Brew Number

32

Style

Guinness G5 11/9

Ingredients

60g chocolate grain from Osborne Park

60 g malted barley from Osb Park

1.5 kg dark liquid malt from Osb Park

250 g dark brown sugar from supermarket

250 g black strap molasses from health food shop

1 Coopers stout kit from Osb Pk

40 g Pride of Ringwood hop pellets (9%) from Osb Pk

Brewing notes

Start with 3L water.  Crush grains in a plastic bag with rolling pin, put in stocking bag, add to cold water.  Bring to boil, poking all the time and boil 15 mins, remove grains and squeeze.  Add liquid malt, molasses, brown sugar, kits.  Bring to boil.  Add hops in stocking bag.  Boil 15 mins and remove hops.  Add to fermenter and top up to 22 L total volume (should be medium bodied and about 6.6% abv).

Pitched yeast 2 September, put on light box.  Rapid initial fermentation, big krausen but no problems with bubbling out airlock.  8 September – looked finished, gave it a big shake and left it till 11 September.  No bubbling but still smell of CO2 coming off the brew.

Decanted without siphon tube.  Bilk primed with 5 oz dextrose.  Bottled 11 September – got 28 bottles.

Tasting notes

Out of fermenter on 11 Sep – smoky, good grain flavour, molasses not too prominent, adequate hopping, excellent all round Guinness flavour.

23 September – 12 days old.  Excellent grainy, smoky, rich flavour, good hop bitterness, slightly fruity (banana) taste from the Coopers yeast.  Detectable but pretty small carbonation, almost no head, hopefully just too young.

9 October 1 month old.  Under carbonated, small hiss on opening, gentle bubbling in glass, limited head.  Excellent flavour but needs more gas.  Possibly improved from last tasting, wait longer!

20 October – This one gassed, in fact frothed out of the bottle, flavour good, lost a little fruitiness, plenty of head.

12 Nov – 2 months old.   Head retention and gas pretty much perfect, no frothing from the bottle.  Good banana taste, with rich smoky molasses and lingering bitterness.  An excellent Guinness.

17 Nov – A dead one, no carbonation, flat, flavour a bit rough – no secondary fermentation.  Second bad bottle from this batch, not sure of cause?  Subsequently found another three bottles with good cap seal but no secondary fermentation – dead yeast.  Recall that we used bleach to clean bottles as out of bottle wash – could be the cause.

17 Feb, 5 months old.  This one very gassed, wicked hiss on opening, frothing out of the bottle.  A very nice, slightly smoky Guinness flavour, banana character gone.  Good bubbling in glass but not much head retention.  Very nice, but lacking in body compared to the more recent grainy effort.

18 Feb – a completely dead one! Very annoying.

9 Mar, another dead one. Goddam bleach.