American Stout recipe, using a hopback and more

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Find Recipes Start your free trial Brew Day Bulletin Dear Homebrewer, Try these recipes developed by BYO contributors: Horst Dornbusch's German-style Pilsner Edgy Pils recipe [Digital Members] and Jamil Zainasheff's American Stout recipe [Free]. If a sour style is on your 2021 brew list, read our advice on selecting a Lacto strain [Digital Members]. Then, get pro tips on force carbonation [Free]. Mr. Wizard walks through how to use a hopback [Free] and fine-tune bitterness post-fermentation [Digital Members]. In projects, learn to build a tap tower with black pipe [Free] or an immersion lid temperature controller [Digital Members] that will work with nearly any bucket fermenter with a large lid. Cheers! Brad Ring Publisher Read & Brew: Free Content For All Recipe Jamil's American Stout (5 gallons/19 L, all-grain) OG = 1.072 (17.5 °P) FG = 1.017 (4.4 °P) IBU = 73  SRM = 48  ABV = 7.2% Ingredients 13.47 lb. (6.11 kg) Great Western domestic pale malt (2 °L) (or similar) 14.46 oz. (410 g) Briess black barley (500 °L) (or similar) 10.93 oz. (310 g) Great Western crystal malt (40 °L) (or similar) 10.93 oz. (310 g) dark chocolate malt (420 °L) Read more Join BYO for in-depth, four-hour online workshops taught by trusted experts Don't miss six upcoming live and interactive online workshops on All-Grain Brewing, Yeast Lab Skills, Brewing Water, Recipe Formulations, Brewery Financials, and Homebrew Experiments. Article Force Carbonation: Tips From the Pros Force carbonating gives the homebrewer a peculiar sense of accomplishment and professionalism. It is a jump that requires new equipment, new skills and faith in your ability to do things right. It is also a heck of a lot faster than bottle-conditioning. Read more Ask Mr Wizard Using A Hopback Q I just acquired a hopback and now I am wondering how best to use it.  Can it replace late addition hops, and if so, would the quantities be the same?  What about dry hops?  Will running hot wort through a hopback obviate the need for dry hopping and what would be the ratio of dry hops to hopback hops?  The instructions with the hopback said use only whole hops and I can understand that but could pellets in a hop bag be substituted? A The term hopback, or hopjack, has different meanings to different brewers. Before the advent of pelletized hops and hop extracts all brewers used whole hops. Hopbacks were used primarily to strain hops from wort after wort boiling. There were two basic designs for hopbacks; batch and continuous designs. The batch-sized hopbacks looked similar to mash tuns and were designed to hold the contents of one brew. Basically, the kettle was drained (or "knocked-out") and the hopback acted as a strainer to remove the hops while the wort flowed through the strainer installed in the bottom of the hopback.  Read More Project Industrial-style Pedestal Tower: Building a tap tower with black pipe My beer brewing started in 2002 with a Mr. Beer kit. While the Mr. Beer plastic bottles were handy, they weren't glamorous. So, I added some bottling equipment and bottled a few batches in glass bottles. Unfortunately, the collecting of bottles, multi-step cleaning, and two-week wait for bottles to carbonate were more than I wanted to deal with. I began researching home draft systems. I decided the convenience was worth the investment and bought a nice stainless mini fridge that would fit two corny kegs. I drilled a hole in the top and installed a two-tap tower.  Read More For Digital Members Only Members get access to thousands of recipes, all new BYO issues and more. Try membership risk free for 14 days.* Brew Better. Try Membership, Free!* Recipe Edgy Pils (5 gallons/19 L, all-grain) OG = 1.047 FG = 1.010 IBU = 48 SRM = 3 ABV = 4.8% Ingredients 9.5 lbs. (4.3 kg) Weyermann Pilsner Malt (2 °L) 10.4 AAU Tettnanger hops (75 min.) (2.3 oz./65 g of 4.5% alpha acid) 4.5 AAU Tettnanger hops (15 min.) (1 oz./28 g of 4.5% alpha acids)   Read more Article Sour Power: The many ways to Lacto The image is startling: You're sitting at your computer one evening and run a quick Google search. You think to yourself, "How hard can this be?" Filled with the exciting unknown, you slowly type in L-a-c-t-o-b-, and immediately, autofill jumps in . . . Lactobacillus plantarum? Lactobacillus brevis? Lactobacillus helveticus? Lactobacillus delbrueckii? Lactobacillus acidophilus? Oh no! The list seems to go on forever and you're realizing there are so many options. Where do you begin? What do you choose? Read more Ask Mr. Wizard Fine-Tuning Bitterness Post-Fermentation Q I've often wondered if there is an easy way to adjust bitterness post fermentation. I've read about a few techniques (Isomerized hop extracts, boiling hops in a small volume of water/starter wort, adjusting water profile, blending, etc.) and I've also read all the reasons why some of these may not work. I'm mostly interested in adding something to the keg (Hop extracts or boiling a small volume of water/wort and adding it). If my beer did not hit the bitterness, I'm most likely just going to roll with it rather than brew another batch and go through the trouble of blending. I also use a sulfate-heavy water profile for my hoppy beers already so adding more probably won't get me what I am looking for. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the best ways to go about this. A At times it is helpful to review why some brewing problems are not so easy to fix and discuss how to prevent these problems in the future. Under-hopped beers are an example of a problem that is not so easy to correct after a certain point in the process. You have noted several possible fixes, including the two primary ways to go about adding bitterness post fermentation, so let's start with these possible solutions and then my suggestions.   Read more Project Immersion Lid Temperature Controller For the past few years I've been doing small batch brew-in-a-bag (BIAB); brewing 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) of delicious beer at a time, in my kitchen, by my lonesome. Something was missing in my homebrew life, and that was the social aspect of brewing with friends. Determined to start up a monthly collaborative "experimental brew" at my place, I began amassing oodles of excellent gear for a ¾-barrel BIAB system. Read more *Free Trial Terms and Conditions: For new members and subscribers only. Limit one per customer. Additional auto-renewal terms apply. 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