Chicago’s Maplewood Brewery & Distillery has earned a strong reputation among its peers for all its beers, including IPAs and lagers, but perhaps especially for its award-winning stout program. Whether it’s the mid-strength core beer Fat Pug, a milk stout of 5.9 percent ABV, or a higher-gravity entry in the Cuppa series—adjuncted and/or barrel-aged—Maplewood has a knack for building in loads of flavor without losing balance.
In this 98-minute video course, Maplewood’s founding brewer and CEO Adam Cieslak joins head brewer Roger Cuzelis and special projects lead Adam Smith to detail their approach to building these stouts, including:
- desiging grists for stouts of varying strengths
- different base malts for smaller or barrel-aged stouts
- dialing in water and mash pH to buffer the acidity of dark malts
- mash temperatures that balance big body with fermentability
- long boils for stouts small and large
- layering flavors into smaller stouts
- balancing higher-gravity and barrel-aged stouts
- adjusting base stout recipes to balance flavor adjuncts
- aiming for very high starting gravities and getting more from a massive mash
- adding malt extracts and sugars for even more gravity
- managing fermentation to ensure adequate attenuation in big stouts
- barrel-aging, from sourcing barrels to adjusting recipes to aging and blending
- considerations for coffee, vanilla, and various other flavor adjuncts
- ensuring flavor extraction from adjuncts
And more.
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