Russian Imperial Stout

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rickthebrew

rickthebrew

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Ok chaps - I hope to brew one of these for around xmas 2011ish :party:

Seen lots of recipes and posts so just after some pointers really, % of grains and hop additions / IBU etc. Also what sort of OG and FG and type of yeast to use - i`m looking at doing a 23l brew if i can squeeze the grain in my tun :twisted:

I nearly have 70 x330ml little guiness bottles which should do for around 23l, so this will be brewed soonish :thumb:

Rick`s Russian or double R for short :drink:
 
rickthebrew said:
Ok chaps - I hope to brew one of these for around xmas 2011ish :party:
Click to expand...
Then you should have brewed it Last year :roll: :lol:

rickthebrew said:
Seen lots of recipes and posts so just after some pointers really, % of grains and hop additions / IBU etc. Also what sort of OG and FG and type of yeast to use - i`m looking at doing a 23l brew if i can squeeze the grain in my tun :twisted:
Click to expand...
I like to go with 70% Pale . . . 10% Chocolate, 10% Crystal, 5% Amber, and 5% Roast/Black malt. . . . Gravity wise you are looking at anything 1.095 and above . . . up to about 1.100 When Last Brewed Courages was 1.102 . . .You'll be looking at around 13Kg of grain to get you 23L at 1.104 . . . which makes a Tun Volume of 50L required really. . . . . You can 'cheat' by adding some malt extract halfway through the boil . . . remember that these old beers were boiled down to get the right gravity rather than a specific volume. . . . often 2 or 3 hours. . . .

Hops . . Stick with traditional . Goldings/ Fuggle . . . If you do go for a long boil then you can always consider target as a bittering addition only . . . Apart from bitterness there is no hop character so no hops in after 60 minutes to go . . .Normally you wouldn't want to aim for a BU:GU ratio of 0.75 . . . but with these big beers which are going to be stored for 2 or 3 years then you can go as high as 1.25 so aiming for a bitterness of 125 to 130 (My Effin RIS was 136)

Enough info??
 
Cheers Aleman - thats great thanks a lot :thumb: So brewed for 2012 then :lol:
My tun is around 32litres so will have to scale down a little - would a sugar addition be OK to up the gravity or would that be a strict no? I have most of the bits I need in stock - what yeast would you reccomend though?

Cheers for the help.
 
Another quick question :roll: I have a couple kg of brown malt that i`ve never got around to using would it be OK to use some of this as well?

:whistle:
 
Hmmm ... that's got me thinking :D Been meaning to do a RIS for sometime and Aleman's figures look rather good there. The only reason I haven't done one before is that I hate waiting!

I've just put 13.2kg grain into my 50 ltr tun and couldn't get more than 35 ltrs of water in... but should work with a decent sparge (rather than my partigyle).

Good luck Rick ... hope it goes really well ... :cheers:
 
Sorry forgot to include the sugar . . . yeah it would be useful. . . it helps to bring the FG down to a sensible level. . . . up to 10% is fine . . . in these big really flavourful beers you an get away with more than you can in the weaker pale ales. Don't fear the sugar :) . . . As I did say in the original reply, if you are short on extract from the mash you can always supplement it with LME or DME.

Brown malt is a good addition as well . . . use it to replace some of the chocolate/amber malts, but be careful some brewers have reported that it is not as fermentable as expected and leaves you with a less attenuative wort than expected/wanted, in a beer of this gravity that is something that you really don't want to happen if you can help it.

Yeast wise . . . this beer gets all its flavour from the malt and hops, and yeast character is not all that important . . . Nottingham is a super choice for this . . . 3 or 4 packets in 20L is not 'too much' . . . or brew a 1.040 small beer and pitch on the yeast cake . . . allow plenty of space in the FV though as Imperial ferments can be rather enthusiastic :whistle:
 
Looks a nice recipe that rick.
The ony thing I would point out is that when I did my RIS my efficiency was quite down.....around 68% IIRC. I'd worked on 75% as usual (my actual efficiency is about 80-82%) and as a result I was a fair few gravity points short.
I remember looking at Almemans Promash sheet for his brew and his efficiency was set at 60 or 65% I think.
I guess the hefty specialst malt bill doesn't convert as well :wha:
Aleman??? :lol:

Have a good brew rick :thumb:
 
Just been thinking, the low efficiency is due to the low volume of wort collected versus the size of grain bill.
Once you have your boil volume, there will still be loads of sugar left behind. Commercially they were probably sparged a bit more than we would do as homebrewers and then boiled down as Aleman said.
 

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