Its been a while since I’ve done any brewing post the newest baby addition at our house. But with fall here and my garage slowly starting to get cleaned up I can feel the draw of the brew kettle.
I am starting this brew log a little early, but I wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere for this next brew. I’m planning on making a Russian Imperial Stout. I brew so infrequently these days that I thought I’d like to make something big that I could age out in bottles. I wanted to have something sort of special to drink with friends and family in smaller quantities when the time is right. Imperial Stout seemed to be a good answer as the higher ABV and the dark malts tend to create more cellarable beers.
The more I thought about the process of making an RIS, I began to think how can I be sure to get the very most gravity points out of my mash. I have a new 15 gallon mashing setup in a keg so I thought maybe now would be a good time to make one big mash and use the first runnings for the RIS and maybe try and use the second runnings for a Sweet Stout. Why Sweet Stout? Well when cleaning my garage and going through my collection of odds and ends brewing supplies, I found a pound of lactose that I never used. So what the heck, lets partigyle the session and get two beers from one BIG BIG mash.
My plan at present is to make a mash that will giev my 8 gallons of primary run off. At 1.25qt/lb I estimate I should get a wort around 1.080 OG. If I use only 7 gallons of it for the RIS, I should get just above 1.093 after a boil down to 6 gallons. I’ll then add 6 gallons of sparge water, run off, add the 1 gallon of held 1.080 wort and see what type of gravity I have then. I’m hoping for something in the mid 1.040s OG.
Seems like a tall order, but I think it will be fun. I am not going to brew this one right now, I am going to wait until I get some yeast built up for the RIS. My plan is to make a Brown Ale with WLP001 California Ale yeast, then put the RIS right on that cake and oxygenate like crazy. I also plan to make an ordinary bitter around the same time with WLP002 English Ale Yeast. I’ll pitch some of that cake (not all) into the sweet stout.
After I work out the math a little better I’ll post the recipe for the RIS Partigyle batch.
What’s inspiring you right now?
BREW ON!
Just realized I may need to get some snifters for this RIS.
John
Baltic Porter for ’11!