Second runnings from batch 174, because hey, that's a lot of grain, and we can get a second batch basically for free. This is a dry stout in the style of a dry Irish stout, but with White Labs's Edinburgh Ale yeast; it will hopefully come out with some residual sweetness, so we have a breakfast stout to break out on special occasions. It will of course no longer be a dry stout at that point, but we'll wrestle out the nomenclatural issues later.

I'm going to call this batch Michael Jackson in Disneyland, because we bottled it during the quarantine and, like many of our other plague brews, it gets a name that's a line from Warren Zevon's song Splendid Isolation.

BeerXML for this recipe, generated by BrewTarget. Of course, because this includes a second mash, the grain bill in the BeerXML file is an as-if-new version of the grain bill.

Ingredients in this batch

  • leftover grain from batch 174, re-mashed with new grain.
  • 1 lb. pale chocolate malt (220°L)
  • 2 lb. rye malt (3.7°L)
  • 5 oz. Fuggles hops (4.2% A.A.) at 75 min.
  • 1¼ tsp. Irish moss at 30 min.
  • 1 pouch White Labs WLP028 (Edinburgh Scottish Ale) yeast
  • Sugar addition of 8 August 2019 (totaling exactly 1 quart in volume):
    • 5.5 oz. dark California wildflower honey from Island of the Moon Apiaries, Woodland, California.
    • 2 lb., 10.7 oz. buckwheat honey from Bennett's Honey Farm, Fillmore, California.
    • 3 lb. Michigan maple syrup, caramelized in Crock-Pot for three hours on high.
    • 150mL tap water.
  • Sugar addition of 13 February 2020:
    • 3 lb. pure Wisconsin maple syrup, caramelized by placing in a Crock-Pot on high for four hours.
    • 2 lb. pure Wisconsin maple syrup.

Procedure

Took leftover grain from batch 174, added three pounds of new grains, and re-mashed at 120℉ for 20 minutes, 140℉ for 15 minutes, and 152℉ for 60 minutes. Drained off about three gallons of wort, then boiled: only had about two gallons of wort after the boil! Diluted to five gallons and chilled with the wort chiller, then poured into a bucket, aerated with the wire whisk, and popped in a lid and an airlock.

Brew day: 12 July 2019
Predicted original gravity: 1.046
Measured original gravity: 1.041 (but recalculate at bottling)
Calculated as-if original gravity: 1.129 (after syrup and honey additions)
Estimated IBUs: 63.8
Predicted final gravity 1.020
Predicted ABV: 8.4 -
Bottling day : 26 October 2020
Final gravity: 1.000
Estimated ABV: 19%

Yield:

  • 1 x 1 qt. beer bottle
  • 1 x 22 oz. beer bottle
  • 4 x 650mL beer bottles
  • 3 x 500mL beer bottles
  • 40 x 12 oz. beer bottles

Total: Approx. 675 fl. oz., or 5¼ gallons.

Observations

  • 2019-08-08: Added three pounds, 0.2 ounces of honey and 3 pounds of caramelized maple syrup to the fermenting brew. A mixture of 3 parts water to 1 part caramelized maple syrup has gravity 1.089, so the presumptive gravity of the caramelized syrup is 1.356—lower than honey.
  • 2019-09-10: Began a wine yeast starter (documented in batch 174) for this and two other batches.
  • 2019-09-13: Pitched approximately one-third of wine-yeast starter into bucket.
  • 2019-12-05: Pulled out about a quart of braggot to use in stew.
  • 2020-02-13: Put three pounds of maple syrup in a Crock-Pot on high for four hours to caramelize, then added two more pounds for fifteen minutes to help dissolve it. Poured syrup into bucket, then pulled out ~1 qt. braggot to sit in the Crock-Pot for a half-hour and remove residual syrup. Poured that back into the bucket, too.
  • 2020-10-26: Bottled in beer bottles using black caps.