Beer Tasting: The Celtic Elk Stout

My Irish stout ("The Celtic Elk Stout") has been on tap for a few weeks now, and is definitely ready for a tasting.

• The Basics
• Original gravity = 1.048; final gravity = 1.018; abv = 3.9%; estimated IBU = 36
• Aroma
• Strong and ever-so-slightly sweet coffee aroma, with a roasty chocolate note behind it. 
• Appearance
• Clear as near as I can tell, but pitch-black in the glass. When you hold it up to the light, you can glimpse a dark brown color with a red tinge to it, but that's only if you have the thinnest sliver of beer against strong backlight. The head is dark tan and thin, with a fine texture and good retention.
• Flavor
• This beer has a very coffee-like quality, in terms of being quite roasty in flavor with a bitter finish (more from the barley than the hops, though, in terms of the bitterness character).
• Mouthfeel
• The stout has a moderate-low body, with moderate and fine carbonation. It is a pretty dry (but not puckering) beer, as befits the style. 
• Would I brew this again?
• This beer is a darned good Irish stout, and I'd definitely use the recipe again in the future. It hits exactly what I was looking for, in terms of dryness, drinkability, fairly low alcohol content, and intangibles. I like this one!
• Overall
• 9.5/10

And a label!

On a whim, I drafted a beer label in honor of the original "Celtic Elk," Megaloceras. It brings in one of the "Irish elk" skulls along with a Celtic knot. Maybe it will make a good t-shirt someday?

The Celtic Elk Stout Kegged

I kegged The Celtic Elk Stout tonight, with 5 gallons as the end product. The final gravity was 1.018, down from 1.048, for 3.9% abv. Flavor is pretty nice so far!

The Celtic Elk Stout

Dark grains set aside to add during vorlauf

As we inch closer to the dark days of winter, I'm in a mood for some good, robust beers. Robust for me usually doesn't require high alcohol content (although it can)--I think of it more as something with a strong malt backbone, prominent flavors from specialty grains, and perhaps some nice yeast character. Following on the heels of last weekend's 80 shilling ale, tonight I brewed an Irish stout.

The recipe is based on Gordon Strong's recipe from Modern Homebrew Recipes, with some modifications for the grains and hops I had on hand. My goal with this batch is to get a robust beer, but one that clocks in lower on the alcohol side of things (in this case, 4.3%). The beer is actually a bit outside the 2015 BJCP guidelines for the Irish Stout style, in terms of original gravity and color. The latter point surprised me--the BJCP lists 40 SRM as the maximum for this style, and to me it seems a little silly to set an arbitrary maximum for a beer explicitly described as "black" in the style guidelines.

The name for the batch stems from the famed Irish Elk, Megaloceras. Because why not?

The Celtic Elk Stout

• 6.5 lbs. Maris Otter malt (Thomas Fawcett)
• 1.25 lbs. flaked barley
• 0.25 lbs. Carapils malt
• 0.75 lbs. 80° crystal malt (added at vorlauf)
• 0.67 lbs. roasted barley (Simpsons, 550 SRM, added at vorlauf)
• 0.5 lbs. pale chocolate malt (225 SRM, added at vorlauf)
• 0.375 lbs de-bittered black malt (Dingemans, added at vorlauf)
• 1 oz. Newport hops pellets, 40 minute boil (10.7% alpha, 6.4% beta)
• 1 Whirlfloc pellet (10 minute boil)
• 1 pkg. Irish Ale Yeast (WLP004), prepared 12 hours in advance in 1 L starter

Procedure

• I mashed in with the Maris Otter, flaked barley, and Carapils, using 4.1 gallons of water at 168°. The mash stabilized at 157°, and was down to 153.5° after 40 minutes. [note: I did not use 5.2 pH stabilizer in this batch]
• I added the dark grains (cystal malt, roasted barley, chocolate malt, and black malt) along with 0.75 gallons of water at 160°, let the mash sit for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and collected 3 gallons of wort.
• I then added 4 gallons of water at 180°, which raised the mash temperature to 164°. I let the mash sit for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and collected the rest of the wort.
• All told, I collected 6.75 gallons of wort at a gravity of 1.040. This works out to ~73% efficiency, right where I had been hoping.
• I brought the wort to a boil, and added the hops and Whirlfloc at the appropriate times (aiming for 40 minute boil and 10 minute boil, respectively). After 60 minutes of boiling, I turned off the flame and chilled the wort down to 78° using my copper coil chiller.
• I transferred ~5.5 gallons of wort into the fermenter and pitched the yeast in its starter. I plan to let the temperature slowly equilibrate with the fermentation chamber overnight.
• The beer had a starting gravity of 1.048, exactly where expected. It was brewed on Saturday, November 21, 2015.