Stonkin' stout

As I said yesterday, I'm going to be away for 5 weeks or so. This meant that there was the possibility of a fermentor standing idle whilst I'm away, a chronic waste of brewing time if ever there was one. But what could I brew that would make the most of the solitude and the silence? I decided it was time to tackle an Imperial Stout.

Imperial Stouts were originally brewed for the Russian market in the 18th Century. The route from the UK to the Baltic States travelled through arctic conditions and so the beer had to be heavily alcoholic to prevent it freezing. And of course high alcohol means strong flavours to match. My version is a bit of a mish-mash of recipes (more of a Colonial Stout?) but will hopefully stay true to the ideas of the original:-

In the mash tun (mashed for an hour at 66 degrees)
1kg amber malt
1/2 kg roast barley
1/2 kg black malt
1/2 kg chocolate malt
400g brown malt
250g oats

In the boil
1kg pale malt extract
1kg malt extract
1kg wheat malt extract
About 3/4 kg malt extract added slowly throughout the boil

Dissolved in water & added to the fermentor after the original boil (couldn't fit all the fermentables in!)

1/4 kg malt extract (ie the rest of the bag)
1kg pale malt extract
500g brown sugar
850g treacle

Hop schedule
25g Northern Brewer, 20g Galaxy, 25g Fuggles - 60 mins
25g Fuggles, 5g Galaxy - 30 mins
25g Galaxy - 1 min

Extras
1/2 l cold-pressed coffee, 28g liquorice root - 5 mins

Yeast
2 packs Safale S-04 (English ale)

This gave 26litres of a dark black liquid with an original gravity of 1.125. If this ferments out fully the beer will be approximately 15%  by volume, however the odds are the yeast will give up at some point and I'll get a final gravity of 1.030 or so, giving a brew of around 11%. If the gravity is higher than that by the time that I'm back then I'll chuck in some champagne yeast.

It's a lot of ingredients -

(Note the liver-healthy drink - but why is it that lemon floats but lime sinks?)

The dark malts meant that it looked more like I was emptying my sump than brewing beer, and it got everywhere. Very noticeable too.

Hmm - roasty. Yes that's a beer in my hand. It's been scientifically proven that brewing beer without a homebrew close to hand produces an inferior batch*. Fortunately I had some bottles of my 'low strength' Saison Du Noir to get me through - it's almost like it was meant to be.

All I need to do now is wait. Hopefully the yeast will slowly nibble its way through the sugars whilst I'm away, then I'll leave it in secondaries for a couple of weeks to finish off and once it's bottled it will get left at the bottom of the pile to mature for 6 months or so.  

* M Shaw vs Naysayers, 'LifeAtTheBluntEnd', May 2012