Russian Imperial Stout

Earlier in February I had the idea of brewing a 12 gallon split batch of Russian Imperial Stout with the intention of changing a variable or two between the beers. Around that time I stumbled on a facebook page that linked me to a site that was selling 5 gallon whiskey casks on the cheap out of Texas. I have never bought one before but did some pricing and decided to pull the trigger, ended up being around $80 before shipping. In about a week or so later I came home to the Blue Corn Whiskey cask and after doing some more research on how to cure the wood (or soften and expand, sealing the staves), I was ready to brew. I went back and forth on which style I wanted to do before I landed on a Russian Imperial Stout. My goal was the brew the 12 gallon and age 5 gallon in the cask while leaving the remaining 5 gallon as a control and ultimately a beer to blend with the cask beer in case it was too overwhelming. I decided to name this beer after ManBearPig, the rogue creature from another dimension in the South Park series. This recipe was inspired but the Great Divide Yeti so I wanted to pay tribute with another mythological animal.

ManBearPig - Russian Imperial Stout (12 gallon) 10.5% Brewed on 2/18/13

29# Pale 2 row
5# Flaked oats
2# Chocolate Malt
2# Roasted Barley
2# Flaked Rye
2# Flaked Wheat
1.5# Crystal 120L
12 oz Molasses

4 oz Chinook @ 60 min
2 oz Warrior @ 30 min
1 oz Centennial @ 15 min
1 oz Centennial @ 5 min

WLP 090 (White Labs San Diego Super Yeast)

Needless to say, brewday was almost a disaster. My calculations were slightly off and I didn't account for enough room in my mash tun. It wasn't a total failure but I ended up having to cold steep the dark malts separately in order to fit the remaining mash grist into the tun. As a result of last minute changes I ended up with an efficiency that was slightly lower than anticipated. I then added some corn sugar to boost the OG up to 1.099. I was a bit nervous for this move because I feared it would dry out the RIS, leaving the body light and ruining the mouthfeel. The beer fermented thoroughly and

quickly, finishing at 1.020 (10.5% abv) which is about what I was hoping for anyway. The beer was pretty hot for the first few weeks, lots of fusal notes but eventually mellowed out nicely.

Finally, it was time to transfer to the barrel. As it currently stands, the beer is still in the whiskey cask and it has been 10 weeks since brewday. I will be kegging this beer very soon while storing a few in bottles to lay down.

So what happened to the other 5 gallons of control? Well, I gave in an decided I didn't want to just have a big Russian Imperial on tap without any special tweaks. I picked up some cacao nibs and Sumatran (4 oz each) coffee beans and aged the beer on them for about 7-10 days. Of course I did lot's of research on coffee and cacao before doing so and learned that a little bit goes a long way (in many respects), and that it's better to add more for a short amount of time and age longer to mellow the flavors. The added acidity of the roasted beans and cacao contributed to the bitterness already suspended in the beer from the hops. After a few weeks of maturing this beer, I kegged it up and within just a couple weeks it was almost gone. I was very pleased with the outcome but I will definitely do some things differently next time. Mainly the mashing technique/efficiency need to be reworked. Lastly I sent in this beer to the National Homebrew Competition and got my results back just the other day. 'ManBearPig' - Russian Imperial Stout aged on coffee and cacao nibs received a 36 (very good). Not bad after an almost disaster brew day.