White Stout

Last month, the brilliant bar that is The Scratch held a homebrew competition in conjunction with Queensland Beer Week, the premise was pretty simple, five interesting homebrewed beers that had a musical theme to it.

I had a bit of a think about the concept, the Scratch bar is a pretty unique place, serving only top notch craft beer, I didn't think that a bog standard pale ale or bitter would win this (last years winner was a blueberry sweet stout!) also no lagers if judging was going to be held mid June. There would not be enough time to brew it and get it served mid July.

The white stout idea came about after trawling the internet for inspiration, I came across Durham White Stout, I immediately thought that that was a pretty cool idea, but quickly found out it was just a strong English pale ale, so I expanded on the idea, what about making a stout that tasted like a stout but looked like a pale ale?

So essentially I took a standard English pale ale recipe, added flaked oats and flaked barley for body and mouth feel, and then added cold steeped coffee and cocoa nibs (recipe below) it turned out great!

And it turned out that I was pretty much spot on with the comp, the winning beers were:

White Stout (mine)
IPA
Black IPA
American Brown Ale
Pumpkin Pie Sweet Stout

The winning homebrewers got to have a brew day down at the excellent Bacchus Brewing Co in sunny downtown Capalaba on the 22nd June, what a great day! Its a great experience brewing on a much larger scale than my home system and chatting with professional brewers is always enlightening.

It was served on nitro on the 14th July, the 2nd day of QLD Beer Week, I have never seen the Scratch so packed! I managed to sample all the other beers, some two or five times.... It was a great afternoon.

Anyway here is the recipe, if you are keen and brew it let me know how you go!

Twist and Stout
White Stout

OG: 1.060
FG: 1.018
ABV: 5.5%
IBUs: 38.6
EBC: 11.5

22L into fermenter

Mash @ 67ºC
Ferment @ 19ºC

5.00 g Calcium Chloride
5.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter
0.60 kg Barley, Flaked
0.60 kg Oats, Flaked
0.10 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L

15g Apollo [18.50 %] (Boil 60.0 mins)
0.50 Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins)
16g Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] - Boil 0.0 min

1.0 pkg #S-04

160g Coffee (Secondary 7.0 days)
90g Cocoa Nibs (Secondary 7.0 days)

The coffee was Blue Mountain and had been sitting in my freezer for about 8 months!

Cheers!