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. 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.