So how does that get me to this subject of this post?  Well another beer I brewed recently is an extra special recipe I’ve been thinking about doing for quite sometime.  It is a Maker’s Mark Barrel Imperial Stout.  This is an extra special brew that will require a long period of aging before it is ready for bottling and enjoying, but will be well worth the wait.

The recipe base is an imperial stout that will be aged on oak cubes that soak in Maker’s Mark Bourbon.  The soaking in Maker’s Mark has two purposes, one is to sanitize the oak cubes and the other is to impart the bourbon flavor into the beer.  Not only will this beer be delicious but a lot of craft breweries have bourbon barrel aged beers in stores and these things are NOT cheap.  $12 to $16 a six pack of bourbon barrel aged beer is a common price.  How much does it cost to make a strong, very flavorful bourbon barrel aged beer at home?  About $8 a six pack……not bad savings, not to mention you can make whatever you like.  Below are some brew day pictures along with the imperial stout recipe.  Down the road I’ll add some posts when the beer is transfered to the seconary with oak cubes and Maker’s Mark Bourbon, when I bottle the beer, and a final writeup come late 2011 or early 2012 with the beer is ready to drink.

Maker’s Mark Barrel Imperial Stout Recipe

Maris Otter Malt – 14 lbs.

Chocolate Malt – 1.25 lbs.

Roasted Barley – 1.25 lbs.

Crystal 40L – 1.0 lbs.

Crystal 120L 1.0 lbs.

Flaked Barley – 2.0 lbs.

The inaugural Carty Cascade Pale Ale (the 2009) version was brewed up and the beer was incredible!  Since the inaugural batch was so tasty we decided we’d recreate the recipe with every year’s harvest and use additional hops for whatever beers we wanted to make.  And so the brew day.

The recipe was the same, very simple grainbill and a nice showcase of our backyard grown Cascade hops.

9.0 lbs Maris Otter

1.0 lbs Wheat Malt

1.0 lbs Crystal 40L

Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast

1.25 oz Cascades 60 mins

1.20 oz Cascades 15 mins

1.20 oz Cascades 0 mins

The brewday was wonderful weatherwise, in the 50s and 60s.  The brewday from a technical standpoint also went perfectly.  The basement is at annual minimum it achieves by mid-winter and doesn’t warm up until mid-spring……..right around 59F.  But a cold fermentation works nicely for this beer, where we are trying to showcase the flavor and aroma of the hops.  I’ll be sure to post a review once the beer is done, but fermentation has gone well and transfer day will be occurring in the next day or three.  Until then enjoy some pictures of brew day.  Lots of pictures, the hops, the grain, the wort, but by far my favorite ones are of the bittering addition of hops right after being added to the kettle.  I love the green color of the hops against the orange/copper wort with white steam rising.

Happy 2011!

Having brewed many, many batches of beer and thereby getting a feel for different grains, hops, and yeast certainly helps.  But that will take some time and you might want to brew a clone of your favorite ale sooner than later.  Well having someone who fits that billing might be helpful, but not everyone has the luxury of a buddy who has brewed beer for years.  So one way to get there more quickly is by critically drinking beer.

Critically drinking beer, seriously, what does that even mean?  Well if you want to quickly gain an appreciation of the many grains and hops available to the brewer, critically drinking beer will certainly help you out.  Drinking your beer critically is simply pouring your beer into a clear glass instead of gulping it down right out of the bottle and making notes about what you see, smell, taste, and feel.  Start by buying some random six packs of commercial craft beers at the local beer store.  Buying mix and match six packs are a great way for trying a lot of different beer without buying entire six packs.  After you’ve got the beers chilling in your fridge, take one out that looks good.  Go to the brewery’s webpage, many brewers will list ingredients (grains and hops) used in the beer (they won’t give you the exact amounts, afterall they want to you buy their beer, not make it!), then taste and smell the beer carefully.  This will allow you to get to know what Amarillo hops might taste like or what roasted barley tastes like.  Trying different beers with the same ingredients is nice to see how different ingredient combinations or different proportions of ingredients might taste.

The nice thing about a clone beer recipe is it might not be exactly what you were shooting for, hell, your first couple clones might not even be close to the target, but you’ll still have a couple cases of tasty beer to enjoy.  As you brew more and drink more beer critically, you’ll get better at cloning your favorite commercial beer.

Let me know how your latest home brewed clone has turned out!

Justin @ BeerEasy.com

6.0 lbs Maris Otter Malt

1.75 lbs Flaked Barley

1.0 lbs Roasted Barley

1.0 lbs Rice Hulls (for easier sparge)

1.0 oz Challenger Hop Pellets 7.6% AA – 60 minutes

0.5 oz Kent Goldings Hop Pellets 5.6% AA – 60 minutes

0.5 oz Kent Goldings Hop Pellets 5.6% AA – 15 minutes

Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale Yeast Smack Pack.

The mash went well, I got 82% efficiency on my mash and mashed at 152F.  The OG of my wort was 1.043 and calculated IBUs was 40.  I oxygenated the 5.5 gallons of wort in my fermentor for 45 seconds and pitched the yeast into wort at 71F.

Here are some photos I think a lot of you may enjoy.  Next week I’ll share a few photos of the fermentation process.  But now to the brew day photos!

Justin

Here is a photo of the grains before adding to the mash tun.  The white specks are barley endosperm, the whiteish flakes are the flaked barley, the dark specs is roasted barley and you can see a great deal of barley husk and rice hulls.

Here is a photo of the mash shortly after doughing-in.

This is the mash after 60 minutes. Notice how the top watery portion of the mash has become clear compared to after doughing-in.  This is one sign of complete starch to sugar conversion.

Here is my boil setup.  The collected wort with a propane tank fueling the boil.  You can also see the big pot in the background, that’s what I use to heat my water for mash and sparges.

Not that is picture is especially exciting, but I thought it was neat with the steam rising.  It is the spent grain in a trash bag.

A wonderful photo of the boil.  You can see some flecks of protein and hop in the clear portion of the wort, lots of steam and on the left is protein hot break.  Occasionally I’ll skim some of this out and dispose.

……And finally the chilled, oxygened and yeast pitched wort.  I’ve got a blow-off tube in there just in case.  I’ll leave this post here for now.  I’ll post a few pictures of the fermentation process during the week.  An early update: fermentation is going well, I have a krausen head developing about 8 hours after pitching my yeast.

Today I brewed up a clone recipe from the September 2008 issue of Brew Your Own magazine, this recipe is for Beamish Irish Stout (I think I said Murphy’s Stout in the video clip, but this was the one for Beamish Stout.  Too many recipes too little time I guess!).

Beamish and Guiness are similar beers, although I like Beamish a little bit more.  It as a bit of hop flavor/aroma that isn’t in Guiness.  Anyway here’s a short video clip of the rolling boil.  It smelled wonderful, if only your monitor was scratch and sniff.  I’ll post some pictures and a some more details later in the weekend.

Anyone else brewing up a batch this weekend?  Enjoy the video!