Dangerous Dan Irish Stout

• Steeped grains in 3 gallons water at 150° for 30-minutes. Then gently squeezed bag and put it in a strainer over the kettle. Poured 2 quarts of 150° water over it to rinse any extra sugars or flavors into the kettle - sort of a mini-sparge.

• Raised heat up and mixed in half of the LME as it was heating. Then brought it up to a boil and took it off the flame to stir in rest of LME. As soon as I got it back to a boil I started the timer and added the bittering hops.

• Only pitched 1/2-oz of aroma hops at 3-minutes to end of boil, which was a mistake - should have been a full ounce. As a result the aroma wasn't all it could of been, but the taste was excellent.

This stout had far less trub and residue than any other brew so far. Was significantly less trub in the bottom of the kettle than in my previous brews. Also less in bottom of primary fermentor when I racked it into secondary fermentor. And even less in the secondary when I bottled it. After 4 weeks bottle conditioning, there is so little if any residue in the bottom of bottle that I don't worry about pouring it all into a glass. Other brews I am very careful to leave that last 1/8" to 1/4" in the bottom of the bottle.

• Carbonation was a long time coming with this stout. At 2-weeks in the bottle, carbonation was low. 3-weeks was better and what I would call drinkable but not excellent. 3½-weeks seemed to make all the difference in world and at 4 weeks it was great. Bummed me out because I had to wait an extra 2 weeks longer than normal for this beer to be ready. So don't be surprised if it takes 4 weeks in the bottle.

• This stout was much darker than shown above. It's basically the same color as a Guinness.

• Original Gravity before pitching the yeast was 1.042
• Final Gravity was 1.014
• ABV was 4.3%
• IBU came out to 32 not the number shown above.