Queen's Park Stout

It was meant to be a routine prisoner transfer.

Recipe

Batch size: 5 gallons Target gravity: 1.050

Ingredients:

• 6.5 lb 2-row malt
• 3 lb pale liquid malt extract
• 1 lb roasted barley
• 1 lb barley flakes

Hops:

• 1 oz Zeus (16% AA) @ 60 minutes

Yeast: Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale)

Brew Day

March 7, 2009: I did this using Death Brewer's stovetop partial mash instructions: paint strainer bag + big ol' pot. But in a nutshell, I got decent enough gravity out of the stuff I mashed -- 4.5 gallons @ 1.047 -- that I thought "What the hell?" and skipped the LME entirely. Woot! Mash temp was 154 F, btw.

After the boil, the gravity was 1.052. How can you argue with that? 4 gallons into the fermenter.

(In retrospect, I think the recipe (which came from the LHBS must be assuming some pretty awful efficiency. StrangeBrew figures it's 67% efficiency...and if that got me my target gravity, or at least nearly so, I think 3 pounds of LME is just overkill.)

Bottling

March 23, 2009: Final gravity 1.011, so 5.5% ABV. Stick a fork in me, it's done. 12.5 litres...not great, but not bad either.

Tasting

April 19, 2009: Just gets nicer and nicer! Lovely big huge head, though it goes away in a few minutes. Much less yeast at the bottom compared to the B-Line Bitter. Creamy and noticeably bitter, but still nice. I don't really get roasty, which I keep reading is what you're Meant To Taste(tm) in a stout...

June, 2009: Next-to-last bottle opened with my dad. Still wonderful. It's possible that the harshness (which was fairly mild (yes, contrasting adjectives) to start with) has mellowed over time.