It’s always a good idea to think ahead, especially when brewing beer, as many styles require several months (even up to a year) of maturing, before they reach their prime. This is especially the case with darker beers and/or beers with a high alcohol content. During maturation, hot and alcoholic tones typically decrease, astringent roasted tones typically become milder, and the flavours as a whole typically blend together better. So what I’m trying to introduce with this post is our next brewday (hopefully tomorrow), during which we will brew an Imperial Stout for next winter. By brewing it now, it will have around 6 months to mature before the first snow falls (hopefully).

The recipe will be pretty much based on the Black Panther Imperial Stout I brewed up in November 2011. Only this time we are brewing up a normal size batch (20 liters) and hopefully won’t have to add any DME to get to the correct original gravity.

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