BCBS Recipe Book – Is Sean Irish? (Irish Stout)

Returning to our series on Throwdown! 2023 winning recipes, let’s look at one of the flight winner’s, Chuck Beardslee’s Learn To Homebrew Day (L2HB Day) inspired Irish Stout. This flight was developed from the common wort provided by MBW for our L2HB Club Brew. Sean whipped up a simple wort of 2-row and a handful of Vienna for color. (Sean loves his Vienna malt!) From there, brewers were left to their own creativity.

What did Chuck do? He went to a dark place. A dark, roasty, delicious place. Check it out!

Is Sean Irish?

OG 1.055    FG 1.010    ABV 6%    SRM 32    IBU 40    

Grains

10.0 lbs  British pale malt (see note below on Base Grain)

2.00 lbs  Flaked Barley

0.50 lbs  Roasted Barley 300L (see note below on Roast Grain)

0.25 lbs  Chocolate Wheat Malt 350-400L

0.25 lbs  Black Malt 500L

Base Grain – I used the Municipal Wort which was mostly 2-row with a bit of Vienna or light crystal malt. You ideally want this beer dry, so you should use an English pale malt that is 3L or lower. You could do a 75/25 split of Pilsner and Maris Otter to get high fermentable sugars and a little interest from the base malts.

Roast Grain – I would have used a 500L Roasted Barley if I could have, but I opted to use three different grains at different colors to create a more interesting profile of roast, coffee and chocolate flavors. If you want a more pronounced stout profile with deep roast, order the 500L Roasted Barley.

Mash Schedule

I didn’t do this step since we got the wort from Municipal, but if doing all-grain, I would do a 40 minute rest at 144F and then a 20-30 minute rest at 160F. If you prefer to do a single mash temp, keep it on the low side = 146-148F.

Boil and Hop Schedule

60 minute boil

@60 add 2oz of East Kent Golding for about 40 IBU

If 2oz of EKG @60 looks like it will push your IBU too high, back out 0.25oz and add that @15.

Yeast, Fermentation and Packaging

Pitch a fresh amount of Irish Ale yeast (White Labs WLP004 or Wyeast 1084) at 65F. Hold there for 4-6 days and then slowly increase the temperature to 71-72F for the final week of fermentation to clean up diacetyl. This beer should have a lower carbonation level from standard, so 1.5-2 vol CO2 is a good target.

Other Notes

This is almost straight out of Brewing Classic Styles – Dry Stout pg 163-165. I followed the steeping grains process since we were using Municipal wort.