In honor of the coming baby we brewed a Russian Imperial Stout (RIS) today. We had some issues initially with mash temp being too low and then the mash not draining properly. But after those were fixed the day went pretty smoothly and the OG was 1093; hopefully we'll end up at a little over 9% alcohol. We are planning on aging the beer on top of raspberries in attempts to make a beer that is similar to chocolate raspberry soufle. This beer has a lot of dark malts (Crystal 120L, roasted barley, black patent, and chocolate) that will hopefully lend a big-bodied, roasty/chocolately flavor that will be balanced by the sweet acidity of the raspberries. As you can see in the picture from the mash, the foam on top already has a nice creamy-brown color, and hopefully that will stay into the beer as well. We dont plan on drinking this beer until about next February/March when Elise can start drinking again. The age will help mellow the beer and blend all the flavors together as well as tone down the alcohol. Hopefully it turns out as good as it sounds.
This other picture is of our fermentation fridge. In the winter our garage is about 54 degress which is too cold for ale fermentation, and the fridge will usually be within about 1-2 degrees of the garage temp. Our temperature controller has heating and cooling settings on it, unlike some others which only have a "cold" setting. With the barley wine we tried using a heating pad to keep the fridge warm enough, but the heating pad has an auto-shutoff, so that didnt work as well for fermentation. The next idea was to get a lightbulb to heat up the chamber and so far, that has been working out pretty well. Whenever the fridge gets below 63, the light will turn on and heat the chamber back up again, and then turn off. Eventually when fermenatation ramps up, the beer will raise the temp by 3-8 degrees, so we might have to switch back to the cold setting and have the fridge on to make sure it doesnt get too hot in there.
Why did you choose a Russian Imperial Stout in honor of the baby? I love the color and potential alcohol content. How will you balance the tartness of the raspberries or will the fermentation process do it? Save a bottle for me to taste.
ReplyDelete1. RIS b/c of the high alcohol content it will last long enough (and hopefully be around its peak) around the time Elise can start drinking again.
ReplyDelete2. Why raspberries? We were thinking that b/c RIS's are usually very chocolately (E's fav dessert) that we should add some fruit to make it like a rasperry choclate souffle (b/c many of us like fruits in our desserts!). Of the available possible fruits (strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, or cherries) that we would use from a can, we thought raspberries would pair the best with the chocolately/malty darkness of the beer. There will be some additional fermentation when the fruit is added as the yeast will work on the sugars from the raspberries, but the flavors of the fruit should remain. Also, by the time we drink the beer, it will probably have spent 6-8 months in the bottle, and the hot alcohol and intense flavors should mellow allowing the sublte raspberry flavor to be present in the background. We'll see....