Initiation Imperial Stout

The Craft Society is a new homebrew club by Craft A Brew. In this club Craft A Brew will send you a new extract kit each month. You will not know what the kit is until you open it. Once you sign up you will start getting your kits and you can stop this membership anytime you want. The first kit is Initiation Imperial Stout.

Here is whats in the kit:

7.5 LBs of Pilsen dry malt extract

1 oz Summit hops

2 oz Cascade hops

1 LB Candi Sugar

11 oz Coffee, Cacao, Vanilla & Chile Pepper Blend

Full Kit Overview can be found here

Initiation Imperial Stout Brew Day

With most extract kits your brew day is not going to be long. specialty grains to need to steep for 20 minutes at 155F. Once this is over you can bring the water up to a boil and turn off the heat and add your dry malt extract(DME). Brew day went well. Here in MI we did have cold weather so I could not cool down my wort fast so I did not do a full boil on this as I wanted to use cold water to cool down the wort so my OG was not at the 1.077 as Craft A Brew wanted. My OG was 1.059. Here is the full brew day

Tasting

I think the body is thin on this homebrew because it is an extract batch. With the amount of specialty grain you cant get a thick body. With an extract kit I think it would be hard to get the body up to an Imperial Stout. I did leave the Coffee, Cacao, Vanilla and Chile Pepper Blend in the carboy for 2 weeks. I also soaked the blend in vodka for 1 week. Color is more a dark brown than black. I think this is because its an extract kit and not an all grain kit. In the smell the peppers blend is what stands out followed by the chocolate and coffee. I do get a hint of vodka. Taste is peppers, chocolate and bitter coffee in the front going back into a little bitterness. Body is light after taste is chocolate and coffee. My ABV was 6.11%. This was due to not doing a full boil. This has nothing to do this the grain bill from Craft A Brew. Tasting Video is here.

Overall this is a good kit for anyone that is an extract brewer. The instructions that you get with your are right now. They tell you everything you need to know. Also I like how they label each pack to also tell you when to add them. I think the price is right in line with the rest of the kits Craft A Brew sells. It would be up to you if you think its a good price or not.

You can check out The Craft Society here.