Lang's Lil' Smokey

For brew #2 in Minneapolis I talked to a buddy (this guy: Adam) and asked if there was anything that he thought I should brew up. Without much hesitation he said a Smoked Stout. Okay...

So I did a bit of research on the interweb and found a fairly nice recipe that looked pretty tasty. I wanted something on the lightly bitter side with a nice chocolate tone and super intense smoke. Minneapolis Town Hall made a Smoked Porter that I tried at the Great Taste of the Midwest and it was intense. Like REALLY intense and honestly at the time it wasn't my favorite. Once they tapped it at the brew pub it had mellowed slightly and was much more drinkable. According to the waitress their beer was aged about 6 months before they even thought it was drinkable. I have no idea whether or not this was before or after the GTotM.

So it turns out the smoked malt used was Apple wood smoked. Thank the lord Midwest Brewing had some in stock! The smell was super intense and I know it's going to be perfect for this brew. Hopefully this turns out stout-y enough. The original recipe calls for Northern Brewer hops and unfortunately they are fresh out. So I decided since I'm just using it for bittering I'll toss in Warrior instead. I also had a bit of help brewing this one as you can see to the picture on the right.

And the name is probably fairly self explanatory. It's named after my friend pictured at the start of the post.

Recipe -
--------------------

Batch Size - 5 Gallons
Boil Size - 6.4 Gallons
Total Grains - 15.75lbs
Anticipated OG - 1.067
Boil Time - 60 min

Grains
--------------------
8lbs Maris Otter (38ppg, 4L) - 50.8%

5lbs Apple Wood Smoked 2 Row (25ppg, 0L) - 31.7%
1.5lbs Crystal 60L (34ppg, 60L) - 9.6%
0.75lbs Chocolate (29ppg, 350L) - 4.8%

0.50lbs Roasted Barley (28ppg, 500L) - 3.2%

Hops
--------------------
1.5oz Warrior (16% Plug) - 60 min

Yeast
--------------------

Wyeast 1056 - American Ale (73-77%, 60-72F)

Brewed November 20th 2009

11/21/09

OG turned out a bit higher than expected at 1.079. Not sure what I did different this time but since I originally had too much wort I had to boil it quite a bit longer. I overshot it slightly and had just a touch less than 5 gal of wort. So my efficiency is somewhere around 75%. Much better. The smoke is fairly pungent and smells GREAT. The wort actually smells a bit like honey smoked chocolate ham. Mmmm... Honey Smoked Chocolate Ham.

12/05/09

Racked into secondary and ended up with a FG of 1.022. This puts the ABV somewhere around 7.3%-ish. Still don't know what my final boil volume was so I guess I can't get a accurate ABV.

12/21/09

Bottled with Munton's CarbTabs and used 3 this time. One less than I used in the Simcoe and Chinook Single Hop. We'll see. The taste is pretty nice but a little more bitter than what I wanted. Nice chocolate tones and TONS of smoke. Not Town Hall Smoked Porter ashtray smoke, but enough.