Stout with Amber Malt

I had used brown malt before in a mild. I loved the flavour of that in combination with a lot of crystal malt, so I decided to use some of its cousin, amber malt.

I wanted to brew a simple stout to test my beer engine. As such, I came up with a beer that was 70 % lager malt, 10 % amber (Crisp), 10 % flaked corn and 10 % roasted barley.

Having messed about with mixed fermentation beers for the last year, and realising that I only really enjoyed the low gravity saison type beers, I was glad to get back to clean beers for a bit.

I cultured some yeast from a bottle of proper job, a St Austell brewery beer. This was then top cropped from a previous batch of bitter. I love this yeast. All I read about it is that it's fairly clean with mineral notes, but I always get a deeply pleasing apricot hum at the start of a sip.

The beer was 1.040 OG to probably something like 1.012.

Hops were a combination of Bramilng X and Willamette. These were added at 45 mins and 15 respectively for 30 IBU total. I would have liked to have gone higher, but didn't have enough time or hops.

The beer was nice, very silky cocoa impression. Would have been improved by a bit more fruity bitterness. As it was, it came across a little gentle, too  chocolatey. Will just up the hops next time. An alternative would be some dark invert syrup. Clarity was good. Will use flaked corn more to combat haze.

Blended 25 percent Brett pale at serving time into the last bottle. This blend was superb. Knocked off the cocoa impression replacing it with dark chocolate. Good to know.

Stout with Soured Portion

A dry stout was brewed. It was 70% pale (Crisp-Flagon), 10% homemade invert syrup number 4, 10% roasted barley, 10% unmalted wheat. Water was Bristol water untreated. 21IBU at 60mins using cascade pellets. 5g of cascade at 5mins (10L batch), 10g of styrian goldings at 20mins. (I use no chill so these were actually 5 mins before end of boil for the styrians and 10 mins after for the cascade). I get bored of comercial beers using american hops, (if I want tropical fruit juice, I can buy tropical fruit juice cheaper than beer), but I like a bit of cascade in bitters and dark beers. It can lift them without being dominant.

The invert syrup was treated as sugar when inputing to my software, knowing the weight of sugar that went into the syrup it was easy to work out the sugar-liquid ratio and adjust accordingly. It was 500/820, and it hasn't gone off a few months after, so theres something to aim for if you are wondering how to stave off unwanted microbes using osmotic pressure. I started with waitrose demmerara sugar. The finished syrup was black and had a liquorice/burnt sugar taste, a bit like a cross between a creme-brulee topping and treacle (for those who live in the UK).

I drew off about a pint of unhopped wort to sour, which I kept on top of a radiator for about five days adding a little bit of sourdough dough a few days in. It had developed a sourness and dirty bread aroma by day 5. I then boiled to sanitise and blended back with the main beer once it had cooled.


The beer looked like this,

And was terribly good. When sipping the frothy mousey head, the first flavour is sugar, mix of dark brown and burnt. Then bitterness wells up, both hop bitterness and burnt sugar/roast barley acrid bitterness, this seems to stimulate the whole tounge in a very firm but balanced way and then there is a brief pause of carbonic spritzyness and then just a lingering complex roasty sugary burnt slightly hoppy melange. I'm not sure the sourness is perceptible but might be accentuating the sugary flavours. I was told this is one of the best beers I have brewed.