Today is another attempt to refine my Night Horse Dry Stout. I have the feedback from the NHC 2012 first round results. The score average was 26.5 (low 24, high 29). Scores of 21 to 29 are considered good. Both judges were BJCP recognized. I have combined them here into a single review.
Aroma
Low malt and hop aroma. Some roast aroma but not prominent. Slight fruitiness.
Roasty, chocolate aromas above a subtle alcohol presence. No hop or ester character noticed. Could be due to lower carbonation.
Appearance
Medium-brown color. Light tan head that dissipates quickly. Clear.
Deep brown opaque beer. Almost completely flat. Very few light brown bubbles appear if roused.
Flavor
Clean malt base with moderate roast flavor. Low-medium hop bitterness not evident in finish. Low hop flavor.
Roasted grains finish with a muted dark fruit taste that fades fast. Very low hop bitterness. Too low for style. No harshness from grains.
Mouthfeel
Very light body. Very low carbonation. Seems thin for style. Should have fuller body and carbonation should be a little higher.
Light bodied brew with low to no carbonation. A little on the thin side for the style.
Overall Impression
Overall a decent drinkable stout but too thin and not toasty enough to be a great example of the style. Could use more specialty grains and some flaked barley.
Overall a good brew. The lack of carbonation mutes some of the character. More hop additions would be more in line with the style and so would improving the body with some specialty grain or malt additions.
Conclusions
There are a couple of conclusions I can draw here.
According to the BJCP, “A judge with any passing score and fewer than 5 experience points receives the rank of Recognized.” That tells me that these beers were not judged by the most experienced judges in the world. Though I appreciate their time and effort, some of what they say has to be taken with a grain of salt. For instance, while one judge describes the beer as clear, the other says it is opaque.
The second conclusion is that I have to get better at bottling from a keg if I am going to keep doing this. I did not understand the flat beer comment until I opened a few of the bottles myself. The carbonation was very inconsistent and there is no telling what the condition was of the bottle they judged.
The third observation is really the first about the beer. I have been playing with this recipe for a while. This is my third version, but there has not been a lot of radical change. More like variations on a theme. It seems that the basic Dry Stout recipe is fairly well understood. Quality pale ale base, with a good percentage of roasted and flaked barley, Goldings for bittering, and an Irish ale yeast. I started with Jamil’s recipe and tried it with and without a protein rest, at both 122 °F and 133 °F. The rest did make the mash less likely to stick, otherwise I am not sure it made a positive contribution to the resulting beer. Then I tried Charlie Papazian’s recipe (the one that went to NHC). The basic differences were the ratios of the basic ingredients. Jamil was 7:1:2:2. Charlie was 7:1:1:1. This time I am using 7 pounds of Marris Otter, 2 pounds of roasted barley, and 2 pounds of flaked barley, and 2 ounces of Goldings. Compared to the judged beer, this responds to the “more body, more character malt, more hops” concern.
Brew Day
Last night I set up the brewery, measured out the mash and sparge water, and weighed out and crushed the grains.
Last night I was cleaning the mash tun and noticed that there was something odd about the way I have the O-rings set up. There are two of them in different sizes. I have the larger of the two on the outside and the smaller one on the inside. The way that the heat had treated the plastic it look like it had buckled a little and the smaller one on the inside was no longer sealing. It appears that I could have been leaking wort into the joints in the area between the inner and outer walls of the tun. I swapped them so that the larger one is on the inside. I will see if it seems to make a difference.
7:05 I started heating the water.
7:59 Strike water is at 173 °F in the kettle. Transferring to the mash tun.
I am going to try to do today’s brew, as much as I can, on the iPad. The first thing I noticed is that I do not have my brew log spreadsheet, so I had to go back to the laptop to check the specifics of my strike water temperatures. I understand that this is a general complaint, that while the iPad software supports iCloud, the Mac software does not. For instance, I could use iTunes to transfer my spreadsheet to the iPad, but then it is an isolated copy on my iPad. This is a not-quite-as-good version of emailing Microsoft Word files back and forth. Apple has to do something about this.
8:06 The transfer of the strike water to the mash tun is complete. The strike water temperature is 159 °F. I messed something up. Heating some water to boiling for adjustment. I am looking for a fairly high mash temperature. Something in the low to mid 150s. I will lose about 10 degrees while mashing in, so I would like to shoot for around 165 °F for the strike water in the mash tun.
8:37 Strike water adjusted to 164 °F. Mashing in.
8:42 Mashing at 153 °F.
8:57 The yeast has been out of the refrigerator overnight and I just smacked it. The manufacture date is April 23, 2012. According to Mr Malty, that gives me 68% viability or 136B cells between the two packs I am using.
9:42 Mash complete. 152 °F. Vorlauf and lauter.
9:54 Lauter complete. Collected 3.25 gallons of 1.069 SG (1.062 at 104 °F) wort. The refractometer read 17.6 Brix, which is 1.070 SG. Sparge strike temperature is 154 °F, 147 °F in the mash tun.
I was reading the May-June 2012 issue of BYO and I saw a sidebar story that a hop spider makes a good lauter filter. Since I have been worried that my vorlauff let’s a lot of grain particles through, I figured I would try running my lauter through my hop bag. It worked pretty well and I ended up catching a bunch of grit that would have otherwise ended up in the boil kettle. The thing is, when I went to pull the bag out of the kettle after the lauter, the wort barely passed through the bag. I had to squeeze it and roll it around to get out the half-gallon or so of wort that was inside. Normally homebrewers figure about 10% loss of utilization with a hop bag. After that demonstration, I am guessing a lot more. I am going to switch to adding my hops directly to the boil. It seems to me that the whirlpool and settle method has worked well for clearing the beer so I thing the hop bag can only hurt at this point. Also, this may explain some of the comments about the hop presence from the judges.
10:05 Sparging.
10:15 Sparge complete. Collected another 3.25 gallons of 1.026 SG (1.022 at 88 °F) wort. The refractometer read 7 Brix, which is 1.028 SG. Heating to boiling. The boil gravity is 1.046 SG (1.040 at 100 °F). The refractometer read 12 Brix, which is 1.047 SG.
Just playing with my spreadsheet, it seems like I got 76% Brewhouse efficiency on my mash. If I can control the boil off rate, I should end up with a original gravity of about 1.054 SG.
10:47 Boiling. Waiting for the hot break to subside.
10:53 Hot break has subsided. Adding hops.
The recipe calls for 2 ounces of 5% AA Goldings hops. The ones that I have are 3.2%. I have another ounce of Willamette hops (assume typical AA of 5%) that I am going to use to supplement.
11:38 Adding chiller, yeast nutrient, and Irish moss.
11:53 Flame out and chilling.
12:20 Chilled. Stirring to form a whirlpool and leaving to settle. The original gravity is 1.054 SG (1.052 SG at 78 °F). The refractometer reading was 14.2 Brix, which is 1.056 SG.
1:08 Draining to the carboy.
1:35 Drained. Shaking to aerate.
1:49 Aerated.
3:06 Everything cleaned and put away. Pitched at 65 °F. The beer is in the fermentation chamber with a set point of 66 °F. The thermostat is in heating mode. The set point is the “cut out” temperature. The differential is set to 2 °F. This means that — since the cellar is cold — the temperature of the beer falls until it is below 64 °F (2 °F below the set point). Then the thermostat turns the heater on until it reaches 66 °F (the set point) where the heater cuts out. That means that the beer will ferment at 65 ± 1 °F for this configuration.
Saturday, June 30 I kegged the finished beer today. The final gravity was 1.015 SG (1.016 SG at 51 °F) or 8.2 Brix, which would correspond to 1.019 SG. That would give me 5.2% ABV and 179 calories per 12 ounce serving.
Monday, July 9 The beer has been on 11 PSI now for 9 days. It is just starting to have a subtle carbonation. The roast is now the prominent character. The amount of roasted barley changing from 1 pound to 2 being one of the major changes in this batch. The initial aroma is now dominated by dark chocolate and coffee, as is the initial flavor impression. It is wonderful. Unfortunately, by the third swallow, my tongue is coated with roast flavors and it begins to seem more like I am drinking a cold cup of coffee: bitter and slightly acidic. That gives me a couple of thoughts. First, this is probably bordering on too much roast. Briess suggests 3–7% for their Black Barley 500L. This is 18%. The 10% in Jamil’s recipe was not too assertive, however. If I were to try again, I might shoot for half-way, or 14%. Second, playing on the cold coffee analogy, it may just be that the bitterness of the dark roasted grain is coming through and I should offset it with some sweetness, perhaps with some caramel malts. Were I to try this again, I might trade that 4% reduction in roast for 4% of a dark caramel. Third, despite having doubled the hop charge, there still is no significant hop presence. It is not traditional, but I think I will have to switch to hop additions throughout the boil. Finally, if I make all those changes, as far as I am concerned, I am not making a dry stout any longer. If I swap out the flaked barley for flaked oats, I am well on the way to making a breakfast stout. Substitute American hops for the British ones and PacMan yeast for the Irish Ale and it actually starts to sound good. I may just go back to Jamil’s recipe for dry stout and accept that the judges do not like it. I am going to see how this beer matures before I give up on it, but I am thinking this is a failed experiment. Before altering the recipe too much, it might be worth giving Gordon Strong’s method of cold steeping of dark grains a try. At very least, trying to assess whether water chemistry has anything to do with the bitter, acidic character of the aftertaste.
Saturday, July 14 The beer has been on 11 PSI now for 2 weeks. There is a very nice level of carbonation now. The roast is still the prominent character. The aroma is like chocolate milk. The bitter aftertaste has subsided and I can now enjoy more than one pint in a session. I still want to use the coffee analogy. Gretchen grinds our coffee from roasted beans. She uses a hand crank burr grinder. The coffee is consistently good, but sometimes there is some sediment at the end of the last cup. I want to say this is fine particulate matter from the ground roast beans. I think something like that must happen with the roasted barley, as well. It may have taken extra time for that fine particulate matter to drop out of suspension, or those first few glasses may have gotten an extra helping of them as the were drawn off the bottom of the keg. I still think it might be worthwhile to cut back a bit, but certainly waiting two weeks may be a factor, as well.
Tuesday, July 24 Two pounds of roast is fine. All the beer needed was some age. I was being sarcastic before about the PacMan yeast, but I think next time I may stray from the Irish Ale yeast. Here is why. I am getting a noticeable flavor of butter after the initial roast flavor. The style guidelines clearly say there should have “no diacetyl” in the flavor or aroma. I did a diacetyl rest, but it may have been too late or too short. The yeast description at Wyeast does not mention it, but if I go to John Palmer’s 1994 archive of the Yeast FAQ, it says under this yeast, “slight residual diacetyl is great for stouts.” The description of the Irish Ale yeast at White Labs says it “produces a slight hint of diacetyl.” The Brew Your Own article, The Dark Secrets of Stout, by Ashton Lewis says, “Some stouts contain perceptible levels of diacetyl and this aroma note is mainly due to yeast strain and fermentation method. If you like diacetyl in your stout, choose an appropriate yeast strain and minimize warm conditioning following fermentation.” Apparently some people like diacetyl in their stout. I guess I am not one of them. I do think I will try a cleaner yeast the next time I make the Night Horse. It can be a Dry Stout without being an Irish Stout.
“Pacman is really great yeast; everything about it is good. Pacman attenuates well, is alcohol tolerant, and it produces beers with no diacetyl if the beer is well made. It’s very flocculent, which makes it a great choice for bottle conditioning. I ferment almost all my beers at 60deg.F; once in a while for certain styles I’ll ferment as high as 70deg.F, but never higher. Use lots of oxygen, and a high pitch rate. I never repitch past the 6th generation, and I always use Wyeast Yeast Nutrient.” — John Maier, Brewmaster, Rogue Ales
Since PacMan is a part of Wyeast’s Private Collection and is not available all the time, Denny’s Favorite 50 might be a good choice, as well. Rumor has it that “all it is is the Pacman yeast with a few of Denny’s beard hairs in it.” 😉 From Wyeast: “This terrific all-round yeast can be used for almost any beer style, and is a mainstay of one of our local homebrewers, Mr. Denny Conn. It is unique in that it produces a big mouthfeel and accentuates the malt, caramel, or fruit character of a beer without being sweet or under-attenuated.”
Monday, July 30 I’m not sure when it happened, but the yeast have apparently processed enough of the residual diacetyl that it is now below my taste threshold. I still want to try another yeast, but at least I know that this much age is necessary with the Irish ale yeast.