Event Horizon Imperial Stout

I sent a bottle of this to GrahamT as a thank you for supplying me with some much needed hops so thought I'd post the recipe here. It's probably one of my best brews to date and hopefully with another few months conditioning it'll be even better because I've brewed this for the 2016 Irish National Competition.
It's based on the Tricentennial recipe from JZ's "Brewing classic styles" book, however mine has a slightly higher OG due to higher than expected efficiency. My FG was lower than his but so was my bitterness so the bitter/sweet balance should be similar.
The fermentation on this was explosive, I had 5 liters of head space in the FV and still ended up with about 2 liters of beer all over the floor after less than 24 hours!
It was named by a friend who poured a glass and held it up to a light to check clarity, but found that it is so dark it simply absorbs all light

Event Horizon
Imperial Stout

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 20
Total Grain (kg): 10.46
Total Hops (g): 305
Original Gravity (OG): 1.105
Final Gravity (FG): 1.032
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 9.6 %
Colour (SRM): 95 (EBC): 187
Bitterness (IBU): 86 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 68
Boil Time (Minutes): 90

Grain Bill
----------------
7.300 kg Pale Malt (70%)
1.100 kg Chocolate (11%)
0.850 kg Roasted Barley (8%)
0.850 kg Wheat Malt (8%)
0.360 kg Special W (3%)

Hop Bill
----------------
60 g Northern Brewer Leaf (7.3% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (Boil)
50 g Northern Brewer Leaf (7.3% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
25 g Northern Brewer Leaf (7.3% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil)
50 g East Kent Golding Leaf (7% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil)
70 g East Kent Golding Leaf (7% Alpha) @ 3 Minutes (Boil)

50 g East Kent Golding Leaf (7% Alpha) @ 7 Days (Dry Hop)


Single step Infusion at 65°C for 90 Minutes.
Fermented at 21°C with Wyeast 1084 - Irish Ale

Notes
----------------
Pitched big using reclaimed yeast from a previous brew
Brewed on 4/3/15
Bottled on 25/3/15

Recipe Generated with BrewMate

Looks a beast What's Special W?

Looks a beast What's Special W?

It's Weyermanns version of Special B I believe.

It was indeed a cracker! I've tasted some really good beers recently and this was right up there. All elements working really well together for a mighty beer.

I'm very tempted to have a go, though I'd never get that grain bill plus liquor into my 26L coolbox! Looks like 33L of mash space at 2.5L/Kg. How thick was you mash Stevie? I'd have to reduce the batch a lot.
Thanks for posting the recipe.

PS have you seenthis thread?

Yeah it's a fairly hefty grain bill, I actually had to scale this down to fit my mt. I think I scaled it to about 16 litres. As for mash thickness, not sure exactly but it was a bit less than 2.5 l/kg cos my mt was filled to the brim

The thicker mash meant I had to sparge longer to reach my preboil volume so that may be part of the reason for the higher than expected efficiency (68% bhe on a beer of 1.105 og, I'm usually around low to mid 70's with normal gravity beers).

That competition looks interesting, I might just try my luck

I was lucky enough to have one of these tonight, after swapping some bottles with Stevie. This is a great beer, good work!

Thanks for the kind review Paul, glad you enjoyed it. I've your other 2 in storage still, I don't want to drink them prematurely

heh! great film. did you know it was supposed to be horrifically gory? there's lost footage of a blood orgy scene, torture, spike deaths etc...apparently they got BDSM porn actors in to make the orgy as real looking as possible. the film was censored because it was deemed far, far too much for commercial cinema, but there's still a glimpse of what it was supposed to be in the hell scenes throughout the movie.

(warning - graphic - obviously)

http://digg.com/video/the-bloody-hell-s ... d-way-down

Hopefully that was posted in the wrong place Rob.

I assumed you'd named this beer after Event Horizon the movie! Lol.

Ahhhh right, get you now Actually it was named after a black hole because of the colour, but now that I've reread your post I did know that! I used to love that movie and I have seen some of the cut footage. I'm not really a fan of gore though, I found the directors cut even a bit hard to stomach particularly the "save yourself from hell" bit

Aah makes sense, the ship is called event horizon because it's powered by a black hole, makes sense when you watch it! Yeah it's a pretty rough movie hahah.

Looks a beast What's Special W?

It's Weyermanns version of Special B I believe.

Similar, but with a bit more roast to it.

Well this was the third of my Irish NHC competition entries this year and I was really pleased that it came first in the stout and porter category. I actually entered this beer last year also and it scored 36 which is decent but didn't place. This year it scored 43 which goes to show that time works wonders on an RIS.

I love how dark that head looks! Becoming a real fan of a stout recently. It's a style I thought I'd hate but it's grown on me a lot!

Looks lovely. I brewed a 10% stout at Xmas, but only one bottle remains. I'd planned on aging it, but I gave in to temptation, ha ha.

Looks lovely. I brewed a 10% stout at Xmas, but only one bottle remains. I'd planned on aging it, but I gave in to temptation, ha ha.

This will be my exact problem I'm sure!

I love how dark that head looks! Becoming a real fan of a stout recently. It's a style I thought I'd hate but it's grown on me a lot!

I was never much of a fan of stout until I realised that Guinness was a very poor example. I've been fortunate enough to try some amazing stouts such as Founders KBS, Struise Black Albert, Kernel London Export, Pojhala Must Kuld, Evil Twin Yin to name a few and it's now one of my favourite styles.