Mona Lisa 2024 Beer Recipe | All Grain Russian Imperial Stout | Brewer's Friend (2024)

The 2023 version of this beer won a couple silver or bronze medals, and is at this point advancing to national homebrew competition finals. The judges complained about its harshness. I thought it lacked body, depth, and girth/thickness.

This time, we will sub standard DME for wheat DME, and boil it a sh*t ton. Because of work schedule it might be as long as 8 hours.

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4/6/2023
took FG of 1034 after 9 days. fermented pretty fast... this base beer may not be black enough, kinda brown looking. vaguely remember the last batch being that way but maybe forgot since it got blacker once it went into the barrel.

updating OG to 1117 from brew day photos. should be 10.8% currently.

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3/29/2023
brewed last night on igloo and digiboil + induction burner. did a full batch sparge (i mean, filled the igloo all way up) twice and got about 7 gallons of wort. first running was 1078 final runnings was 1060, that all without the DME. there was still more wort in the mash tun that couldve come out, probably couldve pulled more wort for the main batch or at least for a partigyle.

got a little better than 50% efficiency. splitting up the wort def helped, was able to boil off 2 gallons in 2 hours which is more than i usually get with the digiboil.

i used a pretty big slurry of s04 from the fridge from a british golden ale plus two cans of propper starter for a couple days before brew day. it looked like a ton of yeast.

adjusting recipe according to the brew day output. if all goes well it could be above 11%. hoping for bigger body with the carapils and oatmeal.

next time consider adding some wheat malt as well!! possibly wheat DME or LME!!!
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3/26/2023
notes on next batch

question is, to DME or not? will be brewing on digiboil which doesnt boil down so much so maybe it should be in consideration. also consider LME, although they make it annoying at the homebrew store....?

making more mods to the grist, going all out for a thick beer, adding carapils and oats, will try to mash at 156...

changing to english yeast. will probably use slurry from fridge with a starter

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3/26/2023
(notes on previous 2022 batch)
unclear on the notes below. if there was DME added i would estimate 10-11% otherwise probably 9.5%. the body is pretty thin. main issue with this beer is it stayed in the oak barrel way too long it just tastes like harsh wood. shouldve saved some on the side without to wood to evaluate separately.

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???/2022
Reading byo session to imperial article about imperial stou they suggest using brown sugar to get up to gravity I’d consider that. Also they mentioned double mash which I should def do it should def help since last time mash tun was maxed out and really too thick
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5/25/2022
majore lapse in note taking. unclear the OG or abv of this beer. somewhere between 9.5 and 12% smh. The OG on brew day was 1095. however there was 3 lb DME added to the recipe separate from what was already in the grain bill making me think i added it later. correcting the efficiency to 55% for the 1095 OG then adding the DME gives 1.116 down to 1020 making it 12.5% not considering the whiskey.

before today the efficiency was set at 50% not sure if that was corrected after brewday? not sure. leaving it there gives us 1.109 down to 1020 for 11.6%.

maybe i put the 3lb in the recipe just to calculate what it would be but never actually put it in? if thats the case it would be 1095 down to 1020 for 9.4% abv

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2/28/2022
Measured 1020 FG ...could that be right? That would be 80% attenuation for 11.6%. Its pretty brown and not black. Maybe there is more volume in there than I have here in recipe

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2/18/2022
considering adding LME to boost grav...(thinking LME instead of DME might be easier to work with),...adjusted volume and turned up the projected attenuation

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2/16/2022
last minute pulling out the oats. worried about stuck mash and wont be able to babysit....

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2/15/2022
got water report updating to that, looks like ph will be a little high so adding a little phosphoric acid.

thinking about mash. G40 is 11 gal in mash so we'll go 1 qt/lb mash thickness on 28 lbs grain. adding a line for DME in case we go to that later.

looks like it will be a little over 7 gallons strike water and 5 gallons sparge water.

pitching 1 jar of RVA 101 into almost a gallon of 1040 starter wort 2 days before. no stir plate.

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2/8/2022
wondering if this will all fit in the GF. could possibly do it all in the cooler or split between the two.

thinking about setting this up early in the day to mash during work and have it boil for 3 hours while i do dinner/bedtimes. setup the GF in the driveway if possible - will be a lot of steam.

see big beer schedule https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gaWvnYevKP9I8mmRzW54MrnqfOVuWlsOEhzyezW-kaY/edit#gid=0

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1/16/2022
adding notes to sparge strategy to try to achieve decent efficiency.
adjusting yeast - use rva 132 plus 3L starter

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12/1/2021

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11/2/2021
this brew came out tasting funky again. submitted to JRHB dominion cup they said umami and i think that is correct. This is the third time this has happened to varying degrees, I previously thought it might be bad ingredients but I think hothead and/or too much roasted malt is to blame...

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5/1/21
Not sure what happened only came to 1.100 OG even after the 2 hour boil and DMe. It was 1075 before the DME.

Last minute adding 2 lb base malt and reducing DME. Gonna play by ear how much dme to add
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4/30/21
booting this back up for big brew day with ryan tomorrow. we are doing two 5 gallon mash sparges into my 15 gallon kettle to boil all at once so that could change things. im expecting better efficiency even without the dry malt extract. plan to boil 90 minutes, check gravity, then potentially add 3 or 6 lbs total DME for the 10 gallon batch. i think we will need 14 gallons to start, boil down to 11 or 11.5, leave 1 behind for trub.
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5/25/2020
FG 1.036 (cold sample)
appears the starter wasnt necessary and didnt do anything anyway. Hit an official 10%
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5/11/2020
SG 1.036 - made a 2x starter from a new hothead pack and tossed half of it into the batch.
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5/2/2020
SG 1.041
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4/27/2020
SG 1.045 fermented like crazy the first couple days just off the kveik pack no starter.
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4/16/2020
brew day. Idk what just happened I hit 1.112 and high volume really, couldnt tell exact because of the foam but maybe it was only 5. I guess eff prob goes up if u add a lot of DME. This could be disaster or awesome
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4/15/2020
just changing the batch size from 6.5 down to 5.5 and taking the 2row down from 15lb to 12lb to still arrive at 10%. considering using kviek yeast for this....

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3/24/2020
revamping this for another attempt. shamefully adding dme and predicting over 70 eff to land at 10%. other than that no real changes. worried it might be too bitter hoppy? would like to NOT split the batch and just do 2 vanilla beans. bourbon oak would be nice but i feel that the failure of the last batch was from trying to do too much at once.
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9/30/19
brewed this on the road, came out with more than 6 gallons at 1.080 which was a mistake shouldve boiled longer. also used some old hops which may be putting off strange flavors.

9/23/19
base recipe is Stone RIS clone found in byo magazine. recipe is scant, and doesnt really add up : https://byo.com/recipe/stone-imperial-russian-stout-clone/ . posted recipe is for 65% efficiency so actually less efficient than my system but i added a pound more base malt anyway to try to get over 10%abv. yeast is a little unclear wlp002 listed 65-70% attenuation so we will have to be perfect and hit 70% to get over 10%abv. but then this amounts to 1030 FG, recipe is listed at 1020. could use wlp007 english dry ale if hittin FG was a concern but i think extra sweetness in this beer is going to be ok.

==========MISC NOTES=============
mona lisa stout

ORANGE
austin homebrew
http://austinhomebrew.com/assets/images/RCPPDF/09611.pdf
1/4oz bitter
1/2oz sweet

https://brewgr.com/recipe/59297/chocolate-orange-stout-oatmeal-stout-recipe
fresh orange peel and juice
(essentially a whole orange)

mrbeer
https://www.mrbeer.com/barleys-brew-chocolate-orange-stout
4oz bakers unsweetened chocolate
2 medium oranges
take off the skins but not too much pith
they soak skins in 1/2 cup vodka, adding allof it
maybe use a thin glass so the vodka covers more

final thoughts
use the brewers peel sweet and bitter, soak in vodka with vanilla bean
use thin glass
add the whole thing
optional : plus the orange juice

CHERRY
austin homebrew
http://austinhomebrew.com/assets/images/RCPPDF/02071.pdf
cherry flavoring

AHA
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/choc-full-o-cherry-porter/
frozen sour cherries

HBT
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/chocolate-cherry-stout.326884/
cherry juice concentrate
might be better in reducing sugar and other flavors....

final stand
a) i guess prob just use frozen cherries. not sour! sweet/dark any other kind than sour
b) cherry juice concentrate? how sour?
Dark cherries. Aha recipe calls for 5 to 10 lb per 10 gal batch. I think I will go with 5. For split batch 3.333