Trying to replicate one of my favourite beers ever.

If you've been following my blog you might remember a beer I mentioned in a post a while back, the Belgian Summer Stout by Boatrocker, a Belgian Chocolate Stout with added raspberries. It is in my top five, or maybe even top two, favourite beers ever (probably tied with Garage Project's La Calavera Catrina)

I loved this beer so much that I actually emailed Boatrocker asking them when they were planning on making it again, as it was a seasonal beer. The response I got was:

"no"

Well, the response wasn't just no, but the whole truth was so much worse. You see, it was an accident and "not easily repeatable".

From Tim at Boatrocker:

"Basically it was a portion of the base imperial stout used to make Ramjet (about 9% abv), put into an ex-wine barrel with fresh raspberries for a few months. The high abv of the stout provided a very fresh and vibrant extraction of Raspberry character. When we racked it out of the barrel the Raspberry character was way too intense, so we decided to blend it down and make it into something more sessionable. We blended it heavily with a batch of dry (low FG) Belgian Chocolate Stout (less than 5% abv). The flavours combined very well, as it turned out Chocolate and Raspberry compliment each other nicely. But it would be exceptionally hard to recreate the same profile."

Ramjet is an incredible barrel aged imperial stout by Boatrocker that, if you haven't tried, you should definitely try.

Well there's no point in crying over spilt beer, I'm a home-brewer, a fucking home-brewer! We can do anything! I'm not going to let this shit stand!

I'll make it myself, I'll create this beautiful, delicious mistake at home!

Credit to contreras19 for the Invader Zim

So I made an imperial stout, around 8% ABV to soak the berries in. The brew day went well, Nothing really to report. My dad was over from NZ and so he came over to help out, along with my friend Jared. It was based on an old recipe of mine, the 'Nathan Fillion' Imperial Stout. It turned out very well and so I figured it would be best to be safe rather than try something new, especially considering how crazy this process is going to be.

So next step is to add berries. I want to add a lot too, I've made a beer with raspberries before and I wasn't happy with amount (the beer was great, just not raspberry enough). So for 20L of beer, I added 1.5kgs of frozen raspberries which I made sure weren't hepatitis A berries.

So first thing was to bring them to just under a simmer for about 10 - 20 minutes. This kills off any bacteria living on the berries that could possibly infect the beer.

Once it had sat for about 10 minutes and was pretty warm, I transferred it into my flask and put it back on the heat. I don't have a funnel so this was going to be the easiest way to get it into my new Better Bottle.

Success with no red stains anywhere!

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to add wood chips soaked in Pinot Noir, this is really the last step to making it an exact replica, but I might do it in the next few weeks. I don't want it to end up being overly oaky, I feel like it could possibly kill the refreshing-ness pretty easily.

And there it is, after a few days of sitting in my fermentation chamber it's starting to show some signs that the berries are fermenting. Will leave it for a few weeks in the fridge then I might move it somewhere dark so I can make that Belgian Chocolate Stout to blend it with!

P.S. The other beer I mentioned earlier, Garage Project's La Calavera Catrina, guess what? They don't make that any more either. 

EDIT: They do make it! But it's just not as good as it used to be...

Stay tuned.

Collaborating with Nathan Fillion.

Killing me softly with your cancellation...

Nathan Fillion is a great guy, some might say the best guy, and i wish he was my friend... I wished so much that the next beer that i brewed was an Imperial Stout that i decided to name after him. I present to you:

THE NATHAN FILLION IMPERIAL STOUT.

Or the 'If You Haven't Watched Firefly Go And Watch It Now'

This brew was also a good occasion because it was my first time doing an all grain with other homebrewing friends: James and Alex. There was really no way this beer could go wrong considering the circumstances. Me and James decided upon a recipe a few nights before, this is how it went:

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Nathan Fillion

Imperial Stout:

Grain:

Joe White Pale Malt   - 6kg    (13.2 lbs)

Crystal 60                  - 600g  (1.3 lbs)

Brown Sugar              - 300g  (0.6 lbs)

Chocolate Malt           - 200g  (0.4 lbs)

Crystal 120                - 150g  (0.3 lbs)

Roasted Barley          - 150g   (0.3 lbs)

Black                         - 100g  (0.2 lbs)

Hops:

40g of Columbus at 60mins  (1.4 Oz)

30g Fuggles at 30mins          (1 Oz)

Yeast:

Reused S-04 from a previous batch.

0--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------0

I basically wanted the biggest, most epic beer that you could have. It was planned to be a 8 or 9% ABV (alcohol by volume) beer. That's why we put 7kg of grain, and 300g of brown sugar into it to make 15 litres.

You may be thinking.

To put that in perspective, i put 6kg of grain into my Pale Ale to make 30 litres of beer, which also had a much lower alcohol %, meaning even less grain was needed.

I'd been obsessing over big dark beers for a while before this was brewed, the 8wired iStout was one of my favourites, but mostly any beer that traded freshness/hoppy-ness for big malty/black fruit/coffee goodness was my friend.

Brew day was a breeze. We drank a lot of beer, made a lot of sandwiches, and had a lot of laughs. It made me realise how much it helped to have people around who also knew what they were doing, so that you didn't have to do all the worrying. If you are finding brewing is getting boring or you are losing motivation, then definitely find some people to brew with. Considering how much time is spent waiting on brew day, it makes it a very social activity.

The only trouble with it was that i forgot to take many pictures...

One of the things that i found most interesting when i got into all grain brewing was that in dark beers, the majority of malt (by far) is base malt (Pale Malt). As you can see in the picture above, and in the recipe i posted, there is only a very minimal amount of dark roasted malts being used, even in a beer recipe that is considered really fucking dark!

If you look hard enough, you can see your soul.

Definitely the best photo of the day.

The original plan was to put only 150g of brown sugar in, but i like to improvise while brewing so i upped it to 300g, upping the alcohol content and adding some more alcohol warmth, for that cold Melbourne winter coming up. We figured that why not go all out on a beer that is meant to be served to Imperial Russian Czars?

This picture is titled "Catherine II - as drunk as a turtle"

We also put more hops than we'd planned, and probably put about 45-50g of bittering hops, and about 40g of flavouring hops, but that's something everyone does... Right? 

TASTING NOTES:

NATHAN FILLION.

Best beer i've made yet for sure, only wish you guys could all taste it... If you know how to brew, i suggest trying it, and then commenting and telling me how it went.

Cheers!