Appetite (Imperial Smoked Maple Coffee Oatmeal Stout)

10% CHERRYWOOD SMOKED MALT
10% ROLLED OATS
1 LITER BARISMO COLDBREW COFFEE CONCENTRATE
4 OUNCES GRADE "A" VERMONT MAPLE SYRUP
100% IMPERIAL BREAKFAST STOUT

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A true, new-school "maximalist" stout with a no-holds-barred approach to flavoring. This is designed as an imperial breakfast stout that pulls no punches and pushes the current envelope of complexity for us and our current homebrew project. Very excited to see it come to fruition.

10/24/15: Finally getting around to brewing this bad boy. Updates to come.

Brew day went fine but we did need to add DME to get to our target gravity. The new system seems worse at getting high-gravity wort, but it's also easier to use so we're basically just fixing these little gravity errors as they happen. Not a huge deal. Should come out quite good, to be honest. We'll update here on the maple syrup and coffee additions, for sure.

Going in to this one, we had the idea of creating a one-gallon parti-gyle batch of "Cinnamon Rauch Brunch" (our horrible pun game is very strong and we want you to know this) with added Cinnamon Toast Crunch® cereal and cinnamon sticks. Using the weaker runnings after collecting a decent amount for the main batch, we boiled down to get about a gallon of wort which will probably produce a beer in the 4.5-5% realm. The hop additions for this were different, also, since it was boiled and prepared separately despite using the same malt bill. 0.5 oz of whole-leaf Amarillo was added at 60 minutes and 0.35 oz of East Kent Goldings at 5 minutes to the end of the boil. The cinnamon sticks (about 0.6 oz/2 whole sticks) were added at 10 minutes to the end of the boil. Needless to say, we're very pumped about both of these. Having drinkable yet intensely-flavored stouts on hand is going to be a huge must for the upcoming New England winter, especially since it's supposed to be brutal. Until next time... -A

11/7/15: Just added ~900 mL of pasteurized, cold-brewed coffee concentrate to a sanitized fermenter and racked Appetite on top of it. Smells amazing. We performed a "taste test" to determine what ratio of coffee to beer to use, and this seemed satisfactory.

11/14/15: Currently measuring syrup to bottle carbonate this bad boy. Looks like we have about 4 ounces of grade A syrup mixed with ~8 ounces of water to make a 1:2 solution.

11/21/15: This rules. Just straight up awesome. Great balance of all of the flavors, and it really comes into its own the closer it gets to room temp. Need to track its progress as it will likely take a couple more weeks to fully carbonate, but it's on its way to becoming an incredible beer of its own. Really happy with it so far!

12/19/15: I just opened a bottle at 5 weeks, and this is, bar none, the best beer we've ever made. There's just no contest. Here's what I wrote on Facebook about this goddamn awesome drink:

"Deep, intense and layered with strong roasty flavors from both the coffee and melange of dark malts used, it also presents with dark fruit, subtle campfire smoke and woodsy maple from the syrup used to bottle-condition it. Oats help make the mouthfeel creamy and smooth, belying its hefty 10.1% ABV"

We're having a sorta "release party"-ish event for it in mid-January and making people brunch to pair it with. I'll be opening a bunch of shit from my cellar as well as fresh stouts deemed worthy of pairing alongside this decadent masterpiece. Yeah, I said it. This is our masterwork. WHAT.

-A

BTW THE BRUNCH WENT REAL WELL AND EVERYONE WAS IMPRESSED BY OUR AWESOME BEER.

MASH SCHEDULE:

-Strike-in at 145 F and hold for 30 minutes (beta-sacch rest)
-Raise to 155 F and hold for 60 minutes (alpha-sacch)