Paddy's Stout

The last beer Aidan (my brew buddy) and I brewed was a Beamish stout clone. I went to University in Cork, and lived there for about 10 years in total, so became intimately acquainted with this beautiful stout. One of my favourite pubs in the world (The Oval) is directly across from the old Beamish brewery, and there was a particular satisfaction in drinking beer brewed just across the road. Unfortunately the brewery ceased operations a few years back, just before I left Ireland. I guess it was another reason to leave!

I came across a post on homebrewtalk.com outlining what looked like a well researched Beamish recipe. It turns out that the poster maintains an excellent blog at perfectpint.blogspot.com and has been perfecting the recipe for a few years. After some communication between us I settled on the following recipe:

beamish clone

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (L):          22.50    Wort Size (L):     19.00
Total Grain (kg):         4.22
Anticipated OG:          1.043    Plato:             10.70
Anticipated EBC:          77.9
Anticipated IBU:          29.1
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential EBC
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 82.8     3.50 kg.  Pale Ale Malt (2-row)         Great Britain      1.037      5
  5.9     0.25 kg.  Roasted Barley                Great Britain  1.029   1523
  3.0     0.13 kg.  Chocolate Malt                Great Britain  1.034   1258
  8.3     0.35 kg.  Wheat Malt                    Australia        1.038      4

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 50.00 g.     Willamette                        Pellet   4.00  29.1  60 min.


Yeast
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Safale US-05

I used Williamette hops just because that's what I had. The malts used were; Crisp Ale malt, Simpsons Roasted Barley, Simpsons chocolate, and Joe White wheat malt.

We made this on February 26th, and fermented at 18C. It reached FG (1.010) in four days, and was left at room temperature (~20C) for a further week. I then put it in my keezer at 6C for another week.

When I see a need for fining beer, my standard operating procedure is to clarify with gelatin (2tsp in 200ml sterile water) in the fermenting vessel, leave for a day or two, and then transfer to keg. Here it wasn't so obvious whether fining was needed or not, but I decided to do it anyway as I have found US-05 yeast to be a poor flocculator. Also, I was going to serve this at a Paddy's day party, so I wanted to make sure people saw this beer at it's best.

We tapped the keg the night before the party, and it was obvious that I had made some errors with the serving setup. I had over carbonated the beer, and it was too cold. Some vigorous shaking and venting, and raising the temperature to 10C improved it immensely.

I started serving the beer at 2pm last Saturday, and by 4:30pm it was gone. Luckily Aidan and I (and our other halves) had managed to sneak a few in on the Friday night too, so we got a good impression of the beer.

Taste wise, it's not easy to compare with the commercial product. I think the influence of the nitro pour is difficult to ignore. However I can say that it's pretty close to Beamish, or certainly the Beamish that I am used to. There's a particular mix of delicate chocolate/coffee with roasted barley which you don't get with other Irish dry stouts. This is in contrast to many of the new world stouts which slam your palate with dark heavy flavours. For me stout is an easy drinking session beer, a thirst quencher and conversational lubricant. I'm happy to say that I can now brew it.