On to the Next Brew

A local beer bar posted on their Facebook page that they are going to host a home brew competition in January. So naturally we had to oblige. The entry has to be a stout. We researched (googled) different stout styles to figure out what we wanted to make and how to tweak it to our liking. One style that stuck out to us was a breakfast stout. We've brewed a coffee stout and a chocolate stout, and breakfast stout sorta combines the two. But the recipe is pretty intense, we had to go all over town looking for cocoa nibs. BTW I don't recommend eating them alone... it's basically raw unsweetened chocolate. Take my word for it ;)


In order to make it OUR recipe, we are calling it a Texas Breakfast Stout. We got locally roasted coffee that we cold-brewed (this is supposed to take some of the bitterness out of the coffee as well as cut down on the oils present). We are also aging it in "oak Texas rum barrels". That is, soaking oak wood chips in rum and adding them to the fermenter. We bought Treaty Oak Rum distilled in Austin Tx. 


We went to our good 'ole home brew store to get our grains, hops, and yeast. Our recipe called for over 20 pounds of grain; they had to put it in a burlap bag instead of the normal clear plastic bag since it was so heavy. They didn't have the hops we needed (Mt Hood and Nugget) so we had to improvise. 


During the brew we had a setback: the hose from the propane tank to the burner was too close and actually CAUGHT ON FIRE. Fortunately my husband was talking to our neighbor outside nearby and she alerted him saying, "oooh it's on fire!" It turned out that most of the tube was salvageable and the destroyed part was cut off. Then after the mash soaked for an hour and we were draining the wort out the tube fell out of the pot and we lost who knows how much on the ground... Luck was not on our side. But that was the last adversity and we joyfully finished our brew, which ended 1 1/2 hours later than usual.


For the first time in a while, the weather was nice and cool and the wort cooled down much more quickly than when it's 95 degrees at 9pm. So the yeast was happy and we had good strong fermentation. We will be secondary fermenting after 5 days and adding more yeast as well as the oak chips. I will keep you updated in the coming weeks!

Update on the Wit

Well my fears were realized: the Wit is very weak. The taste is ok, it's got a good head, but there's got to be about 3% ABV in there. Oh well, we're bound to make mistakes when we try to do our own thing.


Lessons learned: it needed more malt. We knew there wasn't enough when we poured it into the tun. Next time, we'll make sure the measurements are right. Well, I think actually we'll just measure it ourselves if we go to the newer store. Also there's a chance the powdered yeast may have been a problem, as we've heard it is not as ideal. We have used powdered yeast once on our first batch, but we also used bru vigor to aid in its fermentation.


The worst thing is now we have 5 gallons of this stuff. I guess we can always bum it off to friends and family that like lite beer. Har har...