Brew Day - Chocolate Milk Stout

Another day off from work and another brew day.

Today I brewed up the Chocolate Milk Stout that I will blend with the Pumpkin Ale I brewed this weekend.  In total I will have three beers.  This is the same idea I had last year but the hope is that this year all of the beers will turn out.  This was a relatively easy brew day.  45 minute mash in for a nice thick stout, simple 2 hop additions at 60 and 30 minutes and chilling the wort down to temp.

OG is coming in at 1.056 and hopefully this will ferment fast like the pumpkin is.  I will move this to the secondary when the primary fermentation seems complete and then add the cocoa nibs - the sterilized cocoa nibs.

Once this beer and the pumpkin are ready to bottle I will bottle 1 gallon of the chocolate straight, 3 gallons of the pumpkin straight and then blend the remaining.  I used the same yeast on both of these batches so that when I mix the two batches together there shouldnt be any more ramp up in fermentation.  I will let those mingle together for another week and then bottle that batch as the Chocolate Pumpkin Spiced Ale.

This idea was based around mixing a Younghs Chocolate Stout with Pumpking.  I'll check back in about 4-5 days to see how things are going.

9/3/14
Brewed.  Yeast pitched.

9/7/14 
Racked to secondary. Gravity reading 1.022.  Yeast still got some more work to do. Target is 1.016.

9/21/14
Bottled one gallon.  Remaining was mixed with Pumpkin Ale to create Chocolate Pumpkin Pie Ale. This batch will age for another 2 weeks and then be bottled.

Barrel Prep: Riesling Wine for Lambic Blends

Filling the barrel with Reisling wine at night

I finally got around to preparing and filling my second 20L wooden barrel.  This particular barrel is getting 20L worth of Riesling added.  This is going to sit in the barrel and hopefully saturate the staves and provide a nice fruity/vinous flavor to the Lambic-ish sours that I am making.

The wine is not a super complex one.  Its pretty smooth with some apple fruit flavors.  A bit drier than we expected but nothing a little sugar cant fix.

It has been 7 months since I brewed the Lambic-ish. 

Another 5 months and it should be ready for tasting and potentially move into its new home - this barrel.

Here's hoping all goes well.