How to Brew - Irish Stout Recipe

Mash

This stout recipe is a partial mash recipe that gets the majority of its fermentables from Liquid Malt Extract. To start, fill a brew kettle with 3-4 gallons of water and apply high heat with a floor burner. Place your steeping grains in a mesh straining bag and submerge it in the water but make sure it does not rest on the bottom of the brew pot. Bring the water to a boil but remove the grain sack at 155 °F. Some brewers would leave the sack in for 30 minutes at 155 for partial extraction of sugars from the steeping grains but this step is not needed if you are short on time and in a hurry.

Boil

Once a boil is reached, turn the heat off and add Liquid Malt Extract. Stir vigorously while adding the extract to ensure everything is dissolved and nothing gets stuck to the bottom of the pot before turning the flame back on and bringing it back to a boil. Be careful when nearing boiling because of hot break - a brief period of foaming that can easily cause a huge mess. Stirring the wort and approaching the boil slowly is the easiest way to prevent boil over from hot break. Once the boil is reached, pitch your 30 minute hops and start your timer. This is a great point in the process to have a beer. With 60 seconds left on the timer, pitch your one-minute hops.

Fermentation

When the time is reached, add enough water to get to your batch volume and cool the wort to 65-75°. This can be done rapidly using a wort chiller or you can place the entire pot in an ice bath and wait for it to cool down. When the proper temperature is reached, transfer the wort to your primary fermenting vessel and pitch yeast. We here at the Beverage Factory have found that fermenting at 68° has yielded the best results for this beer. Ferment for 10 days in primary before moving on to conditioning.

From there, you can either bottle it or keg it at that point, which is a process for another post.