Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout (13F) - EXTRACT Homebrew Ingredient Kit

Made this in April, drinking some now for the Christmas Holidays and I think this is better than the store bought Rasputin Beer. My Bud buddyís love it also which is odd for them to like such a big beer. I threw in 3 packs of S-05 yeast and in secondary added 3 cups of Makers Mark soak in medium charred oak cubes for 1 week. Smooth and delicious, Iíve brewed a lot of Stouts in my years in brewing and this is probably the beat one yet. Highly recommend.

I will not give less than 5 stars before I've tasted the finish product, unless there's an issue with instructions or packaging related to the recipe. All seems well, but I warn that you should read the instructions on your yeast well before brew day. Should have either scaled up a starter or double pitched the yeast, but that's on me. 4 stars because with the 4 lb of adjuncts crammed into one grain bag, using the recommended 2 gal of water to steep means 1/4 of your grains are above the liquid. Had I seen this would be the case, I would have split the grains into two grain bags, as I'd like to suggest AHS do for their kit.

This clone tastes like the real thing. Use a blowoff tube for the primary.

When I turned 21 I had picked up Old Rasputin, and I have only ever found it at a Central Market (an upper scale HEB located in Texas). Since it has been approximately a decade since I tried the beer, I still believe I recall exactly how it was (and this one is remarkably similar;) notably the carbonation was not high due to the gravity, and yet because I had control over the fermentation and used a secondary fermenter (which I HIGHLY recommend for this beer) and had a slow fermentation at about 70-75 Fahrenheit over a month fermentation time; it turned out very smooth and was as excellent as the remarkable Russian stout it is cloned after. Though I am new to this homebrew company and have been brewing at intermediate level (all grain, though this was an extract brew to simplify things) for several years and have lived in Texas; this is the one beer of the few that I have tried on here that I would un-doubtably (among the 20+ beers that I have made so far) return to when wanting to recreate a "Russian stout" (basically a British imperial stout style marketed to the Russian Tzar.) This is the best stout I've ever made and I look forward to trying other beer recipes from Austin Home Brew. The Safale-05 is perfectly sufficient, though I also used burton salt (with papain extract) and yeast nutrient, along with RO filtered water with Concentrace extract, which I do for all my beer. No yeast starter necessary though it wouldn't hurt.

this is one of the best stouts I have ever made.