Not So Famous…

I didn’t really go into detail when I announced the Brew Day earlier this week because I was in a hurry.  That is something I intend to remedy with this post.

You would think that after a couple brew days, I’d be less happy about having another one.  To be sure, there are aspects of brew day I’m not looking forward to.  For one, it makes a tremendous mess.  For two, there’s a lot of equipment cleanup involved.  And finally, I don’t usually brew for a small group.  Lots of people means doing something large for lunch and/or dinner, which is more work and cleanup.

However, each brew day, there’s been a new piece of equipment that I’ve been eager to test.  This brew day is no exception.  This weekend will be the first run of my new brewing kettle, which I first talked about here! (Pictures to follow.)

Many of you have seen the kegs that brewers put beer in for distributing to pubs and such.  Well, there are a couple of nice things about kegs that make them ideal for turning into brewing kettles.  One of them is that they are designed to have contents under pressure.  This means that the walls and floor of these kegs is thick enough to help distribute heat.  They also often have handles at the top, for easy transportation.  Finally, they’re a LOT cheaper than commercial kettles.  All told, I paid well under $100, while a good kettle will run you $300.

The guy who did my kettle conversion cuts the top of the keg out with a plasma torch. He then punches a bunch of holes in the top to create a grain screen.  From there, he basically creates some plumbing, which connects the center of that screen to the outside.  It’s hard to explain, but I’ll have pictures after this brew day.

This allows me to mash and boil in the same kettle; a prospect of which I’ve two minds.  On the one hand, having a proper mashing tun will allow me to mash a much larger amount of grain than I could in my 5 gallon cooler. (The kettle is 15.5 gallons.)  On the other hand, since I only have the one kettle, I’ll have to drain the mash liquor from the keg/kettle, fly sparge the grain, and then clean our the grain for the boil.  It requires me to have a vessel ready to hold the resultant liquor as well as a vessel for heating the sparge water.  I’ve ended up with a couple food-grade buckets, which will be what I use, I think.  I need my old kettle for heating the sparge water, for sure.  It’s going to be tricky, I think.

The long term solution, of course, is to get a second keg/kettle and a second burner.  We’ll see if that ever happens.  :)

As I mentioned in my title, this will be a chocolate oatmeal stout.  It will be my first all-grain stout, which is exciting enough.  However, this is also my first experience with a non-traditional brewing ingredient. In 1516, the City of Ingolstadt created the Reinheitsgebot, or the Bavarian Purity Law. This law allowed for only 3 ingredients to be used in the production of beer: water, barley, and hops. Yeast was not included in the law, since the microorganism had not been discovered yet. Brewers originally used sediment from previous batches to provide the fermentation. If sediment was not available, they used special vats, relying on natural yeast to provide the fermentation. So while the Purity Law did not allow for yeast, it was out of ignorance, rather than any desire to ban yeast.

This recipe I have sort of adapted calls for a couple of things.  For one, flaked oats, which would NOT have been allowed under the Purity Law.  This should add a sort of creamy mouthfeel, which is the reason for including oats in batches.  (Many brewers say that this is more psycho-somatic than anything else.) The recipe I adapted from called for wheat, which I’ve also never used.  I’m not entirely sure what the reasoning is behind this addition to the mash, aside from the fact that malted wheat is definitely a different flavor than malted barley.  Could lighten up the body a bit.  It may have been used to help counteract the viscosity that all the other ingredients will lend.  Finally, I will add some amount of cocoa powder to the recipe.  This will add most of the chocolate flavor, and should result in quite the tasty brew.

I’ve never brewed with chocolate, and have no real guidelines as of yet to work with.  I’ve found a couple pages that will hopefully give me some ideas, but in the absence of anything else, I’ll add an amount to the mash and see what it does!  This could be a recipe I fine-tune over several batches.

I’ll keep you all posted as to what all goes down this weekend!