Hey guys. I was wondering if there were any good resources for homebrewing high gravity beers, in this case an Imperial Stout coming in at around 10%. I'm trying to nail an FG of around 1.035-1.040 to get the mouthfeel of something like BCBS or Abraxas. I've brewed my share of beers in the 5-7% range, so I'm just trying to figure out what things to look out for when going this big at the homebrew level. Thanks!
First thing that come to mind is that temperature control, especially in the first 3-4 days, is critical. Especially when I'm brewing a big beer, I try to pitch at 62, and then I'll only start ramping up the temperature 72-96 hours in, in an effort to avoid fusel acohols. Make sure you pitch a proper amount of healthy yeast so that your fermentation doesn't crap out on you. Also, if you're going all grain, plan to have a lower efficiency than with your normal 5-7% beers
Thanks. The efficiency is one of the things I'm trying to figure out how to account for. The recipe as it stands has 27lbs of grain. 3lbs of that (a combination of Chocolate Malt and De-bittered Black) will be cold-steeped for a day and then added at the boil (this approach has a two-fold benefit: creating more space in the mash tun and reducing acidity and bitterness). What's the typical efficiency of mashing ~24lbs of grain vs. the usual 12ish?
I go from around 75-78% for normal beers in the 1.060-1.070 range, to around 62-65% for the stuff 1.100+. I'll have to get into my BS2 reports and see what I've been getting. Just did a BCBS type beer. 1.108 OG thats in a barrel right now. I didn't lose a ton, and ended up maxing out my mash tun in the process.
How large can you boil? I have a 15g kettle that I use for these beers at 5g, so I end up around 68-72% (unless I partigyle - which I normally do). I would consider figuring out a way to partigyle the rest if you can only boil 10g or less, otherwise you are losing a lot of fermentable sugar and you get 2 beers for the price of 1 (and about 1.3x the effort!)
The difference in efficiency will depend on your setup. BrewCipher has a utility to calculate it, given your system parameters (and a known mash efficiency for the smaller batch).
I just bottled a RIS. It went from 1.102 to 1.034. I was hoping to finish at 1.028. I was pleased that it did not taste sweet. I used 23#'s of grain and boiled 8 gallons down to 6-6.25 gallons. Good luck with your RIS!
Here is a tip especially if you dont have an O2 setup. The morning after you brew sanitize another bucket/kettle/whathaveyou and pour back and forth between that and your fermenter to get a dose of O2. It works pretty good. I call it the homebrew Yorkshire Square routine.
Out of curiosity, what yeast did you use? Thanks for the tips guys. I'm also wondering: how does cold steeping the specialty grains affect OG? Is there a way to calculate that?
