Brewing a stout without roasted barley?

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emoutal

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So winter is here and I figure I should brew up a nice stout. I was thinking something along the lines of this: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/o-flannagain-standard-41072/

I have plenty of grain on hand, but no roasted barley. There is no local place to buy it, and shipping would be killer for only a little roast barley.

I do have some alternatives. I have base grains, crystal malts, other specialty grain and the following:
Weyermann CARAFA SPECIAL 1 (Dark Chocolate)
Weyermann CARAFA SPECIAL III (Black Malt)

From what I've read, these will not give me what I'm looking for in a stout. The black malt will give more of a charcoal flavour than the coffee flavour I'm looking for. The chocolate malt seems like it wouldn't be roasty enough.

Does anybody have any experience brewing a stout without roasted barley? Is it worth it, or should I suck it up and brew something else until I can find some roasted barley?
 
As far as I'm concerned, it's not a stout if it doesn't have roasted. However, that's the great thing about brewing: brew what you like! Hardly any beer I make (with the exception of most of my porters, for some reason) is within guidelines.
 
Chocolate malt, in large amounts (1.5-2 lbs), does impart a pretty significant roasted flavor. I have a chocolate porter with 1.75 lbs chocolate malt that is easily as roasty as a stout.
 
I don't have any unmalted barley, so roasting my own is out.

I think I'll just have to brew other styles until I can get my hands on some roasted barley.
 
Why not just make a heavy porter with a lot of the chocolate malt? If you add enough, I don't think you'll miss the roasted barley.
 
According to Graham Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Real Ale, the Burton Bridge Top Dog Stout uses a bunch of chocolate malt and no roasted barley.
 
well you guys may have changed my mind. I'll look through the recipes and we'll see what comes to mind for the next brew day.

Thanks
 
I'm pretty sure Sierra Nevada uses black patent and no RB for their stout.
 
If you can get your hands on Pearl Barley (at the grocery store), you can roast it yourself. That may be an option.
 
I would just roll with the Carafa Special I. I think it's close enough of a match to work with the rest of the ingredients even if it has a different roast character.
 
I'm in the same boat. No roast and I got SO nailed on customs with my last order, I don't feel like getting raped again at the moment. I have black malt, carafa 2 and chocolate here though and will be making an Imperial Stout.

I say screw the guidelines. I'm not entering it into any competition and am sure those grains will make a fine beer. I suppose it will be more of an Imperial Porter. But it'll taste great nonetheless.
 
Read your style guides and history folks!
Roasted barley is for IRISH stout (i.e. Guinness). There are still plenty of stouts on the market that have no RB.
The most popular account of history (history is rarely exact) is that the term stout came from the different grades of the very popular porter style of beer. The stout was just the strongest on hand. Roasted barley was against the law at the time in England as the tax was collected from the malting process. The use of unmalted grain would be tax evasion. Many methods were used to achieve color and roasted flavor at the time (brown malt, black patent malt-so named as it was a patented method for creating a black malted barley, etc.)
The Irish, of course, were not beholden to England's tax laws, and made a stout with the much cheaper roasted barley. The flavor kind of caught on.:cross:
 
In my experience Black Patent can make a fine stout without roasted barley. The key is to make sure you have enough carbonate in your water, without that buffer it can come out as acrid charcoal. Adding more dark grains like chocolate, carafa, chocolate wheat, pale chocolate, brown malt etc... is a good idea for complexity as well. No the character won't be exactly the same as if you had used roasted barley, but it will still be within the style guidlines for color/flavor/aroma etc...
 
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