Irish Extra Stout 2025

Thanksgiving weekend brew day! I mostly keep base malts on hand but I've acquired a bunch of specialty grains in judge swag bags, as competition prizes, etc. I decided I better brew some recipes to use up some of these grains rather than perpetually storing them.

For today's beer, I'm brewing an Irish Extra Stout. This recipe is based on one of the medal winning recipes from NHC, specifically Paul’s Irish Extra Stout by Paul Sorice Jr., gold medal winner from 2022. I haven't had a chance to meet Paul yet, but he's in the Pinellas Urban Brewers Guild, the same club I just joined a couple weeks ago. I'm modifying the recipe slightly, including the brewing water (I'm using the Black Balanced (Over 31 SRM) water profile in Beersmith). I don't believe I've ever brewed anything specifically intended to be an Irish Extra Stout, so I'm looking forward to giving this one a try. It's my first time using Coffee Malt in a recipe. The 2021 BJCP style guidelines describe this style as follows:

A fuller-bodied black beer with a pronounced roasted flavor, often similar to coffee and dark chocolate with some malty complexity. The balance can range from moderately bittersweet to bitter, with the more balanced versions having up to moderate malty richness and the bitter versions being quite dry. 

I'm not shooting for an overly dry and bitter version. I'm hoping the selected grain bill and water profile will result in a nicely balanced beer. Here's the recipe as I'm brewing it today: 

Target OG 1.058

Target FG: 1.014

IBU: 36

ABV: 6

7 lb. 14oz Maris Otter pale malt 

6 oz. Carafa III malt (Cold steeped and added to BK during sparge)

6 oz. Simpson's Pale Chocolate malt

6 oz. Briess Victory malt

6 oz Simpson's Coffee malt

3 oz. Simpson's Double Roasted Crystal malt

1.25 oz. (35 g) Cluster, 6.5% AA @ 60 min

0.5 oz. (14 g) Cluster, 6.5% AA @ 15 min

4.66g BCAA (10 min)

Yeast Nutrient (Flameout)

Whirlfloc (Flameout)

Zinc Buddy (Added at pitch)

Fermentis Safale S-04

Mash at 153F. Ferment at 64°F for 12 days. Raise to 68°F on day 13 and hold for 3 days.

Water Profile

Target Water Profile
Ca	Mg	Na	SO4	Cl	HCO3
50	10	33	57	44	142

As mentioned above, I'm deviating from the water profile listed on the AHA's website. To 10 gallons of distilled/RO water, add the following:

• 5.4g Epsom salt
• 3.3g Calcium chloride
• 5.2g Baking soda
• 2.7g Chalk

Brewing Notes

No issues other than my gravity is a few points high. I believe this is due to more boil off than I was anticipating rather than higher than normal efficiency. So, I still need to dial that in a bit. I’m happy to say I think I’ve figured out my chilling process. Essentially I’m chilling down to about 99F with groundwater temps. Then I turn the pump on for the pre-chiller setup which is a Blichmann plate chiller connected to an ice water reservoir. With this setup, I was able to chill down to about 57F. I still had quite a bit of ice left too, so I think I could have easily gotten it down to 50F.

Session Readings
Beginning mash pH	5.18
Ending mash pH	5.18
1st running gravity	16.8 (1.067)
Pre-Boil gravity	10.5 (1.041)
Pre-Boil pH	5.18
Post-Boil gravity	15.5 (1.061)
Post-Boil pH	5.09

One thing worth mentioning, my Tilt Hydrometers' batteries both died on me before I moved to Florida. I figured I'd address that once I got settled in Florida. I'm happy to say I replaced the batteries, recalibrated both Tilts, and will be using one on this brew. I find Tilts most useful for lager fermentations as it helps me decide when to perform a diacetyl rest, but I use them in my ale fermentations as well. The only time I don't use them is in wild/mixed fermentations, but I may try that at some point if I can find someone looking to offload one for cheap. In Utah I used an old cell phone for logging, but I decided to buy a Tilt Pico to use in place of the phone. The Tilt Pico is a Raspberry Pi-based device that functions as a Bluetooth to WiFi bridge and eliminates the need for a cell phone. The cell phone solution worked ok, but my phone would periodically crash or reboot after an update and I'd lose logging data until I managed restart the Tilt app. I'm hoping the Tilt Pico is more stable.

Update 11/30/2025 7:15AM

Things are moving along today. The current gravity reading is 1.053 and temps are holding at 64F, although temps got as high as 66F for a short period. I may need to recalibrate the probe on my temp controller. I forgot to mention, I added White Labs Zinc Buddy to this batch. I didn't realize WL was selling this product and it was a little hard to find, but a friend of mine uses it and recommended it (more on his beer in an upcoming post). It's basically a sterile zinc solution that you can add directly to your fermenter and it supports yeast health. Here's a link to more info on WL.

Update 12/1/2025 8:00AM

Fermentation is still chugging along. I ended up dropping the temp controller one degree, just in case the probe was slightly off. Current readings from the Tilt are 1.025 and 64F with an average temp of 63.9F. The Tilts do wobble during active fermentation, so it likely isn’t exactly 1.025, but very close to it; for example, there are a couple readings where it recently read 1.027, then 1.024, then back to 1.027 then the most recent at 1.025.

Update 12/2/2025 9:45AM

Fermentation seems to be winding down. I went ahead and raised the temp setting on my controller to 67F and I'm letting it free rise. Current readings are 1.020. I'm hoping to get closer to the stated FG for the recipe, 1.014.  

Update 12/3/2025

Fermentation has definitely slowed, but gravity is still dropping a little bit. Today the tilt is reading a hair below 1.020 at about 1.019551. Yesterday's 1.020 was actually measuring at 1.020580, so about a 1 point drop.

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Barrel Washing Rack

***This is a previously unpublished draft that I wrote up back in 2018. I was doing some work to support a new craft brewery in Utah, specifically on their barrel program. This rack was built to make it easier to rinse barrels after emptying.

Today's post isn't exactly for homebrewing, or at least not for most homebrewers (there's probably one person out there with a forklift, doing 60 gallon Solera projects), but I thought homebrewers might find it interesting. This is an equipment build I'm doing for my gig managing the sour beer program, and to an extent, the barrel-aged clean beers at a local brewery. This is a cleaning rack to assist with rinsing barrels between fills.

The way it works is after the barrels are emptied, a standard double barrel stacking rack is lowered onto the cleaning rack. As the stacking rack is lowered, the casters engage the barrels and the stacking rack drops out of the way and rests on the cleaning rack. With the barrels suspended on the casters, you can easily rotate the bungholes to the 6 o'clock position for dumping sediment and rinsing the barrels. Long story short, it makes the barrel cleaning process much quicker and easier.

We have two types of barrel racks. The overall dimensions are basically the same but the construction varies slightly in that some have two crossbars, but most have four. This isn't a huge issue, it just means some of the stacking racks rest lower on the cleaning rack than others. Stacking rack dimensions tend to be 44.5" wide x 30.75" deep x 14.125" tall.

To build the cleaning rack, I used 1.5 x 2.5 - 14 gauge rectangular steel tubing. Materials and cuts are as follows:

• (4) Outer posts at x" long (I forgot to measure these and I no longer have access to the rack)
• (2) Long horizontal beams at 48" long
• (4) Inner posts at 12" long
• (2) Short horizontal beams at 19" long
• (8) Casters

The pieces were assembled as shown in the pictures below. There's enough clearance to slide a bucket under the barrels during rinsing. This is important because while clean barrels will most likely be rinsed in the brewery, sour barrels will likely be rinsed outside to minimize contamination risk in the brewery. We'll need to be able to capture the wastewater and properly dispose of it, so clearance for a bucket is key.

The sizing noted above will give you a couple inches of clearance side to side and front to back. That said, it does require some precision to use, so you need some decent forklift skills to load barrels onto the rack. I also added some rubber pads where the stacking rack rests on the horizontal beams. Hopefully these will avoid damaging the paint and keep it rust-free longer.  I added the same rubber on the bottom of the legs so they don't damage the floors in the brewery.

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Kamado Controller

***This is a previously unpublished draft that I wrote up back in 2018. I gave the Kamado away when I moved, but kept the controller to use on a future Kamado.

In addition to homebrewing, and sometimes related to homebrewing, I really enjoy BBQ and smoked foods. Smoked beers, like-minded cheese, brisket, I dig all of it.

I picked up a Vision Grills Kamado a while back (clearance at Sam's Club) and I love it. Kamados are versatile because you can cook low and slow over indirect heat, or you can open the vents and crank up the heat for some high temp grilling. There's quite a bit of mass, so temps tend to stay fairly constant. That said, The temperature can fluctuate over extended cooks. To remedy this, I decided to build a digital temp controller that controls a small 12 volt fan to regulate the airflow into the firebox. This it's basically the same concept that a lot of people (including myself) use for fermentation temp control. Instead of controlling a refrigerator, I'm controlling a small fan. Essentially what happens is if the temp drops below the setpoint, the fan turns on, stoking the fire and increasing the temp. It is a PID controller, so it will cycle the fan on and off as it approaches the setpoint. This helps keep you from overshooting your target temperature. With this approach, I should be able to maintain constant temps until the fuel runs out. PIC

Here are the components I used for my build:

• (1) Ceramic adapter from BBQ Guru
• (1) Pit Viper Fan from BBQ Guru
• (1) Inkbird ITC-106VL PID Controller
• (1) 12VDC Power Adapter
• (1) Project box
• (1) Panel-mount K-type socket set
• (2) 12VDC female power connectors
• Misc supplies and wire

This particular model of Inkbird controller runs on 12VDC and the output rating is also 12VDC, so the wiring couldn't be more simple. 

The fan from BBQ Guru is nice because it incorporates a very functional housing that  provides protection from the heat and incorporates a damper for fine tuning the airflow. It took a little bit of adjusting to get the fan damper and upper lid damper set correctly on the first use, but once dialed in, it worked awesome.

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