Ubrewtu: #8 Irish Stout

I brewed this Irish Stout in the interest of drinking a real Irish beer for St. Patrick's Day.

And I can't say I was disappointed at all. The timing worked out very well, with my brew day on January 13th, 2013.

It was a cool day in Austin, Texas, topping out around 60F. If you're reading this in some other locale, you may be thinking, "60F in January -- that's a cool day?" If so, I'm sorry. Come visit :-)

Brew day was nice and social. Three old high school friends, from Baton Rouge, LA, who are also re-lo's to Austin, TX (Casey, Carrie, and Taylor) all dropped by for the afternoon and joined me for a bit of NFL playoffs and brewing.

I'm delighted to say that both Casey and Taylor have each bought their own brewing equipment and have since dived into their own brewing. Both are on their 3rd or 4th brew by this point.

I had a bit of trouble during my boil. I had recently bought a Bayou Classic banjo burner. Unfortunately, it crapped out mid boil. I had to run to Lowes during my boil. The temperature of my wart dropped to about 150F over about a half hour before we got back and replaced the burner. Since then, it's been solid.

I also used my brand new wort chiller, which is awesome, by the way :-)

Most interestingly with this brew, I actually collected and re-pitched some of the Edinburgh yeast I used in my Scotch Ale.

I only used a single stage carboy for this beer. The fermentation was vigorous, though the chub was very easy to cull.

This beer was brewed on January 13, 2013, and kegged on February 2, 2013. The original gravity was 1.041 (at 60F), while the target was a bit higher, at 1.050. The final gravity was 1.013, which was dead on target.