Homebrew Recipe: Black Gold Imperial Stout

Black Gold Imperial Stout

Brewing Premise: I seem to get involved in lots of trades and swaps involving the exchange of beer for other goods and services. I've even traded homebrew for help replacing brake pads in the past –  but this particular beer was crafted to trade for some old homebrew equipment! A co-worker of mine used to be into homebrewing and has since had multiple children and taken up other hobbies. He still loves craft beer and a good homebrew so I asked him what he’d like in exchange for all his old equipment. He wanted an imperial stout that wasn't over the top on the alcohol. As a new All-Grain Brewer I couldn't wait to figure this one out. I only had a 5 gallon mash tun at the time so the recipe is tweaked a little to help me get the ABV up since my tun wasn't large enough to hold all the required grains.

Recipe

Grain Bill

9 lbs 2 Row Pale

1/2 lb Chocolate Malt

1/2 lb Roasted Barley

1/2 lb Crystal 60

1/2 lb Biscuit Malt

1/4 lb Black Patent

3 lbs DME

Hop Schedule

(60) 2 oz Chinook

(15) 1 oz Cascade

Yeast – 2 packets SafeAle US-05

Boil Volume – 6.5 gallons

Fermentor Volume – 5.25 gallons

ABV - ~7.5-8% I don’t have the calcs to prove it but it was in this range

Procedure: Mashed @ 154 F with 3.5 gallons of water, which was just about to the brim. Sparged with 170 F water, which had to be topped off several times due to the large amount of grain in my tiny mash tun. Brought to a boil after collecting wort and added all of the DME. Followed hop schedule and cooled down with wort chiller.

Fermentation/ Packaging – Fermented in primary for about 3 weeks and then let sit in secondary for another month. Bottled using 5/8 cups sugar dissolved into 2 cups water.

Tasting Notes – Pitch black and full of all the things an imperial stout should have. Roasty chocolate and coffee come through as expected. The beer pours very thick and heavy, which gives it a sturdy mouthfeel without becoming syrupy. 

Improvement/Tweak Ideas – This was my first imperial stout and clearly I’d want to make this again with a standard 10 gallon mash tun so I can eliminate the DME. I would probably add about 5-6 pounds more 2 row to compensate for that and I would get the sparge temperature up higher than I managed. Throwing in some Carafa or some Belgian Special B would also be a nice addition or swap out for one of the dark grains in the recipe.