Snake River Stout

I sense a pattern in my blogging and brewing - apparently the late fall and early winter are not great for me. It makes sense given this time of year is particularly busy for me - between my teaching schedule, the kids' various activities, and the holidays. Still, I always have big plans to brew up a few batches during this time, when the weather is pretty much perfect for brewing. I should learn that I just need to take a month or two off and pick things up in January when I have more time (before the rush of the Spring semester starts). Anywho...

Last week I finally got around to brewing a recipe for my version of the massively award-winning Zonker Stout from the Snake River Brewery (Jackson, WY). I was at the brewery a few times this summer while on family vacation to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks. Excellent beer and excellent food. My wife and I were particularly impressed with Zonker Stout - one of the most balanced, tasty stouts we've ever had. I asked the waitress if the brewers ever gave out recipes, but she told me, emphatically, that they did not. Oh well...worth a try, right? Still, undeterred, I emailed the brewery when I returned home from the vacation. Much to my surprise, one of the brewers, Chris Erickson, emailed me back...not just with a recipe, but with their own excel spreadsheet with EVERYTHING you could possibly want to know, but don't need at the homebrew scale. Like "Heat Exchanger Cleaning...Caustic Strength 2-3%...circulation time 1 hour". And, "Water Flow Rate (gal/min)...107.1". How spectacular is that!?!?! I even had a few questions about the recipe that I couldn't quite glean the answers from the spreadsheet and Chris was nice enough to answer them all. So much for not sharing the recipe!

I had hoped to brew this back in the September or October, but it should make a nice late winter/early spring beer. I tweaked some of the grain amounts a little to fit my scaled-down version and still hit the OG I was looking for and used Maris Otter as my base instead of American pale ale malt (not actually sure why I went with this now that I'm looking back at the recipe Chris sent).

Snake River Stout
brewed on 1/17/13

Recipe Specifications
Batch Size: 3.75 gal
Estimated Color: 58.2 SRM
Estimated IBU: 41.4 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
OG: 1.062 SG
FG: 1.022
ABV: 5.3%

Grist
6 lbs 8.0 oz Pale Malt, Maris Otter - 73.8%
12.0 oz Roasted Barley - 8.5%
8.0 oz Caraamber (36L) - 5.7%
8.0 oz Dark Crystal (150L) - 5.7%
6.0 oz Chocolate Malt (475L) - 4.3%
3.0 oz Black Malt - 2.1%

Hops
15 g Centennial [9.9 %] - 60 min
6 g Tettnang [3.5 %] - 30 min
6 g Tettnang [3.5 %] - 15 min
3 g EKG [4.5 %] - 15 min
9 g EKG [4.5 %] - 1 min
6 g Tettnang [3.5 %] - 1 min

Yeast
California Ale (White Labs #WLP001)

Mash Schedule
Single Infusion, 152ºF, batch sparge