#23 Double Personality Stout

What is Double Personality Stout? Well it is the brain child of Sam, Brett, and myself. Although that may be over selling it already.

For a start it is a Stout:

• 4.60 kg Ale Malt (2.5 SRM) – 56.1 %
• 1.00 kg Munich Malt (8.6 SRM) – 12.2 %
• 1.00 kg Pilsner (1.5 SRM) – 12.2 %
• 0.80 kg Med crystal (63.5 SRM) – 9.8 %
• 0.30 kg Chocolate Malt (609.1 SRM) – 3.7 %
• 0.20 kg LIGHT Chocolate Malt (431.5 SRM) – 2.4 %
• 0.20 kg Melanoiden Malt (20.0 SRM) – 2.4 %
• 0.10 kg Black Barley (Stout) (500.0 SRM) – 1.2 %
• 30 g Warrior [15.00 %] – Boil 60.0 min (45.1 IBUs)
• 30 g Pacifica [5.50 %] – Boil 4.0 min (2.7 IBUs)

Once it had finished primary fermentation, we then split the brew into two: with the first half we added Coffee and Prunes; and in the other half we added Oak chips from a Bourbon barrel, Black Pepper, and Molasses.

When we started the “design process” it was going to be a coffee vanilla stout and a bacon maple stout (Sam is the coffee master, and Brett the bacon master). But the team got a little worried about the bacon side of things – so we changed that one just a tad as you can see. And then whilst we were discussing the amount of vanilla to use, a certain coffee and fig brew came up… Sam had some prunes doing nothing at all… and so a coffee and prune beer was born for the second one.

We used a lot of prunes (the fig taste was not overly strong in the coffee and fig beer where the inspiration came from, but enough to balance the bitter coffee) but I think we used enough for say a 40ltr batch whereas we were doing a 11ltr batch. The volume of Coffee we used was again too much – say more suited to a 30-50ltr batch.

The final product? Well with the coffee/prune one it definitely has the aroma of coffee and prunes although I think the taste is predominantly that of the coffee with a little bit of prunes. Very coffee liqueur like – possibly a good breakfast beer with the caffeine hit you get from it. One to drink in small doses – and by people who like coffee more than say me, a non-coffee drinker (although I love the smell of the beans).

The oak/bourbon/molasses/black pepper one has a little too much black pepper (I think three tea spoons of whole corns soaked in vodka was used – 1.5/2 probably would have been better), and probably not enough molasses (not sure the amounts used but I cannot really taste anything that makes me think of molasses so a decent amount more is needed). The bourbon is surprisingly still present which I am pleased with. The pepper leaves that wee tingle on the end of the tongue. So to me more drinkable than the coffee one.

So – two unusual beers, both hinting that if one got the balance right they could be great beers which I think is very cool. They were fun to brew and I will admit a little scary to have the first taste of. Some ageing should improve both I think (although for once I am happy about giving up 2/3rds of the bottles to the others involved). I am really keen to use the Gladfiled light chocolate malt again – in a porter/stout or even a black IPA. It rocked (and we probably should have split the mix into three keeping a third of the base stout).