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| Achill's Island Stout |
Achill's Island Stout is my well establishes stout, based on Pale malt, with 8-10% flaked barley, 10-12% of roasted grains (Chocolate and Roasted). I use a high mash (67ºC), and ferment with S-04 to get a high body (higher than style requirements) and a pleasant fruitiness, to smoothen roastiness of black malts.
Again I brewed a good stout, I don't like Guinness draught as I feel it too watery, so I exagerate with body and flaked rains to have a creamy beer. Roastiness, burnt, coffe and chocolate are presents, but it's very pleasant to drink.
Judges don't like all this body, so I scored just 35,5 (on 50) because my Dry Stout was 'not enough dry'. Well, not bad. I'll drink it and enjoy anyway
I hate astringency in beer (as a noob, I had bad results on black beer, due to inexperience), so there are several points were I operate differently from pale/amber beers, to prevent tannin extraction:
Mash: ph goes down to 5,5 thanks to black malts, I adjusted water/grains ratio to 3l/1kg
Sparge: 70ºC, it means less efficiency, but temperature far from the risk of tannin extraction. Sparge ph is acidified under 6. Less water than usual, I prefer add water later, then wort with low density but tannins inside.
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| based on Mr. Guinness idea |
I used a similar procedure for the Foreign Stout, slightly different, with 24% Munich, 3% Crystal, 3% flaked barley and 8% Roasted plus Chocolate. I boiled 90 minutes, half an hour more than the Dry, then I fermented it with US-05, for a bigger attenuation.
After a month in the bottle, it's nothing special: coffe, chocolate, liquorice but also toffe and caramel, not well combined togheter. Roastiness is too harsh, with a kind of charcoal aftertaste and a bit of spicyness and astringency. 40 IBU, but the only detected bitterness comes from burnt grains.
It's a deep dark black beer, a cappuccino head, creamy, medium body and a bit of alcohol warming. But very burnt, and caramel like flavors are non well combined with roastiness.
Next time I'll get rid of crystal and munich, and use some brown malt.
