That'll learn me.

So, we finally got a chance to move the "big stout" out of the 18s it's been sitting in for six weeks or so, cosy-ing up to the whiskey soaked toasted oak chips. We've been looking forward to trying it. We've got quite good at what we call stout. Some black malt, roasted barley, you name it, we shovel it in, but I thought we'd better go easy with this one. I lost my nerve - I admit it.

It's turned out to have a quite restrained "aroma". It smells like beer. Well, maybe there's a touch of dried fruit and even a little bit of incense hiding in there. Taste-wise, there's raisin and black treacle (definitely) and some bitter burnt pepper (is it?). It finishes up with a warm spicy alcohol thing. I can't spot anything I recognise as oak at all. (What is that incense thing? Sandalwood? Is it the oak doing that?)

Anyway, it's very, very dark red-brown, it's 8.8% abv and it's called "Black Flag". Oh, and it's liable to make you drunk. So enjoy responsibly...

That big stout thing...

... is out of the fermenter and sitting in a bunch of 18's, along with some booze soaked toasted oak chips. I'm going to leave it for a few weeks, and see what happens.

It looks like our yeast did pretty well without special measures (apart from over-pitching a bit), in that we seem to have about 8.6% ABV at the moment. I suspect that if I'd roused it a bit, we could have hit 9%
Next time, perhaps...