Imperial chocolate milk stout recipe input

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4traindays

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Im wanting to make an imperial milk stout with chocolate, saw a few recipes online that gave me some ideas. Heres what ive come up with, its kinda a combination of two recipes that Ive seen. Any input/advice/changes would be greatly appreciated, as I am pretty new to home brewing. This would be my 5th batch! Thanks.

.25lb extra dark crystal
.75lb pale chocolate malt
8 lbs dark LME
1 lb Lactose
1oz cluster bittering
1oz cluster aroma
4oz cacoa nibs

I was also thinking about adding some cold pressed coffee into the secondary.

What should the OG/FG numbers come it at? also how long would be ideal for primary/secondary/ and bottle conditioning? thoughts on yeast to use?
 
If you brew it that way, my calculator shows OG 1.075, FG 1.021, ABV 7%. Increasing the bittering hops to 2 ounces would increase IBU to 35. 3 ounces of Cluster at 60 minutes gives 47 IBUs.

The guidelines for R.I.S. call for 50 to 90 IBUs, so I suggest more hops than your proposed recipe, but you can control the bitterness to your liking. If I were brewing this recipe, I would probably use about 2.5 ounces of Cluster for roughly 41 IBU. This is lower than "style" calls for, but I don't prefer overly bitter beer.
 
thanks for the response, and the calculations. So you'd bump up bittering to 2.5, and leave aroma at 1.0? at a og of 1.075 would it be necessary/recommended to pitch double the amount of yeast? Would you add the entire amount of LME and lactose at the beginning of the boil, or save some LME for later on in the boil?
 
I would probably pitch 2 packs of US-05 or S-04. At 1.075, it would be a good idea to use 2 packs of dry yeast. If you choose to use liquid yeast, a large starter would be a good idea. MrMalty.com has yeast calculators to help you determine the size yeast starter you would need for liquid yeast.

Since it is a dark beer, there is no reason to save some of the extract for a late addition. Adding extract late in the boil keeps beer color lighter and avoids carmelizing the wort. NO need to avoid darkening or carmelizing a R.I.S.

I calculated the IBUs based on a full, 5 gallon boil. If you do not have a pot large enough for a full boil, then let me know your boil volume, and I will see if we need to adjust the hops quantity to keep the correct bitterness. Smaller kettles cause less "hops utilization". This means we may need to add more hops at 60 minutes if you use a smaller pot to make the beer turn out the same way.
 
I just purchased an outdoor propane burner to boil a larger volume, but I do not yet have a full volume size pot. I most likely will boil 3.5 gallons then top off with cold h2o to 5 gallons in my primary. What additional hop usage would you recommend for this size boil? I appreciate your advice. Thanks
 
I just realized that I calculated the recipe with DRY malt extract, and you had specified LIQUID malt extract. This changes the calculations quite a bit. Would you like me to recalculate the recipe for LIQUID malt extract, or would you like to continue with the adjustments for DRY extract. Dry extract is more fermentable, so we would need 10 pounds of liquid extract to equal the gravity numbers I quoted for dry extract.

Tell me which way you prefer to go, and I will post the final version of my suggested recipe.
 
I'm open to using Dme or Lme, no preference. If dry is how you've come up with the numbers, then ill stick with that. How would your suggested recipe look? Thanks again got your assistance.
 
It would be...

8 pounds dark DRY extract.
2.5 ounces cluster at 60.
1 ounce cluster at 15.
Add lactose at 15.
US-05 yeast (2 packets)
Ferment at 65 2-3 weeks (no secondary)
bottle with 4 ounces corn sugar.
Bottle condition 3 weeks at 70-72.

This is how I would make this recipe if I was doing it. It comes out to OG 1.075, FG 1.021, 44 IBU, 7.1 ABV.

Each ounce of cluster at 60 minutes is good for about about 14 IBU. That means you can adjust the bitterness to your liking by adding or subtracting hops as you desire. Increase to 3 ounces at 60 and you are up to about 51 IBU. Decreasing bittering hops to 2 ounces loses IBU to roughly 37, and so on.

I do not have much experience with lactose so I do not know how much the added sweetness will reduce the perceived bitterness. You may want a few extra IBUsto make up for that sweetness, or not.
 
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