Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A new Merchant is born.

I’m sipping on a glass of my latest vintage of Imperial Stout as a reward for having bottled the 2007 vintage. Last years batch of the Merchant was brewed last November, since then it has been sitting in a corny keg in my cellar. Today I primed the 9.4% abv black beast with some sugar and ran her into 50 nip bottles. I think last years vintage is the best yet, roasty, bitter with hints of raisins and chocolate. After 4 or 5 years of brewing this style I think I am starting to get there. Fine tuning a running beer is easy, it takes a hell of a lot longer to perfect an imperial recipe.

3 comments:

Greig McGill said...

Ah yes, but what a worthy lifetime ambition!

Anonymous said...

can the recipe be revealed, or is it subject to brewer's secrecy.

i'm just about ready to bottle my imperial stout too, though there's only 11 litres of it and i don't have that many nip bottles - it'll go in a motley collection of nips, 330ml, 500ml and 640ml bottles i suspect.

last time i took a hydrometer sample it was at 9.5% but i suspect it'll have come down another few points since two weeks ago (it was still at 1034 at that time).

once it is bottled, the long wait begins.

Kieran Haslett-Moore said...

This is the batch that was documented here http://themothersmilk.blogspot.com/2007/12/session-winter-warmers.html

The method followed my double mash method.

Mash #1

-6kg Maris Otter Pale
-2kg German pils

Mash #2

-6kg Maris Otter Pale
-2kg Roast Barley
-500g dark crystal malt
-500g dark chocolate malt

-500g white cane sugar.

151g of NZ Super Alpha hops (11.25 alpha acid) at 60min.

S-04 yeast.