I am brewing another stout

The mash was

• 1 lb 3 oz pale malt
• 1 lb 4 oz roasted barley

This was done in our caphalon dutch oven, overnight in a 150^oF oven.

Today I sparged it through our large colander into the 5 gallon stock pot. I added

1. 6 lbs Northern Brewer gold malt extract.
2. 1 lb light dry malt extract
3. 1 oz Nugget hops, from our garden

This is the tricky part. I do not know the alpha acid level of these hops. Commercial Nugget hops are rated at 11-13%. I suspect, since this is not a professional hop farm, that ours are somewhat less. For bittering purposes I am treating them like Northern Brewer: 7-9%. This worked out OK in last year’s brew, but the stakes are higher this time: I am using only the homegrown hops–we have a lot in the freezer. In fact, after today I will still have some of the 2006 crop to use, before starting on last year’s. Any local brewers want some hops?

After 30 minutes of boiling I added a second ounce of the hops.

Right now the boil has about 15 minutes to go. When it finishes I will add another 1/2 oz. of the hops for aroma, and 1 gallon of frozen cherries, from the tree in our front yard. After that has cooled on the back porch (this is January in Minnesota) I will pour everything into the fermenter, add water to about 5 1/2 gallons total, and add a package of Wyeast 1098 British ale yeast. According to some authorities I should strain out the hops at this point, but I am just going to wait until I rack it to the secondary fermenter. I have had no trouble with this in past batches, so I will cheerfully take the path of less effort.

Later Edit: The Initial Gravity was 1.057, considerable higher than I expected. I think the cherries contributed significantly to that.