Breakfast Stout

On this edition of Me and the Homebrews, WBN makes Northern Brewer's Breakfast Stout.

Stout is a heavy ale, usually black in color, low in alcohol, high in satisfaction for a cold winter's day. It's the beer that eats like a meal.

Beer for breakfast? This smooth, low alcohol stout is good for lunch and dinner too. If we had to pin it down, it's a cross between an oatmeal stout (a high proportion of flaked oats creates a silky texture) and a sweet stout (lactose gives sweetness and a full body) with the coffee-like flavor of roasted barley. A buttery note from the yeast completes the impression of a complete meal in a glass.

Oh, yeah. Most unfermented beer smells and tastes kinda funny before the yeast get in there and convert all the sugars to alcohol. In this case, the wort smelled wonderful -- like roast coffee and a big bowl of oatmeal, and there definitely is more than a hint of chocolate on the palate.

The best part is it only takes 4 weeks to make!

O.G. 1.033
F.G.  1.015
ABV 2.23%

With an alcohol content that low, you can drink twice as much. Your taste buds will thank you, even if your waistline doesn't.

Something different we're trying this time: keg conditioning. Normally we put all 5 gallons in the keg and force carbonate so we can drink it sooner. This time we put the priming sugar in the keg with the beer and set it aside (not in the fridge) in order to rouse the yeast into making the bubbles for us. Think of it as a giant bottle of beer.  Natural fermentation usually leads to a "softer" carbonation which doesn't suffer from undissolved CO2 bitterness.