The Beer League

Here in beautiful Western Mass, it’s supposed to hit the high 40′s, so it is a beautiful day to brew. On tap for today’s brewday is a Chocolate Stout. The recipe is aas follows:

5 gallon batch

9# American 2-row

1# Munich

1# Crystal 60

1# Roasted barley

1# Flaked Oats

1# Flaked barley

1# Chocolate Malt

1# Lactose sugar

.5 oz Magnum hops@60 minutes

.5 oz Magnum hops@10 minutes

1 packet SafAle S-04 English Ale yeast or WhiteLabs WLP002 English Ale Yeast

2 oz cocoa powder in secondary

1 vanilla bean in secondary

OG: 1.075

FG: 1.028

I have all the ingredients together and getting ready to grind the grains. Additionally, I created a starter for the yeast yesterday. I should have started it a couple of days ago, but I figure by the time I pitch today, it will be about 18-20 hours since making the starter. We’ll see how the fermenting plays out…

No disasters during the brewday, although it was quite busy- brewing and cleaning kegs at the same time is pretty tiring. It is now the day after, and fermentation is going a bit crazy- spewing a bit up into the airlock. I have changed the airlock 2 times already.

I have one question from my brewday, however- I checked my OG after adding in the lactose, not prior. Hpw can I calculate the contribution of the lactose? Since lactose is not fermentable, I would think that for an accurate OG I want the number BEFORE the lactose addition. Am I correct?

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