Brewing Russian Imperial Stout with Anise & bottling Hair of the Dog IPA

Well Hello again! It hasn't been but a few days since the last update, but we up here in Calgary couldn't help but bust out the new mash tun yesterday! First we had to fix the tun, so it wouldn't leak anymore.  It cost a simple O-ring from Home Depot which I shoved into the area between the two walls of the cooler in the hole that was pre-drilled. Then I attached the hosing and the braided steel and voila! We were ready to rumble. You can see the new attachments I added on the pictures on either side of this paragraph.  I thought we would have a nice, easy brew day with the only problem being the fresh snow and the -8°C weather. It actually turned out to be a good thing, considering we needed the snow for chilling!

The recipe for the Russian Imperial Stout was slightly modified from my old Imperial Overlord Stout from last year; we used Millennium hops instead of Warrior, and added 1oz of anise seed (from our trip to Germany) in the last hop addition. Unfortunately, this post isn't as simple as hoped, because we had a few problems.  First, we had to bottle the last brew they had made before I arrived in Canada: Hair of the Dog IPA. Aptly named, considering it was the first brew made with their new dog, Emmy, around.  Apparently there are some dog hairs included in that recipe.  Not to mention, the name is appropriate for any alcoholic beverage!  That went without problem (barring the handful of spills which are imperative to any bottling operation), and we went directly on to mashing the grains for RISw/Anise.

Now, here is where the real hairy part was (harharhar). The braided steel got kinked right at the barb going into the ball valve! In a valiant attempt to amend the situation, we accidentally popped off the end cap of the other side.  Needless to say, we ended up with a stuck mash. Luckily, we had an extra boil kettle, dumped all the grains and mash into it, attempted to fix the braided steel (to almost no avail), and ended up just sparging in any way that we could.  Fortunately I was not new to this method since I have done many brews with the BIAB method (feel free to search it or see previous posts). In the end, the mash tun worked mostly, but a new attempt at the filtering braided steel tubing will have to be made.  I guess we will try to use a larger diameter tube with the ½" silicone tubing inside, which will be directly connected to both the barb and the end cap. Also, it will probably be shorter to fit better inside the tun.

After all that hoopla, the rest was easy.  Mark downloaded a new app on his phone - BrewR - to simplify the hop additions and timing for the boil. The piles of fresh snow that were shoveled off of the deck allowed for a perfect cooling system, and the OG was a perfect 1.100.  After the big mess of the mash, we at least ended up with tasty beer.  Hannah even tasted it and said it will be amazing. And I definitely trust her on that one!

In a few weeks I will update on the fermenting transferring process of the RIS.  In the meantime, I will try to fix the mash tun. Until then,
                HAPPY BREWING!