Guinness Clone

For my tenth homebrew adventure we pulled off an epic 'trippel' brew day. I got together with my new brew buddies Mike and Scott to brew a trio of beers ready in line with the St. Patrick's Day season. On deck were an Imperial Stout, an Irish Red, and my cobbled together recipe for a Guinness clone. This was also my first time brewing outdoors which turned out to be a blast. It also somehow went by very quickly. All three of us finished in under four hours total. I've never brewed that fast indoors on any of my brews, even the extract batches. The ladies brought us District Taco for lunch so that gave us the energy to push through to the end.

This was also my first experience brewing with a wort chiller. Mike was interested in building is own out of copper tubing so I decided to go in with him and try to make one myself. I was less patient with the turns and ended up kinking the copper piping a little but it worked really really well. It normally takes 30-40 min. to chill 4 gal. of wort from boiling down to 80 degrees. The wort chiller did it in less than 10 minutes. Definitely a worthwhile investment. Just need to find an attachment for my kitchen sink for those indoor brew sessions.

Brew Recipe
Brew Date: 2/24/2013
Style: Irish Stout
Batch Volume: 5 gal.
Type: All grain
Boil Time: 60 min.
Color: 33.5 SRM
Target Bitterness: 33.6 IBU
Target OG: 1.046
Target FG: 1.011

Grist
5.5 lb. Maris Otter
2 lb. Flaked Barley
1 lb. Roasted Barley

3 oz. Acid Malt
2 oz. Willamette Pellet Hops (60 min.)
11g. Danstar Windsor Ale Yeast

Brew Notes

Mash Temp: 155
Mash Efficiency: 78.8%
Pre-Boil Volume: 4.4 gal.
Volume after Water Addition: 4.5 gal.
Measured OG: 1.054
Measured FG: 1.014
ABV: 5.3%
Calories: 179

Started with 5 gal tap water brought to 162F. Saccharification rest at 154°F for 30 min. Used .030" crush again and ended up with very similar brewhouse efficiency as last batch. Very consistent so far. Had to ferment in the small carboy (~4.5 gal.) so gravity ended up being higher than target because there was no volume left to add water.

Update 3/5/13 - Gravity reading today is 1.014. Got a lot of roasty taste and it's pretty good already. Pretty excited about this one.

Update 3/17/13 - Bottled today. Gravity remained 1.014. Yielded 43 bottles. Used 1/2 cup of priming sugar again to hopefully prevent over carbonation. This is especially true with the 43 bottle yield vice a traditional 50 bottles.