Infinite Door Ale

Author David Foster Wallace died last fall. He would have been 47 years old this Feb. 21st, so to honor his life and inspirational work, I decided to gather a few friends together on the 21st and brew up an Imperial Stout titled the Infinite Door. Aqua took some nice photos; check them out here. We did some random readings from various DFW books. I worked out a dice rolling system that told you what book to read from and what page to begin on. As it ended up, most of the readings ended up falling on Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (which was recently adapted into a film, which I think first showed at this year's Sundance Festival).

This was the first time I have ever used a yeast "starter". I generally just pitch straight from the vial (which is how you buy it), but this time, knowing it was going to be a fairly heavy brew, I wanted to guarantee that I was pitching enough yeast to get the job done, so a good day and a half before brewing, I prepared a small wort and got the yeast excited and multiplying.

This was probably the messiest beer I've done as well. I tried to abide by the 2 quarts of water per 1 lb. of grain for my mini-mash, which was slightly idiotic as my mini-mash pot is only a little over 2 gallons capacity, so when I dumped the grains in, it was a bit of a problem, but I just let some of it overflow, cut the flame, put the lid on and put a towel on top to trap the heat.

The sparge was when it got truly messy. Here I am recirculating the first runnings.

Shot of boil...

My past few beers have been experiments with spice, to some degree, so this time, I decided to hold back, and added only a few spices, at extremely low volume. Small amounts of Nutmeg, All Spice, Cardamom, and one Star Anise pod.

Some reason I cant get this photo to stand up straight. Here the wort is cooling in the tub.

Pulled a sample before pitching the yeast, Original Gravity of 1.078. Not quite as heavy as I had anticipated, but good enough. My biggest beer yet.

On the 8th day of fermentation it was racked. Final Gravity of around 1.019. Attenuation of about 75.6%. Really good for the White Labs Edinburgh Ale yeast I used. 7.8% alcohol/vol.

As mentioned in my Oak Aging post, back on 12/09/08, I had put some toasted American Oak chips on some Knob Creek bourbon. Here are the chips before I drained them off the bourbon and added them to a baggy to soak in the secondary.

I ended up having some of the bourbon. It was interesting to taste. Extremely oaky, which in someways comes off as peppery. It tasted good.

Here was a sample of the Infinite Door a few days before bottling. The bourbon/oak was very subtle, but definitely there. I think this is going to be a good one.

Infinite Door Stout

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Malts/Sugars

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8 lbs. Pilsen Malt Extract Syrup (Most before boil/Rest at 15 min)

2 lbs. Two-Row*

.5 lb. Crystal 60L*

.5 lb. Crystal 90L*

.25 lb. Chocolate Malt*

.25 lb. Special B*

.25 lb. Roasted Barley*

.25 lb. Black Patent*

1 lb. Dark Candi Sugar (rocks)

Hops

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1 oz Styrian Aurora 7.6% (60 min)

2 oz Cascade 6.3/7.1% (60/30 mins respectively)

1 oz Fuggles 4.6% (30 min)

Yeast

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White Labs Edinburgh Scottish Ale (WLP028)

Other

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Whirlfloc tablet (15 min)

Servomyces yeast nutrient capsule (10 min)

1/8 tsp Nutmeg

1/8 tsp All Spice

1/8 tsp Cardamom

1 pod of Star Anise

Mini-mash (*) grains went into water around 160 degrees, so one step mash around 157 or so for an hour. Sparge water around 170. Mixed in most of the malt extract (though not all) before bringing to boil. 1/2 Candi Sugar at 30 min, and half at 10 min. Spices went in at flame out. Otherwise as scheduled above. 60 minute boil.

Brewed on Sat, Feb 21

Racked on Sun, Mar 1

Oaked on Sat, Mar 7

Bottled on Tue, Mar 17 (St. Patrick's Day)