Last weekend I participate in Fuggled’s International Homebrew Project; aimed to get some hombrewer’s together around the world to pick a recipe, brew it and then blog about it

This year’s recipe was a remake of a 1933 Barclay Perkins Milk Stout. Frankly, before this came up, I’d never heard of it; shameful to be sure! Kristen England from the BJCP even offered up an authentic recipe from us to brew! There were some ingredients in the brew day that I’d never used before, so I was a little nervous; plus I was not able to get 2 of the malts listed (amber and brown malts) that I ended up having to toast in my own kitchen! Here’s to homebrewer ingenuity (oh yeah, and the helpful tutorial at The Brewery!!)

Brewday went pretty smoothly, even though I forgot to secure the askets that hold the false bottom of the mash tun in place; we had a frantic ten minutes trying to get the sparge going before we got it unblocked! Phew!!

The new brew system is really making our brewdays into a breeze. The fact that we no longer have to pick up pots to dump stuff out, or have 5 pots of various sizes around in order to boil sparge water or hold wort while we transfer between vessels is a HUGE relief. Brent and I now fight way less on brewday, and can enjoy each other’s company as well as a few brews along the way!

Chuck is as always, extremely helpful in the clean-up of any stray grains or wort. Nary a drop will go to waste in our house!

And, god forbid any ice would go astray from the wort chiller. Chuck makes sure all that ice stays exactly where it’s supposed to!

Being my first attempt at a stout, I’m interested to see how it comes out. At 88% efficiency on the batch, I’m already very excited!

OG: 1.053

FG : 1.024

ABV: 3.7%

Actually think I’m going to pull half of this off tomorrow and throw it on top of some freshly brewed (& cooled) espresso YUM!

Will update more once it’s bottled and I have some tasting notes! Recipe is here.