Stout Stout Stout

With the post ski beer reserves dwindling (kind of) I wanted to resupply. Attempted to make a dry stout with some extra body and umph, so yeah, not really a dry stout. 10 gallon batch assuming 80% efficiency.

For beer geeks: 10 # marris otter 2 row, 6.5 # canadian 2 row, 0.5# each 40 and 120 crystal, 1 # each flaked barley, flaked wheat, and choc malt, 2# roast barley. Tried something new with the grain. Since I typically get a stuck sparge with that much roast barley, I steeped 1 pound of it separately. During the sparge, after gettting the grain bed set, I added it to the top of the grain bed. --- no stickage in the sparge this time. Mashed at 150. Water 0.25 burton salts/5 gallons. 2.5 oz willamettes in the boil and 2 oz fuggles at 10 minutes. Put the beer right on the 1056 yeast cake from a previous batch.

Unfortunately I only got 9 gallons or so out of the boil (not 11) so the gravity was very high, but the sweet wort was delic! Hopefully there will be a great roasty character left in the final product. ... and bigger is better, right? OG 1.066 (not the 1.055 target I was going for) TG I'll let you know.

So this concluded a massive "catch up on beer" session where I bottled a ginger mead, bottled a plum wine, bottled a russian imperial stout, kegged a rauchbier, racked 2x reds to secondary, kegged an ESB, and brewed 10 (or 9) gallons of a stout all in less than 36 hours. Anyone want to embibe?