PenSans Black & Roasty is brewed to be a clone of the epitomy of dry Irish stouts, namely Guinness. OK, so Guinness make something like 19 different versions around the world but the essence is the same . . . a well balanced meal in a glass !
This home made version uses a very basic recipe of 90% pale malt and 10% roast barley. There's talk of Guinness using flaked barley in their recipe but this probably has as much to do with cost saving as anything else so I didn't feel bound by it. Certainly for purposes of experimenting with a new brew I decided to leave it out and just see what the results were.
Guinness also have a unique process, the roots of which go back centuries, in which they (may) add about a 4% portion of an intentionally soured & pasteurised sample of Guinness back into their brew. Again, I decided to omit this for the sake of simplicity. I did say I wanted my own version of a dry Irish stout didn't I ?!
Key to a dry Irish stout over other similar beers (say porter, sweet stout, milk stout etc) is that the black malt is replaced by 'roasted barley'. This is barley that has not been malted and then gets roasted. Somewhere, deep in the mists of brewing time, I found some advice on making your own roast barley and I describe on the recipe page how I did it. You may find this info useful because I have managed to botch at least one attempt at making roast barley, the first attempt leaving me with a yellow coloured Guinness . . . so I have at least set some lower limits on the roasting schedule and have also been forced to develop some means to test the development of the roasting effect as it roasts.
This particular brew I eventually called 'PenSans Black & Roasty' because I couldn't think of anything better to name it ! I experimented with a few names before realising that if I were to tell you anything at all about this beer that differentiates it from any others, well, its black and roasty !
I carbonate in stainless steel kegs with a 60% CO2 / 40% Nitrogen mix and dispense it with a Guinness type sparkler tap, in which the beer is forced to go through a small plate that contains 5 tiny holes. For those of you familiar with the Venturi effect, if a liquid races through a sudden constriction it suddenly moves much faster, causing a pressure drop in the surroundings. This pressure drop causes the dissolved gases to 'crash' out of solution, creating that deliciously rich foam that seems to settle from the bottom of the glass upwards. To see this happening in a glass of your own Black & Roasty Dry Irish Stout has got to be one of the high points in my brewing history ! To brew your own . . read on !
Oh and by the way, I created the logo above using a picture of the first pint I poured, coincidentally into a genuine Guinness glass !!
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