Please critique this Stout Recipe.

A buddy of mine put this together and we're both still new to brewing so I thought I'd throw it up on here so for more experienced people to comment on. That way we don't find out the hard way that some aspect of the recipe won't work. Here it is:

8 oz. Cacao Nibs
1 lb. Black Barley, Roasted Malt, Chocolate Malt
6 lbs. Sparkling Amber Extract
1.5 oz. Columbus
.5 oz. Nugget
WLP013 London Ale Yeast
WLP715 Champagne Yeast
1.5 lbs. Dark Belgian Candi Sugar

Boil water and steep Black Barley, Roasted Malt, and Chocolate Malt for 30 minutes.
Crack Nibs and add to steep for 20 minutes, add Sparkling Amber Malt Extract.
Add 1 oz. of the Columbus, boil for 10 minutes.
Finish with .5 oz. Nugget and .5 Columbus.
Boil for 30 minutes.
Fill Carboy half way with potable water, add wort, pitch yeast at 65F
Secondary Fermentation:
Switch to secondary fermenter add Belgian Candi Sugar pitch Champagne Yeast at 70 - 75F

OG:1.198 FG:1.079 SRM:210 IBUs:161 estABV:12% - 15%

What size batch is this? There's no way your going to get an OG of 1.198 with only 6lbs of extract and 1.5 pounds of candi sugar.

You also have a ton of roasted malts in there and your IBUs are off the charts. This beer would be extremely bitter and roasty without the malt to balance it with how the recipe is now.

Is that a pound each of the black, roasted, and chocolate malts? If so, way way too much. I'd cut out the black completely and half or quarter the chocolate. A pound of roasted barley is good though.

I also don't think steeping the nibs is going to do you much good. You could add them to the boil, but I think that would extract too much astringency. I'd add them to a secondary for a week or so to extract the flavor without the bitterness.

I agree too that 161 IBUs is off the chart. For something like this I'd shoot for maybe 40-50. If you really wanted to go up to 80 you could probably get away with it, but that would be my absolute max I'd even consider.

Also, there should be no need to add any champagne yeast to the secondary. There will be plenty of yeast left over from primary fermentation to eat up any sugars you add later.

It's a 5 gallon batch and I'm glad we threw it up on here for input. Thanks guys. I think the plan to add the Candi and the champagne yeast when transferring to the secondary is to get that 12-15% ABV so I'm assuming you're saying that's not necessary.

What kind of stout? If this is an Imperial (which would be in line with your OG num) then your IBU could be 100ish. Still 168 seems tongue blistering and the malt isn't in the ranges for a Imp stout either.

If you're just steeping the 3lbs of malt, all you've got for fermentables is the sugar and the amber extract, in which case, in 5g, your OG should be 1.066.


Theres something screwey in the way you put this into whatever system you're using. They only way I can get OG anywhere near that high is if I drop it down to 2g, and include the 3lbs of specialty malts as fermentables.

Didn't notice it before, but your OG is no where close to accurate - even if you mashed all your grains. How did you do these calculations?

Adding the candi sugar will add some fermentables, but no where near enough to get you to 12-14% ABV. And if you added enough to get you there, I imagine you'd end up with nothing better than a thin rocket fuel that you wouldn't want to drink. If you are shooting for an ABV of 10%+ you're going to need to add a lot more malt extract (or do a mash, but from the sounds of it, you aren't set up for that). I suppose if you are shooting for a 14% beer, you may need to add some additional yeast to get it there. However, a beer this big is going to take a lot of babying to keep the yeast happy and healthy all the way through. You might consider starting with something closer to the 10% range - easier to do and just about any yeast can handle that (I've made a few 10% barley wines without adding any additional yeast - just pitch a nice, big healthy starter)

i would suggest putting the nibs in secondary and allow the alcohol to extract the flavor, i would be concerned that the oils or cocoa butter would get pulled from the nips at steeping temps and that would kill any sort of head retention. i would also hold off on the Champagne Yeast unless you absolutely need it.

Synovia said:

Theres something screwey in the way you put this into whatever system you're using. They only way I can get OG anywhere near that high is if I drop it down to 2g, and include the 3lbs of specialty malts as fermentables.

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Same with the IBUs. No idea how you got 161 IBUs from what sounds like a 10 or maybe 40min boil.

+1 on what medium said. when I boiled nibs it totally killed my head retention

My buddy put this recipe together and I don't know how he got his OG and IBU measures. We are shooting for an imperial stout type, how much malt would we need then for a 10% ABV? Any ideas on how many IBUs it should come out to? Does the amount of nibs sound good to you guys for putting in the secondary?

A beer that starts at 1.100 and ends at 1.025 would be just under 10% ABV. Maybe you don't get 75% attenuation (although you do have sugar and champagne yeast), so you'd need a little higher OG.

An OG of 1.100 is something like 12 lbs LME and 2 lbs sugar. The IBUs need to be up in the 70-90 range, or thereabouts.

oh just noticed something else with this, do not steep the grains at boiling water temperatures. You want to steep around 150F. if you go above 170F you can extract tannins.

The directions are a little unclear, so I'm gunna guess this is what its meant to be:
steep grains for 30mins in 3gallons at around 155F
Remove grains, add extract and bring to boil
add 1oz of Columbus, boil for 60mins, then at flameout add remaining hops
cool, top to 5gallons, pitch yeast, etc
If that's right, with the current recipe you're looking at like 27IBUs (if that amber is DME).

All that dark malts seems like a lot, but supposedly Great Divides Yeti uses about 12oz each of all 3. So if you wanted, you could probably do 1lb of each, but I'd swap to something like 6lbs of light DME and 3lbs of amber DME if thats the case (gives about 10%ABV). You'll probably want to add half the extract towards the end of the boil to help with hop utilization as well. This will most likely end up with a high FG so you may want to switch to a higher attenuating yeast like Fermentis S-05 as well.

on a big beer like this i would either pitch 2 vials of what ever yeast strain or make a big starter...either way it will ferment vigorously and you should use a blow off, even if you think you have enough head space. you might want to check out John Palmers HOW TO BREW website his first edition is completely free online and is a fantastic resource.(but this website is good too)

We've been brewing using Papazian's books New Joy of Homebrewing and another one I don't have with me now and I forget the name. In the extract recipes there he has you steep the specialty grains until you acquire a boil then remove them so we probably would have used that method although next time I plan to go by your recommendations dcp27. I already know from experience a blow off tube is necessary even w/ our brown ale that came out to about 4 or so ABV (still need to get a hydrometer so that's an uneducated guess). That blew off about 20+ ozs in 12 hours using Safale-S04. I'll def. check that How to Brew extra, thanks. When I get a chance I'll post up a revised recipe from all of your suggestions and see what you guys think. Thanks again everyone for the help.

Good luck with your brewday! Let us know how it turns out.

durbanpoison said:

We've been brewing using Papazian's books New Joy of Homebrewing and another one I don't have with me now and I forget the name. In the extract recipes there he has you steep the specialty grains until you acquire a boil then remove them so we probably would have used that method although next time I plan to go by your recommendations dcp27. I already know from experience a blow off tube is necessary even w/ our brown ale that came out to about 4 or so ABV (still need to get a hydrometer so that's an uneducated guess). That blew off about 20+ ozs in 12 hours using Safale-S04. I'll def. check that How to Brew extra, thanks. When I get a chance I'll post up a revised recipe from all of your suggestions and see what you guys think. Thanks again everyone for the help.

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This is the beauty of this site. We were all new to this at some point and are happy to help where we can. I learn something new everytime I log on. Keep the questions and revised recipes coming.