Gyle 21 - AG Winner Staison

As with most of my brews, I get an initial idea from somewhere, can be a conversation, can be something I've read. That will make me want to brew a particular style of beer. This is then matched to what ingredients I've got, and what makes it interesting to me.

That's how this started out, I got the idea that I wanted to brew an imperial stout. Something I've not tried to do since Gyle 05, which was when I was still BIAB, and it didn't end up as an imperial stout, only about 7%.

So, I'd penciled into the brew schedule that I was going to brew an Imperial Stout, and then when I was at work at PSBH (‏@portstreetbeer) the night before my brew, I was talking to @Not_that_Jamie and got the idea into my head that I actually wanted to brew a farmhouse imperial stout. Basically, an imperial stout, but brewed with saison yeast. It was just so lucky that I had a decent amount in the fridge from the last saison I'd brewed.

I gathered all of the ingredients together and my kitchen looked like this;

I had created a recipe, so I adjusted it slightly for the new yeasts I would be using, and I made all the alterations.

I knew this would be a big beer, with a very high possibility of a stuck mash, so I stuck a load of rice hulls at the bottom of my mash tun to help create a bit of a filter (I think I need to address this properly with my new system when it comes online).

Then, it was on to adding the water and the malts for the mash.

Which ended up looking delightfully evil.

I mashed in at 74 degrees, to give me a mash temperature of 64 degrees, which I left to mash for 2 hours. After which I started to sparge - well my form of sparging, where I put some foil over the top with holes, and pour water on that.

I aimed for 80 degree sparge, and I got about 79 according to my temperature probe, but I think it's running about 1.5 degrees high.

Whilst waiting on the mash and the sparge, I got the yeast out of the fridge to warm up to room temperature, I didn't want the yeastie beasties to be thermally shocked and suffer any ill consequences. I also took the time to measure out the first hop addition.

I was going to make damn sure that I didn't under pitch with this beer, what with the gravity so high, I didn't want to stress the yeast too much.

I have to make a confession, I was aiming for an OG of 1.093 with a batch size of 21 litres at an efficiency of  70%. Even with the rice hulls the mash started to stick, and was running really slowly, so I agitated the mash and added a bit more water, and when running off, I forgot that I'd done this. I ended up with an OG of 1.085 with a batch size of 24 litres at an efficiency of 70%. So, I got the right efficiency, and if I'd boiled down more, I would have got the right gravity and batch size.

I'd checked the first wort gravity, and it was at 1.093, so I thought it was all gravy. Problem was, I thought things were going swimmingly, the boil had been great, looking beautiful, and smelling roasty as you like.

So after the boil, I started to cool down, did my cooling, the transfer and aeration, pitched the yeast, and *then* did my final gravity checks with the refractometer. It was then that I saw that I was at the 1.085, instead of the 1.093. This clicked into my head with the other thing that had been staring me in my face, and bugging me, there was an extra 3 litres in the FV!

I think the thing to take from this, check more, and then check again.

I've been reading the book Yeast, by Chris White, and that says about doing a secondary aeration, especially with bigger gravity beers, about 8-12 hours into primary fermentation, to help the yeasts stay healthy. I don't have access to pure oxygen just yet, but I had bought an aquarium pump, so this morning, I saw that the beer had krausened, so I dropped a sanitised line into the FV, and aerated it for 10 minutes. I'm hoping this will keep the fermentation healthy.

I forgot the name, well. It's an imperial, imperial - king - winner. and staison, well that's an amalgamation of stout and saison. See, it's perfectly obvious when you think about it.

Cheers.