chromosphere

On last Friday, Mr C (who can be often found lurking in the background of SSG’s Wake Up it’s Tuesday) and SSG herself came over. The girls amused themselves watching DVDs – we made far more use of our time and produced a stonking Imperial Russian Stout, based on adm’s “Crazy Ivan“. So this one got the name “Mad Boris”.

The recipe is as follows (loosely adapted, but reduced to allow it to actually fit in the mashtun still leaving room for some water…):

6kg Maris Otter
375g Amber Malt
375g Light Crystal (60L)
375g Chocolate
375g Wheat Malt
375g Roast Barley
200g Dark Brown Sugar

Hops (90min boil):
100g East Kent Goldings (5.7%)
20g Target (9%)

Yeast:
2x Safale 04

We sparged for 32L and then boiled up without topup and after run off (and a fair bit of loss to the hops!) we had almost exactly 4 gallons in the fermenter at 1090. (and “as black as a night with no moon” ) I was tempted to dilute down to 1080-85, but in the end decided to just let it get on with it and pitched as was.

On Sunday morning, the yeast had overflowed in the fridge, and was leaking all over the kitchen floor. And so, into the bath it went and chucked a load more foam everywhere while the yeast got on with it. At last – calm enough to get the airlock on and not foam through – farting every second or so.

Now only four days after pitching, it looks like we’re done. A quick refractometer check and it looks like it’s down at 1023, but I need to recheck with the hydro in a day or two’s time. The airlock is still gluging occassionally. I’ll let it sit for a good week or two anyhow, and may go to secondary for this (though given the long maturation time, I’m sure it’ll be fine straight into the bottle).