Review My Irish Stout-ish Recipe Please

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

BeerKillLogic

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2011
Messages
79
Reaction score
13
Location
Clearwater
Greetings all!

Just as a background this will be my 3rd homebrew ever. 1st was a pale ale, second was a porter, and now this....

This recipe is not actually that of my own, it started out as the Mill Run Stout by John Palmer in How To Brew. Originally I wanted to do a chocolate stout, but couldn't find a recipe I felt confident in, so I wanted to use his stout. He mentions replacing chocolate malts with either malt in the recipe or adding additionally adding chocolate malt. So I opted to use Chocolate malt in place of roasted barely, so I understand technically speaking this is not a stout.

Also the recipe called for pale malt DME, and my LHBS did not have that so I went with Briess Golden Light DME. Is this the equivalence of pale malt or something different all together?

So with all that said. The recipe is not exact and this will be my first time not following a recipe to the T.

I would like to hear what you guys all think of the recipe and if there is any tweaking I can, or should do. (keeping in mind a trip to the LHBS again is not likely going to happen soon)

What style of beer does this more closely fall into? Porter? Stout? Maybe just a generic dark ale? Who knows...

The recipe:

6.6lbs briess golden light DME
0.5lb crystal 60L malt
0.5 chocolate malt

0.75oz Nugget
1oz Fuggles

White labs WLP004

OG for 5 gallons 1.054
 
A stout really needs roasted barley to be a stout. With chocolate malt, and no roasted grain, it's more of a very dark brown ale, a Northern English brown.

Chocolate malt doesn't taste like chocolate. It's roasty, but not nearly as roasty as roasted barley.
 
Any info about the DME. Is the briess golden light the same as pale malt? Close enough? not even close?

Does the posted recipe seem like it still has potential for goodness?
 
If you want a dry stout I would go with your base + roasted unmalted barley and an adjunct, no crystal malts Mine is 12-16 oz black malts - usually 12 oz roasted barley + 4 oz carafa or black patent or chocolate wheat ( malted,) and 1-2 lbs of flaked something ( barley or wheat.) my preference is for unsweet, dry, roasty but I suppose if you like a sweeter stout you could add crystal. I like Northern brewer as the main hop, often with columbus or summit, sometimes willamette.

Steve
 
Any info about the DME. Is the briess golden light the same as pale malt? Close enough? not even close?

Does the posted recipe seem like it still has potential for goodness?

its pale malt plus a lil carapils

as already stated, its not a stout, but looks like a good brown
 
Alright so yesterday was brew day. I followed the recipe I listed exactly. After aerating the wort back and forth from the fermenter to the brew kettle I topped it off with water to bring the wort up to 5 gallons and mixed real well with a wort paddle for a couple minutes. Took a turkey baster to collect a sample for gravity reading, and my OG which I took when the wort was about 70 degrees read 1.070...

How is this even possible with the above ingredients????
 
it's not, i'd recommend always taking a reading before topping off and calculating what it is at the new volume. as well as you mixed, you likely still didn't mix it well enough

OG2 = OG1*Vol1/Vol2
 
So I could take an OG from my 2.5 gallon wort prior to bringing up to 5 gallons? Should I do this after its cooled, or while its still hot?
 
always chill it, hydrometers lose quite a bit of accuracy over 90F or so even with the corrections.
 
Back
Top