Not Your Mother's Breakfast - brewday

The Brew

My second brew ever, '10k Before Breakfast', was our attempt to clone one of my favorite beers, Founders Breakfast Stout. That attempt was an extract brew we based mostly off a recipe from BYO magazine. That beer turned out OK. Well, pretty good considering what we were trying to accomplish. We missed big time on our OG, only getting around 1.070, well below the 1.080 goal. In getting to 1.070 we had to boil longer then planned so in the end we only had about 4.5 gallons to package. The lower starting gravity ended up with a lower yield for alcohol content as well at 6.2%. Another flaw in the final product was a slight acrid note to the coffee flavor. I attributed this to our leaving a hop bag with the final coffee addition in secondary far too long. Lastly, the bottles over-carbonated. All that said,  every last drop was drank and enjoyed.

A second attempt at this has been in the cards ever since the first go-around. A year later however, we've progressed from extract to all-grain. And this brew was the first in jumping from BIAB to batch sparging in a cooler mash tun.

The grist was again based strongly off of the BYO recipe, as were the hops, hopping schedule and additional recipe ingredients. The only major variation to note was the use of the dry English Ale yeast instead of a liquid American Ale variety.

The Recipe

Grain/Sugars:
14 lbs. 2-Row (US)
1.5 lb Flaked Oats (US)
1 lb Chocolate Malt 
12 oz Roasted Barley
8 oz De-bittered Black Malt
8 oz Crystal 120L

Hops:
1.00 oz. Nugget @60. (A: 13.8%, B: 4.7%)
0.50 oz. Willamette @15. (A: 5.2%, B: 3.6%)
0.50 oz. Willamette @0.  (A: 5.2%, B: 3.6%)

Yeast:
Safale S-04 English Ale Yeast  (2 packets - rehydrated)

Extras:
1.0 tablet Whirlfoc @15m
0.5 tsp Wyeast nutrient @15m
2.5 oz Dark bittersweet bakers chocolate @15m
1.5 oz Unsweetened chocolate baking nibs @15m
2.0 oz Course ground Sumatran coffee @0m
2.0 oz Ground Kona coffee, cold brewed, add at packaging 

Brewday

11/28/2015 - Brewday

As noted above, this was the first brew with my new mash tun. This homemade tun is simply a 50 qt beverage cooler with some small modifications. Inspiration for this was based off of Denny Conn's interviews, articles and website discussing his method for batch sparging.

Solo brew. Heated 7 gallons of strike water to 168F and transferred to the cooler. Mashed in the 18 1/2 lbs of grains, stirred to breakup any clumps. Temperature reading at start of mash was 153.9F. As that mash sat in the cooler converting away, I measured out and heated 3 gallons of water to 180F. After the 60 minute mash, ran off into the kettle collecting 4.9 gallons. This is the point where the batch sparging comes in. Added just over 2.5 gallons of 180F water to the tun and stirred. After a short 10 minute rest, again ran off into the kettle. Mash and lauter complete, I had collected 7.75 gallons of 1.063 preboil wort.

Fired up the burner to start the boil. After about 10 minutes of warming I realized I wasn't getting the heat necessary from the burner. And then, flameout.  Fifteen minutes later, I returned with a full propane tank and boiling commenced within a few minutes.  Boil was per schedule in recipe and uneventful. Concerned about how efficient my first single infusion and batch sparge was I added a pound of DME with 10 minutes left in the boil to bolster the OG.

Chilled down the wort, transferred to the carboy and pitched the rehydrated yeast. Ended up with nearly 6 gallons of 1.087 original gravity wort.

The next morning the yeast were doing their thing as it bubbled away.

Complete brew details here.