The dark-side..

Another home brew related post today.. I did a style of brew yesterday for the first time. I made a stout (with a twist). Usually stout is made from dark roasted/chocolate malts and has hops added only at the beginning of the boil stage in order to impart a bitter flavour to the beer. I decided that I'd go for a American twist to my stout so I added a bunch of Centennial hops to the end of the boil in order to give a hop forward flavour to the beer; the purists may argue that this is no longer a stout but I'd argue it's simply an "American stout", i.e. in a modern American style. As you can see from the photo it's fermenting right now and I finally think I've figured out my volume issues. I can now reliably fill my fermenting vessel to the top, in fact I don't think I could safely get any more in than this, once the yeast gets to work there's a tendency for the beer to try and leap out due to foaming and release of Carbon Dioxide gas; hence the safety tubing in place (which traps any escaping liquid or foam). It will be a couple of weeks before I bottle this up, and then at least 6 weeks conditioning after that. Let's hope it's worth the wait!