
Craft Beer & Brewing Course
Brewing Black is Beautiful Imperial Stout with Weathered Souls
In this video course—which we have made freely available to all—Baskerville breaks down his approach to brewing Black Is Beautiful and other imperial stouts
Free — no subscription needed
The Black Is Beautiful initiative has made a difference. In 2020, more than 1,200 breweries in all 50 states and 22 countries participated in the open-source collaboration to raise funds and awareness for diversity and racial justice—a cooperative effort without any known precedent. However, even before that project took on a life of its own, Weathered Souls cofounder and head brewer Baskerville already had a strong reputation among fellow brewers and Texas drinkers for his characterful imperial stouts and other beers.
In this 68-minute video course—which we at Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® have made freely available to all—Baskerville breaks down his approach to brewing Black Is Beautiful and other imperial stouts, including:
- Designing imperial stouts with balance in mind
- Constructing a grain bill for complexity and body
- Tips on mashing in, lautering, and sparging heavy stout mashes
- Kettle caramelization, long boils, and hop additions
- Managing high-gravity fermentations with oxygen, yeast, and nutrients
- Choosing your flavor adjuncts, and how and when to add them
- Barrel-aging imperial stouts
And much more, including recipes from Baskerville himself.
Course contents
5 chapters, 21 lessons, 1h 8m of video
Chapter 1
Welcome
Chapter 2
Brewing Black is Beautiful (and Other Imperial Stouts)
- Finding Balance in Stout Recipe Development2:12
- Constructing the Malt Bill + Mashing In11:15
- Learning Lab: The Heart of Darkness—Exploring Dark Malts
- Sparging & a Long Boil11:34
- Getting Deeper with Malt: Kettle Caramelization
- Hopping Your Stout0:37
- Building Stouts with Balance in Mind4:37
- More Perspectives: Bulk Up! Brad Clark of Private Press on Building Stouts with Bigger Body
Chapter 3
Fermentation + Making it Your Own
Chapter 4
Last Words & Thanks
Chapter 5
Appendix: Supplementary Materials
What students say
The course teaches not only how to brew stunning Imperial Stouts, but also tells us how inclusive beer should be to everyone! Loving it!
Very thorough explanation of the process and great ideas on things that will help me brew better stouts. My first one after watching just a portion of this class turned out amazing!
Seems like a really solid approach to brewing big high gravity stouts. I even liked the main narrator's repetition, it helped lock in the points that he was talking about. I think I picked up a couple of techniques I'd like to try.