Today’s stout is dedicated to the paving of the road which was occurring at the time of the brew. Thus, the “Paving Tar Stout” is born. This one is based on a Russian Imperial Stout from Brewer’s Best, to which we added crystal malt (40L we think), as well as 3 lbs. dark Munton’s DME, (dried malt extract). The result was a very malty, extremely tasty wort, which we look forward to enjoying.
The yeast was a basic Nottingham dry yeast packet. Our expectation is that this would have been something of an ‘exciting’ brew (with potential to paint the ceiling), thus we added a drizzle of Fermcap-S, which purports to be an anti-foaming agent – something my wife is particularly pleased we are using, as the brew room is also the laundry room, and really, who wants exploded beer all over their clothes?
Initial gravity was 1.092. This is 0.010 above the absolute extreme end of the reported OG from the recipe, which is exactly as we wanted it. As Josh (brewmaster and origin of the recipe said), “Go big, or go home.”