So, I started feeling bad about my big bottled beers after the death of the Kazakhstani Imperial Stout so on a whim tonight I decided to pop open a bottle of my nine month old Smokin’ Warrior Stout and man is it good! This whole batch was a bit of a test run in many regards. First off, it was one of the first stovetop BIAB batches I did so I really had no idea what was going on. Secondly, I had never used Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt, their new Midnight Wheat or done an all grain Imperial stout so I decided to toss each into this small 1.5 gallon test run of big beer for fun. Because I was embarking on an experimental journey I decided on the Warrior hops I don’t believe I had used before which gave me the obvious benefit of an awesome, recipe appropriate name for the beer; the Smokin’ Warrior Stout. On top of that, when I Google image searched smoking warrior this picture came up and I stole it and made an awesome label.
Overall impressions, this beer is not for everyone. It’s a sipper at 9.5% ABV and in all honesty should have been more but it only attenuated to about 70% leaving the beer sweet, full bodied and awesome for an Imperial Stout. The smoked malt comes in at just the right level and while my girlfriend equated it to licking a burnt log I thought it was pretty damn tasty. All in all, after nine months I think the smoked malt, the residual sweetness and the hop bitterness have balanced out into something pretty good. Maybe worth a slightly larger batch next time. Next time I might swap in some MO in place of whatever I got for Pale Malt and would probably drop the brown sugar down a bit. Of course, I’m writing this after the glass so it’s all based on memory which is skewed from a 9.5% beer and a couple PBRs.
I re-added this beer to my Beersmith files (after I lost everything on my computer crash….) and adjusted it to five gallons just in case I start feeling frisky. Let me
know if anyone has brewed anything similar.
Ingredients
11 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
Grain 1 56.0 %
4 lbs Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt (4.0 SRM) Grain 2 19.0 %
1 lbs 12.0 oz Briess Midnight Wheat (550.0 SRM) Grain 3 8.3 %
12.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 4 3.6 %
12.0 oz Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 5 3.6 %
2 lbs Brown Sugar, Light (8.0 SRM) Sugar 6 9.5 %
2.00 oz Warrior [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 70.8 IBUs
American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [124.21 ml] Yeast
Est Original Gravity: 1.112 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.021 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 12.3 %
Bitterness: 70.8 IBUs
Est Color: 65.3 SRM
Overall impressions, this beer is not for everyone. It’s a sipper at 9.5% ABV and in all honesty should have been more but it only attenuated to about 70% leaving the beer sweet, full bodied and awesome for an Imperial Stout. The smoked malt comes in at just the right level and while my girlfriend equated it to licking a burnt log I thought it was pretty damn tasty. All in all, after nine months I think the smoked malt, the residual sweetness and the hop bitterness have balanced out into something pretty good. Maybe worth a slightly larger batch next time. Next time I might swap in some MO in place of whatever I got for Pale Malt and would probably drop the brown sugar down a bit. Of course, I’m writing this after the glass so it’s all based on memory which is skewed from a 9.5% beer and a couple PBRs.
I re-added this beer to my Beersmith files (after I lost everything on my computer crash….) and adjusted it to five gallons just in case I start feeling frisky. Let me
know if anyone has brewed anything similar.
Ingredients
11 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
Grain 1 56.0 %
4 lbs Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt (4.0 SRM) Grain 2 19.0 %
1 lbs 12.0 oz Briess Midnight Wheat (550.0 SRM) Grain 3 8.3 %
12.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 4 3.6 %
12.0 oz Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 5 3.6 %
2 lbs Brown Sugar, Light (8.0 SRM) Sugar 6 9.5 %
2.00 oz Warrior [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 70.8 IBUs
American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [124.21 ml] Yeast
Est Original Gravity: 1.112 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.021 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 12.3 %
Bitterness: 70.8 IBUs
Est Color: 65.3 SRM
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