I been wanting to brew a licorice stout for ages, got the idea from a recipe in Sam Calagione's Extreme Brewing book called Dark Star. The sweet acid - glycyrrhizin - in the licorice is supposed to be a good counterbalance to the bitterness of the roast barley. I used up a few odds and ends I had left over from previous brews though which hopefully will work ok. The ingredients and recipe as we made it are as follows:
Pre-boil
6 gallons water
12 oz chocolate malt
12 oz black malt
8oz roasted barley
6oz crushed crystal malt
7oz cara-pils crushed malt
2 teaspoons gypsum
Boil
4.4lb light spray dry malt
4.4lb dark spray dry malt
1 oz licorice root bashed up with a hammer
2oz saaz hops
1 teaspoon of Irish moss
500g dark sugar
1 oz Hallertau hops
Fermentation
Windsor ale yeast
We put the pre-boil ingredients into a grain bag and heated up the water with gypsum and grain bag in it. At 77degC the grain bag was lifted out and drained for 2 minutes without squeezing. When the wort was boiling the spray malt extract was added and stirred in. After 5 min further boiling, I removed 1/4 gallon for the yeast starter and put it into a one gallon demijohn to cool. The saaz hops were added. 40 minutes later the sugar was added with the bashed licorice root and the Irish moss. 10 minutes later 1/2 oz of the Hallertau hops were added. 10 minutes later the other 1/2 oz was added and the heat turned off.
When the yeast starter wort was cool the yeast was added and given a good shake.
When the main wort was cool enough to handle, this was transferred to a 6 gallon plastic brew bucket via a straining bag. When that was cool, the frothy yeast starter was added and an airlock fitted. A little cooled boiled water was added to bring the level upto 20 litres. Then I stared at it for a while waiting for something to happen.....
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