Homebrew: Ivanovich Imperial Stout

Break out the brew kettle, today was a beautiful day for making beer. Bob an I brewed our first imperial stout and I couldn’t think of a more fitting day to brew it. The style of the imperial stout originated in England. Brewers in the UK exported this style to Russia for the Russian Imperial Court. It just seemed right to make a Russian style beer the day after we got hit with a Russian named hurricaine. So I proudly introduce to you the Son of Ivan; Ivanovich Imperial Stout.For this batch we used the base recipe for Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout from the North American Clone Brews book. I had to make several substitutions because of some ordering snafu’s. The original recipe calls for kiln coffee malt but I wasn’t able to get it.Vital StatisticsYeild: 5 GallonsFinal Gravity: 1.028SRM: 59.6Original Gravity: 1.089IBU: 57.4Alcohol by Volume: 8.1Brew Date: 2004-09-19Secondary Date:Bottle Date: 2004-12-28Export from PromashIngredients

• 1 lb. Roasted Barley
• 1 lb. Chocolate Malt
• 1 lb. Extra Dark Crystal
• 4 oz. Black Patent
• 1 oz. Northern Brewer 10% alpha
• 1 oz. Fuggles 4.4% alpha
• 9 lbs. Muntons Light DME
• 1 Pack Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

Directions

• Steep the grains for 45 minutes at 150 degrees.
• Add the DME and bring to boil.
• Once boiling add Northern Brewer pellets, I added perhaps 6 pellets less than one ounce.
• Boil 60 minutes then add 4.4 AAU Fuggles pellets
• Boil 30 more minutes then cool to 70 degrees
• Add water to cover boil-off, I added 1 Gallon
• pitch the yeast.

I made a yeast starter Thursday evening here is the log for that:

• Let yeast warm to room temp and smacked the activator pack.
• After about an hour I boiled 3/4 cup light DME for 15 minutes and cooled it.
• Once it was cool blast with oxygen and added the yeast.

The starter wasn’t that active when I pitched it, but I did have a fair amount of bubbling in the fermenter around 6 hours later so I still had a pretty quick start.