Toad Spit Stout
Posted: January 28th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Homebrew, Stout | 2 Comments »
Irish Stout at 5 hours
I chose this one because it called for some specialty grains, and since I was showing Megan about different types of beer, this made a good example of steeping grains to add to malt extract syrup. The key to steeping is to keep the temperature consistent, which is hard to do on a standard range where you have either 1-10 as your heat settings or lo-hi. Fortunately, Kathy got an instant-read thermometer from my brother and his fiancee for Christmas! If you don’t have one of these, get one as soon as you can. Not only are they great for checking the temperature on your lamb roast, but they’re awesome for keeping the temperature consistent for brewing.
I knew it might be asking for trouble to brew this in my 3 gallon pot, but since we were making the Grand Cru in the 5 gallon pot, I didn’t really have a choice. All was going well, the crystal, patent, and roasted barley had all steeped just fine, and I had a nice boil going with the hops (Nugget had to replace Northern Brewer). Sounds like a perfect time to go clean out the ol’ carboy and sanitize it, right?
The Irish Stout begins to ferment for real.
I was excited that I got to use some Willamette hops from my own back yard for the finishing hops. It’s amazing how much hops one plant can produce! And I discovered that the strange baggie of white powder in with my brewing supplies was indeed gypsum, which is good because I’d forgotten to buy any. With the boil completed and the carboy ready to go, we sparged and poured the brew into the carboy. Wow is that a black, black brew.
After a week, the stout has gone from fermenting vigorously to bubbling lightly. I think it’ll be ready to bottle in a couple of days, as soon as a little more sign of fermentation has gone. As I mentioned in the Grand Cru post, I don’t use a hydrometer. My method is to watch the frequency with which the fermentation lock bubbles. Usually, a beer is done fermenting when the lock bubbles up once every minute or so. Leave it too long and you’ll have a flat beer (unless you keg it).
Maybe I’ll take photos of the bottling process…
Hey there I just finished up brewing a batch of this and my beer stopped fermenting after only one day of bubbles furiously blowing out of the airlock I am very curious if my beer is done? or if I need more yeast or something. any ideas?
No more foam, no bubbles in the airlock, nothing? It seems highly unlikely that it’s done fermenting after only one day, since this beer usually takes about a week to ferment (unless you added far more yeast than was meant for 5 gallons of beer).
Have you checked the specific gravity with a hydrometer? Try that now and again toward the evening and see if the specific gravity changes at all (if it changes, it’s still fermenting). It’s possible that you have a stuck fermentation. I’ve never had that happen, but here’s some info on reasons for a stuck fermentation.
Good luck!