Spirit additions to Dry Stout

Halfacrem said:

I'm planning on splitting my Greg Hughes Dry Stout when it's done fermenting. I'll keg 5l of the 11.5 litre batch in an easy keg and bottle the rest. I'm thinking of adding some spirits to the bottled Stout to see how they come out.

I've got some very nice Mount Gay XO Rum that I got for Christmas last Year. I'm happy to sacrifice a few mils for experimentation purposes, so I think a Rum Porter is on the cards.

I also have a small selection of Single Malts. I'm not prepared to sacrifice my favourites, but I have a Bunnahabhain 12 which doesn't come off the shelf too often, so perhaps, with it's slightly smoky style, it might add something to a Stout.

The alternative would be to get a bottle of Bourbon in the traditional November Supermarket spirit sale and add a little of that.

I'd be interested in hearing other peoples experience with this. As I'm going to be making a couple of different additions, I'm thinking of adding the spirit to the bottle with a medicine syringe before adding the primed Stout. I'm thinking 10 mils per bottle? Would appreciate any thoughts.

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Slid said:

I would only ask you to think through, with some care, what this would gain you, over and above pouring the stout into a beer glass and 10ml of your chosen spirit into a tastefully designed and separate spirit glass, and sipping both alternately?

Well, sorry, but you did ask for thoughts.

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Halfacrem said:

All thoughts are appreciated. I'm not looking for everyone to agree with me :thumb:

I do enjoy a beer and a glass of Whisky every now and then. I guess to find out if there was any difference in enjoying them separately, or together, I would have to do both :-)

I'm only talking about 5 litres of Beer, so 10 bottles in total, perhaps 50 mils of Rum and 50 mils of Whisky. I reckon that's worth a gamble.

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Slid said:

That's fine by me, all of us have made mistakes in the very recent past!

So now my suggestion is adding as late as possible, maybe to top up the bottles at bottling time? Since this will be a sort of "long term" brew, there should be few issues with slower carbonation.

Good luck with it :thumb:

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MyQul said:

On page 181 of GH's book there's a recipe for vanilla bourbon porter. You could follow those instructions for the stout? - 400ml just before bottling

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Covrich said:

Not sure on this could it affect carbonation? probably silly thought really but the high alcohol could affect the yeast in suspension?

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Halfacrem said:

Yes, I've thought about that and come to the conclusion that I'm not clever enough to work it out [emoji1]

However, if only 2 parts of a 500mil bottle are at 40% and 98 parts are around 4%, I would imagine this would only raise the abv by a fraction, so I can't see it interfering too much with carbonation!

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BreadMurderer said:

I remember splitting my oatmeal stout way back and adding rum and raisins to the fermenter. I boiled the raisins in the rum so it was sterile (probably all good anyway with the alcohol but better safe than sorry). I didn't get to taste it in it's prime as it needed ageing but it was worth the experiment, it's what brewing's all about I'd say! :-)

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