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First Irish Stout

Started: 12/22/94 Bottled: 12/29/94

Ingredients

Malt: 4 lb. can Mahogany Coast Irish Stout malt extract.
2 lbs. light dry malt extract.
2/3 to 1 tsp. corn sugar per 12 oz. bottle (priming)

Boiling Hops: 1/2 ounce Northern Brewer hop pellets
Finishing Hops: 1/2 ounce Northern Brewer hop pellets

Yeast: 14 grams Muntton & Fison Home Brewer's Yeast dissolved in 1 cup 95 degree

Adjuncts: 3 or 4 cups crushed grains, unknown content appears to be a blend of crystal and roast barley. Came with kit.

Procedure

Put 6 qt. cold water into our large saucepot and put about 3 cups of crushed adjunct grains in a grain sack into the water. Realized all the ingredients would
never fit in the pot and ran to Shopko to get a large canning pot; left grain in
water for a half hour before heating. Heated to a light simmer and let simmer
for 5 or 10 minutes. Removed grain bag from water. Nice, dark brown color from grain. Smells wonderful!

Turned off heat, added one 4 lbs. can of Mohagany Coast Irish Stout beer kit malt extract, one half ounce Northern Brewer hops, and two lbs. light dry malt extract to the hot water, heated to a boil, then boiled for 30 minutes.

Added one half ounce Northern Brewer hops and continued to boil for another six
or seven minutes.

Plastic fermenter and instruments sterilized in 5 gal. cold water and two capful
s of bleach, rinsed with hot water.

Filled plastic fermenter with 3 3/4 gallons (15 qt.) cold water. Poured hot wort
into the cold water. Didn't strain the wort (dang).

Took 6 and a half hours for the wort to cool to below 80 degrees F.

Dissolved 2 packets Muntton and Fison ale yeast in 1 cup 95 degree F water, let
sit for 13 minutes, swirled and added to wort mix. Covered fermenter and put trap in place. Moved fermenter to basement and went to bed.

Six days later, no activity for at least one and a half days and hydrometer is stable at 1.024. Sanitized bottles in bleach bath followed by a long cycle and heat dry in the dishwasher. Sanitized siphon, bottle filler, funnel for sugar, strainer in 1.5 ounce bleach + 4 gal. water. Boiled the bottlecaps for 10 minutes and let air dry and cool.

Suspended strainer in beer to try to keep most of the grain and hops (from not straining the wort) in the fermenter; siphoned beer from within strainer to bottles; added 2/3 to 1 tsp. corn sugar to each bottle (double for the 750 ml bottle)
and capped; inverted four times individually and four more times after finishing, a case at a time. Noticed during the last bottle or two that the strainer was sitting on the bottom of the fermenter, so a couple of bottles may have a dead yeast taste.

Bottles (44 12oz and 1 750ml) placed in basement for the constant 65 degree temp
down there.

Brewing Record

12/22/94: Began work at about 9:30pm, began cooling around 11:00

12/23/94: Pitched yeast at 5:40am, 79 degrees F.

12/23/94: 1:00pm (first look), bubble bubble bubble! It's WORKING!

12/24/94: 9:30am bubbling a little less, basement seems to be holding a steady
 65 degrees F, left to Michigan for holiday.

12/28/94: Got home from Michigan. No gaseous activity visible. Basement is still about 65 degrees F. Ran to store and got a hydrometer and bottle washer. Washed bottles with washer, placed in plastic tub of water and 5 T bleach at 7:30 pm to soak off lables and kill some bugs. Hydrometer at 7:00pm read 1.024.

12/29/94: Hydrometer at 2:00pm read 1.024. Time to bottle! Removed bottles from bleach tub, cleaned off label residue, put 'em in the dishwasher to rinse and
get that last bit o' clean (heavy wash, dish soap only in the initial cup, heat
dry). Sanitized bottling stuff and bottled. Made 44 12oz and one 750ml. Final
hydrometer reading at bottling (6:00pm) was 1.024, and it tastes good. Some of the bottles really foamed over when sugar was added, but we were usually able to
beat the foam with the bottlecap. I wonder if there's soap in some of the bottles. A couple of the bottles may have a dead yeast flavor, as I might have gotten some of the bottom sediment... didn't notice the strainer was on the bottom until
it was already there. We occasionally touched the bottle filler, sugar spoon, etc. with our fingers but I'm not gonna worry about it. We've minimized contamination, and that's all we can do. Basement is still a steady 65 degrees F. Should be ideal for keeping bottled beer. Suspending a strainer in the beer to filter out the hop/grain scum worked pretty well, but I'd rather remember to strain it as I'm pouring wort in the future.

1/6/95: Had the first bottle, refrigerated. Decent head. Doesn't taste very strong; fairly dry. No bad aftertaste. I think it's reasonably good, especially for a first try.

1/10/95: This bottle was poured very carefully, so no head really formed. Taste is very stout. Nice carbonation, pleasurable little bubbles rolling gently to
the surface as I drink. Incredibly dark; when held directly next a lightbulb,
almost no light passes. Decent bitterness.

1/14/95: Had a couple. Poured 'em such that I got a big head, it hung around for quite a while. Two was enough to... well, I won't be having more than two at a time (wheee!). It's definitely improving with age.

2/?/95: Noticed that the 750ml bottle has two hairline fractures just below the
crown cap: Possibly a source of decarbonation. Probably should drink it soon.

Note: The original gravity listed was not actually measured, and is probably quite wrong. This number was obtained from the recipe's listed O.G. My guess is
probably closer to 1.050. I just included it because I hate to see an empty piece
of data.

Statistics

Original Specific Gravity: 1.042
Finishing Specific Gravity: 1.021
Estimated Alcohol Content: 2.21