“Father and Son Stout” – A Family Brew Day

The Boy has helped me brew on several occasions but this was “his” batch. Last month we went to visit the local brewing sage, Mike O’Brien and the Boy bought the ingredients for a batch of stout, his favorite style. He’s had to work two part-time jobs to make ends meet so we haven’t found time to brew this batch until yesterday.

In case anyone is following along at home, this is a rough approximation of the recipe we used. The bags of specialty grains were unmarked.

11.5 oz Crystal Malt
8.5 oz Chocolate Malt
7.5 oz Black Patent
9 lbs of Maris Otter
2 oz of Amarillo hops
Danstar – Windsor dry yeast

We typed this all into our BSOC (Brewing Software Of Choice – in my case it happens to be BeerAlchemy, a nifty Mac-based application) just to make sure we weren’t totally out of whack. Ideally, this is on track to be an American Stout.

We brewed indoors because my propane tank is empty… and because I didn’t relish sitting outside. The “big” burner on our new stove threw off a stunning amount of heat, nearly as much as the outside burner so the brew day wasn’t noticeably longer than usual. Cooling was a bit of a drag but as, 20MintueJan’s photo yesterday showed, it’s amazing what a pile of snow accomplishes.

Original gravity was 1.052 which wasn’t bad especially given that we batch sparged and that we had a bit of a calculation error with mashing temperatures. By bedtime, the carboy was gurgling happily and this morning we found the lid had been popped.

The great thing about brewing with friends or family is that there are stretches of time when nothing particularly is happening (during the mash, during the boil…) when it’s a natural, low-pressure time to chat. It was great to catch up a bit with the Boy and I hope this turns into a habit, an activity we can do together.