Milk Stout

This week I'll be brewing my first Milk Stout.  This was one of the styles that got me interested in Craft Beer initially - it's just such a odd and interesting concept to make a sweet stout using milk sugar.  They aren't very common which makes it even more appealing as a homebrew recipe.  I'm surprised it's taken me seven years to finally make one.

For the recipe I've decided to go with yet another historical English Beer published on the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog:  William Younger's Milk Stout.  I haven't had a bad result with one of these recopies yet so I keep coming back for more.  This one has a couple very odd ingredients:  1.  16% corn in the grainbill (I've opted for Flaked Corn rather than the grits originally called for) and; 2. Licorice root (which I've opted to use towards the tail end of fermentation like a dry hop).   It also uses brewers caramel to darken the color of the beer - this is always fun to make

I'm sticking mostly to the recipe with this one.  The notable differences are using american pale malt and Willamette hops rather than Fuggles.  I'm going with late boil hops rather than dry hop as well.  The yeast will be as specified:  Scottish Ale.  This will be my first time using it - I'm interested to see how that goes.

This is going to be a fairly strong beer at around 6% and should be fairly sweet with the unfermentable lactose.  I'll be kegging the beer but wont be in a huge hurry to drink it quickly at this strength.  I'll give it 3 weeks to ferment out before kegging.

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct:
• 9.5 lb 2-Row
• 2.75 Flaked Corn
• 0.5 Crystal 60L
• 0.5 Black Malt
• 1 lb Lactose
• 8 oz Brewers Caramel
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 2 oz Willamette (Leaf, 5.7%AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz Willamette (Leaf, 5.7%AA) at 30 min
• 2 oz Willamette (Leaf,  5.7%AA) at 5 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale Yeast
• Water:
• 13 gal spring Water
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min
• Extras:
• 4 oz Licorice  in Fermenter

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal
• Mash:
• 155 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 65 F
• Primary Duration:
• 3 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.068 (Target 1.066)
• Efficiency:
• 75% (Target 72%)
• FG:
• 1.024 (Target 1.019)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 63% (Target 70%)
• ABV:
• 5.8% (Target 6.2%)

Brewing Notes:

• 7/17/21 - Built a starter using 100 g of DME and 1 Litre of waster.  Let it sit on stir plate over night to propagate
• 7/18/21 - Brewday - from 12 PM to 4:15 PM- Including Setup and Cleanup
• Heated 8 gal of spring water to 180 F
• Milled my grain.  Added CaCl and Gypsum to the grain
• Moved 6 gal of water to the mash tun and cycled until the temperature settled to about 165 F
• Stopped the RIMS and added in my grain.  Stirred well to eliminate doughballs.  Let the mash settle for 10 min
• Cycled the mash through the RIMS at 156F for 60 min
• Made the brewers caramel using Turbinado sugar.  Cooked this using a "dry caramel" process

• Heated 8 gal of sparge water to 180 F
• Drained the mash tun to the boil kettle.  Added water on the top until I'd collected about 5 gal.  Started heating the kettle after collecting about 3 gal
• Filled the mash tun back for a second sparge and let this sit for 15 min.  Slowly drained this into the kettle so that the boil wasn't broken.  Topped up the mash tun with water until I'd collected 8 gal total
• Boiled full volume for 60 min.  Added my bittering hops when the hotbreak cleared
• Added 30 min hops
• With 20-15 min to go I added the Caramel, Lactose, and Irish Moss
• With 5 min to go I added flavoring hops and Wart Chiller to sanitize
• Chilled the beer down to tap water temperature:  ~80F

• Drained into the fermenter.  Let the beer fall a couple feet to splash around and aerate.  Pitched the yeast during this.

• Collected 5.5 gal.  Measured the gravity as 1.075.  This is higher than target efficiency at 75%.  Adding 0.5 gal to get closer to target gravity (1.068)
• Moved to the fermentation chamber to chill down to the mid 60s for fermentation
• 7/19/21 - The airlock was bubbling the next morning
• 8/1/21 - I found licorice root tea which I'll use.  I'd never had it before so I brewed one up using hot water - it is slightly sweet and has a very mild flavor that isn't really that much like a black licorice candy.  I thought it was pretty nice.  I've decided to use 6 bags which I'll add directly to the beer.  I think I'll give this until next weekend before transferring to the keg.

• 8/10/21 - Transferred to a keg today.  Measured the gravity as 1.024.  The beer has a rich malty flavor and is slightly sweet
• 8/29/21 - Tasting Notes - Richly flavored and sweet (but in fairly restrained way) - aroma and flavor are really lovely.  Has a good bit of complexity with a lot of flavors to pick out and quite of interesting notes.  Goes down very easily and I find that 1 glass is never enough
• 12/1/21 - This keg kicked