Brewing Stout
Stout is the slowest of all the brews that we make. We actually only brew 18bbls at time rather than the usual 20bbls. Our mash tun simply can’t handle any more grain than that. Once, we did a beer club order for stout, and I was able to toy with the recipe. I discovered that the trouble we have with making this beer is in the oat flakes. I tried to increase the oats to 10% of the grist… that did NOT work. So now we keep the oats at only 5%, and the run off still takes 4 and half hours! Compare that to about 2 hours for Wheat or Pilsner. Oh well, I guess every drop is worth it!
Its time to make a hop order. As I feared prices for Hallertau hops from Germany have increased dramatically from 4.00$ a pound up to 5.50 a pound. Well we will see how the quality is when I get the hops. Atleast they have some to sell!
Thanks to the THIRSTY homebrew club yet again. We had their homebrew monthly meeting here tonight. I gave them all a tour of the brewery, and they got to watch me finish up the stout brew. Then they tasted all the left over samples from the homebrew competition. They made a long boring stout brew quite a bit more fun!
Someone brought in a bottle of Moose Drool in its new aluminum bottle. Its a really nice package, but I hear it costs two to three times what a glass bottle costs, so don’t expect us to switch over any time soon. I would love to get the glass out of brewery, just because of the mess though. Broken glass from bottling clogs up our drains several times a year.
Someone else brought a bottle of 100% Spelt beer from the Michigan Brewing Co. It was very light, with no malt body at all. I would only drink it if I became allergic to barley. Apparently, some people are allergic, and that is why they are making it.
Well thats it. Tommorrow night is the Johns Grocery Belgian Beer dinner. I can’t wait!