alpha acid) @ 90 min
  • 1 oz. Magnum hops (12.4% alpha acid) @ 85 min
  • One 96-oz. can Vintner's Harvest cherry fruit wine base
  • ½ tsp. LD Carlson pectic enzyme
  • 2 pouches White Labs WLP007 (Dry English Ale Yeast)
  • Later sugar additions:
    • 1 lb., 3.7 oz. Ben's Sugar Shack maple syrup, added 13 Feb 2018
    • 9.15 oz. Grandma's blackstrap molasses, added 13 Feb 2018
    • 1 lb. Kirkland grade A amber maple syrup, added 29 Mar 2018
  • 2 oz. (dry weight) Hungarian oak cubes, soaked in miscellaneous bourbon, added 29 Mar 2018

Additional ingredients for batch 097B, I Believe in Peach

  • 3.3 lb. Briess CBW® sparkling amber LME
  • 1 lb. Muntons light DME
  • 1.750 oz Perle hops (6.6% alpha acid) @ 60 min
  • 1 oz. Czech Saaz hops @ 10 min
  • 1 can (3 lb., 1 oz.) Vintner's Harvest Peach Puree
  • ¼ tsp. LD Carlson pectic enzyme
  • 1 pouch White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale Yeast)
  • 2.75 lbs. dried apricots (added on 5 June 2018)
  • 2.5 kg (weight is after slicing and removing pits) fresh peaches, juiced (added 3 July 2018)
  • approx. 4 fl. oz. solera mead (added 3 July 2018)
  • 1 oz. YCHHops Citra hops (13.3% alpha acid), added in a hop bag on 30 July.
  • 1 oz. LD Carlson Mandarina Bavaria hops (9.2% alpha acid), added in a hop bag on 30 July.
  • 2.4 oz. C&H cane sugar, for priming, added on 5 August.

Procedure for batch 097A

Raised seven gallons of treated tap water to 164℉; dumped grain into bag and put it in the brew pot. Temperature only came down to 160℉, so I quickly sanitized a quart honey jar, filled it with ice cubes, and tossed it into the mash. Stirred vigorously and allowed the temperature to come down to 154℉ over the next fifteen minutes, then covered and allowed it to fall to 146℉ over the next forty-five minutes. Pulled out the grain bag and set it aside for batch 097B. Wound up with only five gallons of wort, so I sparged again with two more gallons of water, bringing the total up to 6.5 gallons. Boiled for 90 minutes, adding all the hops at the beginning of the boil. But holy jeez, I always forget that the real pain involved in brewing in this apartment is that the stove takes forever to boil six-plus gallons of wort.

Boiled for 90 minutes, making hop additions as indicated above. Started typing up these notes. Turns out that a 96-oz. can of Vintner's Harvest Cherry Wine Base consists of just over 3 lb. cherries and about 7 cups of tart dark juice with gravity 1.034. Partially covered the pot with 45 minutes remaining in the hope of encouraging a more vigorous boil, and in the hope that most off-flavor precursors have already been driven off (and that the one-third-open pot lid will allow plenty of escape for anything that's left). Tossed in the wort chiller to sanitize with 25 minutes left, leaving the lid entirely off from this point onwards.

Wort chilling went well and took less than a half-hour this time. Pulled off about a gallon of wort to hold for batch 097B, then added a pound of dark brown sugar to the wort for this batch (i.e., 097A). Poured cherries, pectic enzyme, and cherry juice into the fermenting bucket, then filtered the cooled wort over a large strainer and over the cherries and juice. Covered and allowed to cool further to room temperature while prep began for batch 097B.

Brew day: 8 February 2017
Original gravity: 1.082 (but we're treating this as if the O.G. were 1.099 due to later sugar additions)
Estimated IBUs: 112.8
Predicted final gravity 1.025
Predicted ABV: 10.9%
Bottling day (batch 097A): 25 April 2018
Final gravity (batch 097A): 1.017
Estimated ABV: approx. 12%

Yield:

  • 14 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 15 x 22 oz. beer bottles
  • 1 x ½ gal. beer growler
  • a hydrometer tube's worth of beer

Total yield (batch 097A): about 572 fl. oz, or just about 4.5 gallons

Procedure for batch 097B

(I'm taking some cues here from the parti-gyle stout recipe on page 72 of Mike Karnowski's Homebrew Beyond the Basics.) Loaded the grain bag back into the brew pot/mash tun and poured more (Campden tablet-treated) hot water (at 100℉) over it. Allowed to soak for fifteen minutes, then pulled the bag out. Poured the remaining gallon or so of wort from batch 097A into the brew pot, leaving me with a second-runnings wort with a gravity of 1.025. (And maybe we'll get some nice Maillard flavors from the part that participates in the second boil.) Added some leftover malt extract and enough water to take the boil volume to 6 gallons. Mixed thoroughly, then brought to a boil and allowed to boil for an hour, adding hops according to the schedule above. Poured the peach puree and the pectic enzyme into a sanitized bucket, then cooled the wort, drained it into the bucket, and aerated it. Pitched the yeast and popped in an airlock.

Brew day: 8 February 2018
Original gravity: 1.050
Estimated IBUs: 42.9
Predicted final gravity 1.015
Predicted ABV: 4.8%
Bottling day (batch 097B): 5 August 2018
Final gravity (batch 097B): 1.012
Estimated ABV (batch 097B): approx. 5%

Yield:

  • 21 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 7 x 22 oz. beer bottles
  • 4 x 500 mL beer bottles
  • 1 x 375 mL beer bottle
  • a hydrometer tube's worth of beer

Total yield (batch 097B): about 492 fl. oz, or just about 3.8 gallons

Observations

  • 2017-02-09T11:30: Both batches are bubbling quite quickly.
  • 2018-02-12T02:15: Carbon dioxide discharge from batch 097B has already slowed down visibly. Has the yeast already ripped through most of the fermentable sugars? (Or maybe just the easily fermentable sugars?)
  • 2018-02-13T13:04: Both batches are producing carbon dioxide much more slowly than they were on the 9th.
  • 2018-02-13T18:48: Added molasses and maple syrup to batch 097A.
  • 2018-03-29T19:53: Added maple syrup and bourbon oak cubes to batch 097A.
  • 2018-04-25: Bottled batch 097B.
  • 2018-05-17T21:02: Racked batch 097A into new sanitized carboy. Current gravity: only 1.002!
  • 2018-06-05T19:04: Added dried apricots to batch 097B.
  • 2018-07-03T18:10: Xenia juiced two and a half kilograms of peaches, and I added the juice and fibrous pulp to the fermenter for batch 097B. Also added approx. 4 fl. oz solera mead (currently the solera is fermenting rather vigorously) to get a wine yeast in and be sure that the beer comes out dry.
  • 2018-07-30T18:31: Racked 097B into a clean bucket, removing the ale from the yeast and the dried apricots and the peach pulp. We only have four gallons of this now! Saved a quart of yeast in the fridge. Added two ounces of hop pellets in a hop sock for dry-hopping; I'm planning on leaving them in about five days.
  • 2018-08-05T17:00: Racked batch 097B into new carboy on top of undissolved cane sugar, then bottled it, yielding on 3.8 gallons of 5% beer. Discounted the sugar from the peach juice in the ABV calculationbecause of the amount of water that it also added: the gravity of the juice is about the O.G. of the original unfermented wort. Holy jeez, is that peachy.