Imperial Stout

We've been meaning to brew one for a while. The first beer we ever made was a stout from an old courage recipe circa 1970. Its the only beer we've remade time and again in exactly the same way. Most of our beers recieve little changes and additions evolving and improving all the time but the stout we thought perfect from day one and have never messed with it. I very often as a little tradition have a stout every Saturday after the bar closes if ive been working. I really like our stout a lot.

I've been spending a lot of time looking at historical recipes recently. I find them a good way of trying to get into brewers heads of the time. Often i see things i wouldnt do and it casues me to rethink things and look at things afresh. Looking at old recipes or any recipes really is a bit like looking through someone elses eyes which definitely forces me at least to think in different ways.

One of the things ive seen and wanted to brew for a while is the 1914 Courage recipe found here.
As we have a new packaging tank (O2 levels prepack are at an alltime low :) more on that in a future blog maybe) We were able to split this batch into three and make seperate additions.

Version 1 of this beer is simply the recipe found in the link, rich unctuous, a classic British imperial stout. Version 2 and 3 have ingredients added to enhance and compliment the flavours already there in the original beer. We're not telling what they are though but would be interested to see if people can guess.

We're launching this beer at the excellent Indyman Beer Con this year and will have all three versions on over the weekend. Come say hi and maybe we'll find a prize for whoever guesses the right additions.

Head of production, Chris JJ Heaney will also be doing a talk on our cuvee beers in the cellar that weekend at some stage. We'll be sampling every beer from 2013-2016 and discussing both religion and science. There may or may not be incense and or religious iconography.