Author Archives: Scott Swanson

Today was a simple experience following a base recipe. It was intended to be modified, but when the local brew supply store was closed, it turned into a time to simply follow the recipe and see what that delivered. Today’s batch was the Caribou Slobber from Northern Brewer. It was supposed to end up at a 1.052 OG, but we ended up within the margin of error at 1.056, which may be in part as it was done using a full boil, not the partial boil the recipe called for.

The wort/beer was a lovely dark caramel or deep brown, and tasted pleasant and malty, and should be at the point we would want to drink it well before the Paving Tar Stout is at the same point.

Edit: here it is in the final form:

Edit 2: In the glass

One of the last of this excellent beer.

Bruce and Scott mix in the LME

Josh Checks the OG on the Paving Tar Stout

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.”