BetterBeerBlog

The first beer brewed of the season and I won’t even be drinking it for the next 11 months or so. I’ve always wanted to brew a pretty big beer and a Russian Imperial Stout is one of the biggest styles out there. The strongest beer I’ve brewed to date was a strong stout about a year ago that weighed in at about 8%. It wasn’t as big as a Russian Imperial Stout but it was much bigger than your average stout. Truth is, I still haven’t drank it. It didn’t carbonate in the bottle too well so I thought I’d age it for a year and then keg it. As it stands, I’m waiting for a tap to free up on my kegerator so I can tap my Milk Stout first, followed by my Strong Stout.

According to the BJCP, the Russian Imperial Stout was brewed to high gravity and hopping level in England for export to the Baltic States and Russia. Said to be popular with the Russian Imperial Court. Hence the “Russian Imperial” part of the name.

I picked this recipe up from Rich who runs Beer and Winemakers of America, my local homebrew store. He had me taste and all-grain batch he brewed up. I liked how it was so we put together the ingredients for an extract version. While the extract version is close, it’s not exact. Even then, I tapped into my surplus of beer ingredients and deviated from the original recipe a but further. That’s the great thing about homebrewing though, there’s so much room for experimentation!

The one thing I must comment on, this is the most expensive beer I’ve brewed to date. I’m sure there are other beer styles that are more costly but the finally tally on this beer made me take pause. I purchase the ingredients for this beer and my latest pale ale at the same time. The combined cost was about $180, short by only a few cents. I find it funny that I’ll go to a bottle shop or BevMo and drop that much on beer without batting an eyelash but I’ll take pause when it’s homebrew. Go figure. Anyway, here’s my list of ingredients.

Ingredients

• 9 lbs - Coopers Light DME
• 2 lbs - Bavarian Wheat DME

Specialty Grains:

• 1 lbs - Hugh Baird Crystal 80L
• 1.5 lbs - Hugh Baird Roast 550L (.5 lbs was from my surplus)
• 1.5 lbs - Belgian Chocolate 450L (.5 lbs was from my surplus)
• .5 lbs - Bamberg Karaffe 600L

Hops

• 6 oz - Northern Brewer (7.8) bittering
• 2 oz - Fuggles (4.5) bittering
• 2 oz - Kent Goldings (4.0) finishing
• 1 oz - Willamette (4.0) finishing

Yeast

• California Ale Yeast (WLP001) - I purchased two vials of this that I used to make a yeast starter. As I type this post in, I hear my Russian Imperial Stout bubbling away in a vigorously.

Extras

• 1 tablet servomyces
• 1.5 lbs Dark Belgian Candy Syrup

Original Gravity: 1.108 (within style parameters)

Final Gravity: TBD

ABV: TBD

Process

1. Steep grains @ 155° F for 30 minutes, then remove.
2. Boil 3 oz Northern Brewer for 60 minutes.
3. Add 9 lbs of Coopers Light DME and 2 lbs of Bavarian Wheat DME at the 30 minute mark. Once the wort is boiling again, add 2 oz more Northern Brewer.
4. Add wort chiller at 40 minute mark.
5. Add last 1 oz of Northern Brewer, 2 oz of Fuggles and 1.5 lbs of Dark Belgian Candy syrup at the 45 minute mark.
6. Add servomyces at 50 minute mark.
7. Add 2 oz of Kent Goldings and 1 oz Willamette hops at the end of the boil.
8. Cool beer to 70° F and pitch the yeast starter.
9. Because of the higher original gravity and yeast starter, I aerated for 10 minutes fat and calorie burning minutes, a process I like to call “shaking the baby”.

Tasting Notes (wort)

Very, very dark mahogany brown in color, opaque with a bunch of particulate matter floating about. The bubbles present are brown. Roasty, coffee and chocolate aromas are primary with a wet grain, malt aroma secondary. The hops are noticeable and smell “wet grass”-ish. The flavor is very similar to the aroma with strong roasty, coffee and chocolate notes, that sweet, breakfast cereal, malt flavor and medium-high level of hop bitterness that is augmented by a roasted bitterness. This is a full-bodied beer that leaves a sheen on the walls of my taster glass. This is tasting pretty good so far, still very raw but it’s getting there.

Tasting Notes (primary)

TBD.

Tasting Notes (final)

TBD.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Homebrew. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.