Last Thursday I brewed this years batch of The Merchant of the Devil , my own Imperial Stout. The brew went very well and despite suffering the only stuck mash I have ever had with my current mash tun set up I achieved an O.G of 1111, and was able to make a small beer of O.G. 1056 from the late runnings. That evening I celebrated by opening the bottle of Harvey’s Imperial Extra Double Stout that Greig had brought me back from Sussex. Let me tell you this beer pushed my buttons, if only I had some cases of it.Harvey’s Imperial Extra Double Stout 2003 (9%abv)
2003 vintage, Pours a viscous pitch black with the faintest disappearing wispy head. The aroma features a stunning cornucopia of aromas. Dried fruit, raisins, prunes, figs, a distinctive sour fruit character reminiscent of the Rodenbach beers, Passionfruit, iron and a touch of saltyness blended a delicious funky brettanomyces character. Complex to say the least. On the palate there is luscious aged malt, a surprising level of body considering the sour/brett character in the nose, a salty note, some passionfruit and iron, a suggestion of sourness, roasty malt notes and a hint of autolysised yeast. Outstanding beer, my beer of the year in fact.
5 comments:
greetings from Italy, good luck
Marlow
a 'small' beer of 1056!!!
i recently bought myself two 5L jars for the purpose of a few 'brett' experiments (referencing your other post), after discussions with brendan about it. one jar can have 5L of London porter with some deliberately introduced brett (maybe orval dregs) and another jar can wait for my planned old ale for the same treatment. the rest of both brews will be bottled as normal.
Yeah just a trifling little session stout with very uncharacteristically for me cascade hops late in the boil.
The jar method sounds good. Just be careful with your bottling. Are you going to have a specific set of bottling kit for the brett beers? I would .
yeah not too sure yet how i'm going to manage the bottling side of things. might have to employ some of the methods in some of my earliest home brewing books (papazian) using just a length of plastic tubing and essentially syphoning it out. that way i can keep that piece of tubing completely separate from any other gear.
anyway not too sure when this will all happen. the porter started at 1057 and 13 days later is still only at 1019. it could be the kilo of brown malt i used in it, could be the mash temp being too high....but i'm gonna wait a bit and see if it inches down closer to my normal finishing gravities before bottling/jarring. and plus, last time i looked in regionals, they were out of orval anyway.
I think Chris mentioned they did have Orval in the other day.
Brett will take care of that gravity.
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