Secondarying Leo’s Stout #2

This article was originally posted on Dec. 5, 2011 on my homebrew website, Fat Grey Tom’s Cider. It has been re-posted here with the same time stamp.

We secondaried Leo’s Stout, batch #2. The grains and trub settled to the bottom and the yeast settled and compacted on top of it.

We used Leo’s jacket to protect the carboy from sunlight and it seemed it deserved a hat.

The stout provided a problem, however: it was primaried in the garage, which gets much colder than the rest of the house. Considering this, the new batch of pumpkin is being primaried in the work room and the stout is being secondaried for a lot longer, for about two weeks or so, so the yeast can finish the job it didn’t get done initially. Because it is an ale and we did put it in too cold of conditions. Our bad!

However, now, it’s sitting in a bucket in the warm.

I think we learned our lesson.

All the pictures here, on Flickr, all released under a creative-commons attribution-only license.

 

Look at that yeast cake! Look at that trub!

 

Trub at the bottom. Big yeast cake mixed with sediment.

The stout protected by pizza boxes

Stout #1

This article was originally posted on Sept. 30, 2011 on my homebrew website, Fat Grey Tom’s Cider. It has been re-posted here with the same time stamp.

After having successfully brewed our first beer, a “basic dark” and both wanting to move on to a greater challenge and something with a more complex flavor, we decided to brew a stout.

And brew a stout we did!

“If we’re bottling when the sun’s setting, meaning its beaming directly at the beer, isn’t that bad?” Bryce asked.

“Yes it is,” I replied.

And so, we used what we had to protect our bottling from harmful sunlight.

From the front:

The stout protected by pizza boxes

From the front

 

 

 

 

 

 

From behind:

The stout, protected by pizza boxes.

Yes, we did protect the beer with pizza boxes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We weren’t, apparently, all there:

After I had filled the first bottle, I realized that we hadn’t yet put the priming sugar in the beer. So, we put the sugar in, stirred it up and filled the rest of the bottles and drank the first, flat bottle of stout.

And, it was good! And tasty! And so now, we wait. We wait to crack open the first brew.

Crossing our fingers.

Hurrah.

Here’s the recipe, from our local home brew store:

Ingredients:

6 lbs.      Amber Malt Extract
1 lb.        Roasted Barley
1 lb.        Amber Dry Malt Extract (DME)
1 lb.        Flaked Barley
2 oz.       Goldings, Willamette or Fuggles Hops (We used Fuggles.)

Directions:

Bring water to a boil, add malt extract, roasted barley, DME, flaked barley and hops. Stir until extract is completely dissolved. Boil for 1 hour.

Strain wort into fermenter. Bring water up to 5 gallons.

Aerate and pitch yeast.

Let beer ferment, between 60 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit,  for two weeks/when fermentation is complete.

Bottle, cap, let sit for two weeks. Enjoy.

As soon as we open, I’ll write about it. Until then, we’re still trying to figure out a name and a bottle design.

This stout:

Tag: http://brew.wheelerc.org/tag/stout-1/