The Highwayman - American Stout

This is for BIAB. Adjust to your personal equipment. 8oz unsweetened cocoa powder. Vanilla bean should be soaked in 4oz. of vodka for a week before adding (split and scraped) into the fermenter using a muslin bag (boil the bag for 15 minutes 5 minutes before adding to fermenter) after primary is complete. The tincture of vanilla vodka can be added with no noticeable change in flavor other than the vanilla flavor. You won’t taste vodka. Check for taste preference after 4 days. Aseptic cherry puree added 3 days prior to packaging. 8.8 gallons of strike water @165f. should give you 156f of mash-in temp. (adjust according to your equipment). Mash-in for 60 minutes. Boil for 60. Fermentation temps (I'm using a SS conical fermenter which means no transfer to secondary for priming sugars.) should be set for 65-68f consistently for the duration of 2 weeks or until your hydrometer has the lowest consistent reading. For bucket brewing use the normal transfer to secondary with priming sugar. For spunding I used blowoff for the first 4 days of primary and switched to spunding valve and used it as an airlock. Day 12 I used the spunding valve set to 8psi and dropped the temperature to 50f for 1.7VOLS.
All salt additions go into the strike water before the grains. If possible, use a yeast starter to achieve the ABV. as dry pitch may result in a sluggish fermentation due to the high sugars for the grain bill or pitch 2 packets.