Help me adjust this stout

Here's the recipe that I'm looking at making this weekend. My goal is a slightly high gravity stout. I was thinking about different hops and maybe using WLP002 for the yeast. And I'm not sure if I need the gypsum, as I don't have a scale to accurately measure it and I don't know if I even really need it.

Any other suggestions?

Amount Item Type % or IBU
3.50 lb Dark Dry Extract (17.5 SRM) Dry Extract 35.90 %
4.00 lb Dark Liquid Extract (17.5 SRM) Extract 41.03 %
0.75 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 7.69 %
0.50 lb Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 5.13 %
0.50 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 5.13 %
0.50 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 5.13 %
2.50 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (60 min) Hops 38.2 IBU
0.50 oz Fuggles [4.50 %] (0 min) Hops -
35.00 gm Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 min) Misc
5.00 gal Denver, Colorado Water
1 Pkgs SafAle English Ale (DCL Yeast #S-04) Yeast-Ale



Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.061 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.016 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.92 %
Bitterness: 38.2 IBU Calories: 260 cal/pint
Est Color: 48.3 SRM Color:

Here's what I would do.

Make all the extract light or pale. Drop the black patent. Bump the roasted barley and chocolate malt to 0.75 lbs. Make the crystal somewhere in the 50-60L range, and maybe make it a full pound.

Make the Fuggles addition no later than 15 minutes, or you will clash. The IBU numbers also do not look right, but I do not have time to run them through a calculator.


TL

Thanks Tex! That's the type of feedback I wanted.

1. Why should I scale back the Crystal to 60l?
2. Why should I go with lighter LME and DME?

I'm aiming for something dark and a bit thick, but not super-duper-eat-with-a-fork-monster-sweet.

"The IBU numbers also do not look right, but I do not have time to run them through a calculator."

And the IBU's are straight out of the beersmith calculator, but it seemed a little odd to me as well. Maybe it's assuming a really low AA?

I make no claim to speak for TL, but I'd like to answer your questions as best I may.

1. 120L Crystal is powerful stuff. Much more than a quarter pound can really overwhelm any beer - including stout - with cloying sweetness and raisin/currant flavors. 60L will add less flavor and increase body.

2. Control. If you use the palest extract you can find fresh, you have greater control over the colors and flavors in the beer, because you'll be adding specialty grains to impact those things.

Extracts, you see, are made by mashing malted grains - the same process all-grain brewers use - and carefully removing water. The more water removed, the more concentrated the extract. Syrups are generally concentrated to 20% water, and dry extracts are, well, dry.

Pale/light extract is usually mashed from pale malt only. Amber and Dark extracts are mashed from pale malts with the addition of specialty grains. Where you lose control with darker extracts is you almost always have no idea how much of what specialty grain the extract producer used to derive his product. With dark extract, for example, one extract producer might use crystal, chocolate and black malts. Another might use only roasted barley. So if you switch extract producers, the beer will probably be completely different.

If you use palt/light extracts as a base, you use specialty grains as building blocks of flavor. You control the flavor and color of the beer instead of the extract producer. You can use the same recipes the all-grain brewers use, substituting pale extract for pale malt.

That's why I agree with TL on your grains. I also urge you to keep the malt bill simple - use pale extract, one type of crystal, and one type of roasted grain (TL suggests two, and I'll leave it up to you to decide). If it were me, I'd use that amount of pale extract, a pound of 60L Crystal, and a pound of Roasted Barley. TL suggests 0.75 pound each of chocolate malt and roasted barley. You can make the call. Now I think on it, if you're looking for dark, rich and complex, TL's mix of chocolate and roasted will work well.

Your hops are completely screwy. 2.5 oz of NB at that AA% will yield, according to ProMash, anywhere between 80 and 100+ IBU, depending on the size of the boil. That's bleedin' insane for any stout not Russian Imperial, which your stout is not. Stout can generally withstand a Gravity Unit (GU) to Bittering Unit (BU) ratio of 1:1. Your stout's OG, also according to ProMash, will be ~1.065; thus, your recipe can probably withstand 65 IBU of bittering hops. That's about an ounce and a half of NB at that AA%.

Hope I made sense!

Cheers,

Bob

8 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 65.31 %
1 lbs Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM) Grain 8.16 %
1 lbs Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 8.16 %
12.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 6.12 %
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 4.08 %
8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 4.08 %

I just brewed this the other day and it is rockin' like a demon! I love it. I also added 8 oz of Cocoa Powder to it and it's so dark/choc/roasty. You'd love it. Just convert to extract and you're golden. Hope this helps.

Eschatz- Thanks for the recipe idea! Did you use any hops at all?

BobNQ3x- WOW. That's awesome. Thanks for the clarification on the pale/dark extracts. Thanks for all the info! I love all the people here who are willing to write small novels to help out new brewers. As far as the screwy hops, my other guess might be that Beersmith is doing some odd calculations based on a 2.5 gal boil, but even then I'd think that 2.5 oz of the NB is a bit high.

Actually the hop rate isn't that off by my calculations. Your boiling gravity will be around 1.114 so your 60min extraction will be around 14 which will give you about 44IBUs for 2.5oz of 8.5% hops. (2.5X8.5X14/6.7=44)

2 oz will get you about 35IBUs.

According to ProMash, the size of the boil doesn't make that much of a difference. With a 2.5 gallon boil I got ~80 IBU; with a full boil the IBU jumped to just over 100!

Your software mileage may vary. Try it in something like The Beer Recipator; maybe that'll kick out something different.

As for the extract descriptions - well, I hate watching people reinvent the wheel. Extracts are proprietary products, and each brand and type do different things in beer. I just pay attention when people talk about them and file away their observations.

Bob

I just went to the LHBS and got the ingredients. I went with 2 oz of Northern Brewer and 1 oz of Fuggles since they sell hops in 1 oz packages. I think I'm going to add the NB at 60 min with .5 oz of the Fuggles at 60 min, and then the last .5 oz of Fuggles at 15 min.

I got pale LME and DME, and WLP002 yeast.
I think I got 1lb of 60l Crystal, .75 lbs of chocolate malt and .5 lbs of roasted barley. (don't have the recipe here with me)

I'll be brewing it up tonight after work; wish me luck!

No one has said anything, but you can drop the Gypsum. And if you don't know why you would be using it, don't use it. Water chemistry is a tricky thing and not to be taken lightly.

Kungpaodog said:

Eschatz- Thanks for the recipe idea! Did you use any hops at all?

Click to expand...

OOPS!
1 oz of Cluster 7 AA at 60
1 oz of EKG 5 AA at 10
and .5 oz of Williamette 5.5 AA at flame out

Sorry bout that...

I'm brewing it right now, and I did drop the gypsum. Just finished bottling my pumpkin red ale. The grains are steeping, and it looks awesomely black. Heheheehe!:rockin:

I just finished brewing this, and after getting everything cleaned up I checked my hydrometer and it read 1.068! This is higher than I was aiming for, but I ended up using less DME and more LME since my brew shop sells bulk LME, and pre-packaged DME. I tried to do the calculations in my head whilr I was at the shop, and I think I went a wee bit high. Anyways, this is the recipe I ended up using:

Amount Item Type % or IBU
3.00 lb Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 30.00 %
4.75 lb Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) Extract 47.50 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 10.00 %
0.75 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 7.50 %
0.50 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 5.00 %
2.00 oz Northern Brewer [7.30 %] (60 min) Hops 25.7 IBU
0.50 oz Fuggles [4.70 %] (60 min) Hops 4.1 IBU
0.50 oz Fuggles [4.70 %] (15 min) Hops 2.1 IBU
5.00 gal Denver, Colorado Water
1 Pkgs English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) Yeast-Ale



Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.062 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.068 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.020 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.52 %
Bitterness: 31.9 IBU Calories: 310 cal/pint

Am I going to have a new paint job on the ceiling over my fermenter tomorrow? I have a 6.5gal plastic bucket with lid and 3 peice airlock. Is it worth trying to set up a blow off tube in the morning, or should I be OK with what I've got?

Just plug the airlock hole - I cover it with a piece of clear tape - and set the lid on loosely. There's no need to seal the bucket.

Cheers,

Bob

BobNQ3X- I was more concerned about a higher OG beer krausening a ton and pushing krausen out the airlock, hence wondering if I need a blowoff tube. Thanks again for all your help and input.

A blowoff tube would definitely be a good idea. I brew beers that are almost always 1.060 or higher, and sometimes I need one, sometimes I don't. Better safe than sorry. I did have one explosion, and while I was sleeping, my wife actually thought something had blown up downstairs, like the furnace! There was beer all over the place.

If you're worried about krauesen lifting the lid, unroll a large garbage bag under the fermenter like you would under a live Xmas tree. If the foam blops out, it'll make a puddle in that for easy cleanup. You don't need to worry about stuff getting back into the fermenter through the foam.

My first pro gig used 12bbl open fermenters. Well, I say "open", but we laid large sheets of clear Plexiglas on top. Foam would ooze out on every batch and make a hell of a mess. There, we could wash it off with a garden hose right down the floor drain. At home you don't really have that option. Thus the garbage bag. Cleaning off the outside of the fermenter is really easy, with a little soaking in Oxyclean for the tougher gunge.

That's why I never seal my Ale Pail fermentations. I sanitize the lid and lay it on loosely. Even with the most vigorous ferments, I've never had much foam ooze out. If you seal it up, it could go "pop". If you just cover it loosely, it'll ooze.

FWIW,

Bob

Bob- thanks again for the tips! I decided to just let 'er ride, and I left the 3 piece airlock on, and after 24 hours it started bubbling away nicely. I haven't seen any krausen coming though the airlock, so I think I'll be OK. My downstairs guest shower is where I store my fermentors and bottles, so if there is any mess it should be easy to clean up (unless it hits the ceiling!)

One last question about this beer and I'll lay it to rest: during the boil the wort kept trying to boil over. I added the LME and DME as soon as I got to full boil, and it wouldn't stop trying to get out of the pot. I finally added the hops after taking it on and off the burner about 25 times, and this helped for a while, but then it kept trying to boil over. I added water about one cup at a time to keep the foam down, and this worked alright, but why was it doing this? Is it normal for such a high OG beer to do this in a partial boil? (by the way, my OG ended up being 1.069)