Smoked Vanilla Stout

This is my first all grain recipe. What do you guys think?

Size: 5.04*gal
Efficiency: 80.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 239.67*kcal per 12.0*fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.072 (1.026 - 1.120)
Terminal Gravity: 1.018 (0.995 - 1.035)
Color: 42.88 (1.0 - 50.0)
Alcohol: 7.08% (2.5% - 14.5%)
Bitterness: 61.2 (0.0 - 100.0)

Ingredients:
1.0*ea WYeast 1056 American Ale™
7.0*lb (50.0%) Stout Malt - added during mash
3.0*lb (21.4%) American Chocolate Malt - added during mash
3.0*lb (21.4%) American Caramel 120°L - added during mash
1.0*lb (7.1%) Smoked Malt - added during mash
2*tsp Vanilla (whole bean) - added dry to secondary fermenter
2.0*oz (66.7%) Czech Saaz (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 10.0*m
1.0*oz (33.3%) Magnum (14.5%) - added during boil, boiled 45.0*m

That's a ton of dark malt, this beer would be super astringent and burnt tasting, I think. I would cut it down to a pound each MAXIMUM and cut your smoked malt in half, otherwise it's going to totally overpower your vanilla. Adjust your base grain to get back to the OG you wanted. I would also probably leave out any late addition hops, they'll probably just clash with what you've already got going. The smoke and the vanilla are going to be your main aroma components.

What's "stout malt?" I it is roasted, then it appears you have no base malt. If it is a base malt, which I've never heard of, you've still got way too little. I recommend you go to www.beersmithrecipes.com and research some stout recipes, then redesign from there. This recipe as it is would create an in drinkable beer.

Cheers!

Agree - too much dark malt. Maybe up your base malt a bit a bit and use a pound of roasted barley.

Stout malt is just another base grain, usually british in origin, like MO or golden promise.

daksin said:

Stout malt is just another base grain, usually british in origin, like MO or golden promise.

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Cool. I Bing'd it and found nothing. Tht being the case, I'd cut the roast malt down to not more than 1.25 lbs, the Crystal down to .5-1 lb total, and up the Stout malt to 8-9 lbs.

Brulosopher said:

Cool. I Bing'd it and found nothing. Tht being the case, I'd cut the roast malt down to not more than 1.25 lbs, the Crystal down to .5-1 lb total, and up the Stout malt to 8-9 lbs.

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Oh yes, and the smoked down to 2-4 oz

Thanks for the input everyone. Why is it that I shouldn't use so much dark malt, it is a stout, darkness shouldn't matter. Is it just that using a lot of dark malt will tend to make it more bitter?

Also, I realized that Stone makes a Vanilla Smoked Porter so I want to differentiate a little bit so I added molasses and adjusted according to some of your suggestions. Let me know what you think now.

Original Gravity: 1.072 (1.026 - 1.120)
Terminal Gravity: 1.018 (0.995 - 1.035)
Color: 30.38 (1.0 - 50.0)
Alcohol: 7.09% (2.5% - 14.5%)
Bitterness: 31.9 (0.0 - 100.0)

Ingredients:
1.0*ea WYeast 1056 American Ale™
10.0*lb (75.5%) Stout Malt - added during mash
1.25*lb (9.4%) American Chocolate Malt - added during mash
1*lb (7.5%) American Caramel 120°L - added during mash
.5*lb (3.8%) Smoked Malt - added during mash
.5*lb (3.8%) Molasses - added after boil, steeped 5.0*m
2*Vanilla (whole bean) - added dry to secondary fermenter
2.0*oz (100.0%) Czech Saaz (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 45.0*m

meznaric said:

Thanks for the input everyone. Why is it that I shouldn't use so much dark malt, it is a stout, darkness shouldn't matter. Is it just that using a lot of dark malt will tend to make it more bitter?

Also, I realized that Stone makes a Vanilla Smoked Porter so I want to differentiate a little bit so I added molasses and adjusted according to some of your suggestions. Let me know what you think now.

Original Gravity: 1.072 (1.026 - 1.120)
Terminal Gravity: 1.018 (0.995 - 1.035)
Color: 30.38 (1.0 - 50.0)
Alcohol: 7.09% (2.5% - 14.5%)
Bitterness: 31.9 (0.0 - 100.0)

Ingredients:
1.0*ea WYeast 1056 American Ale™
10.0*lb (75.5%) Stout Malt - added during mash
1.25*lb (9.4%) American Chocolate Malt - added during mash
1*lb (7.5%) American Caramel 120°L - added during mash
.5*lb (3.8%) Smoked Malt - added during mash
.5*lb (3.8%) Molasses - added after boil, steeped 5.0*m
2*Vanilla (whole bean) - added dry to secondary fermenter
2.0*oz (100.0%) Czech Saaz (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 45.0*m

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Using too much roasted malt in a beer would be like using too much salt in a dish- just enough makes it great, too much inedible. Your new recipe will work, but I'd still consider cutting the Chocolate down to .75 lbs, adding .5 lbs Roasted Barley, cutting C120 to .5 lbs, and add .5 lbs of C20-40 for a nice caramel note.

Its only at 27SRM now, it doesn't seem dark enough for a stout

meznaric said:

Its only at 27SRM now, it doesn't seem dark enough for a stout

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Replacing some of the Chocolate with Roasted Barley will get you the color you're after. Either way, 27 SRM is pretty dark.

I recently made a smoked chocolate stout that turned out really well:

Here's the link: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/all-grain-all-grain-chocolate-biscuit-stout-363757/

I'd agree that you had too much dark roasted grain in your original bill. Also, if you aren't making a sweet or an oatmeal stout you usually don't have caramel, at least under BJCP style guidelines. Mine uses 120L so I thought you might find it interesting. I also added chocolate/vanilla/rum (sanitation/a little flavor) so it shares some of the same qualities as yours, at least with the vanilla addition.

I'd disagree with all of the other posters stating to reduce the smoked malt to 2-4 oz. Let me qualify that by adding that smoked malts come in a huge variety of ranges and qualities. My recipe uses 1 pound of peat smoked malt, which is a lot of a really strong smoked malt, but in the stout, it is balanced well with the chocolate [before any of the additions of chocolate etc. I bottled one gallon of the regular beer]. I'm guessing that you are using regular smoked malt, which is much weaker in smoke flavor than peat smoked malt. 2-4 oz. will likely be undetectable. In either case, I think you should ask your LHBS or whatever site you purchased the grain from how strong the smoked malt is and how much they recommend in 5 gallons.

Hope this helps, cheers.

I would totally start with the Stone Vanilla bean smoked porter recipe and then 'stoutify' it to your tastes and dreams. They give you a great target amount for peat-smoked malt, which is tricky. Just up the abv and roast levels to where you want it. Saaz seems like kind of a weird hop for this style as well.

Herky21 said:

I'd disagree with all of the other posters stating to reduce the smoked malt to 2-4 oz. Let me qualify that by adding that smoked malts come in a huge variety of ranges and qualities...

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This.

While I would think 1lb of peat smoked would be more than what you may want (and anywhere from 2-8oz would be closer for peat), 1lb of beech would be pretty subtle. 1lb of cherry smoked malt may be a bit stronger (has more of a campfire-esque taste than beech wood IMHO), but still not overpowering at all. Never used it, but alder wood smoked malts are also commercially available. Not to mention people have smoked their own and reported on boards here with mesquite, oak (Schlenkerla has a great oak-smoked doppelbock), hickory, and a whole plethora of other woods.

Not all smoked malts are equal.