Stout Recipe: Comments?

I'm planning my first stout, an Oatmeal Stout using Golden Promise as the base malt, a touch of Munich for maltiness, a touch of Carafoam for head retention. Do y'all have any thoughts about my recipe?

Batch Size: 5.8 gallons
Expected OG: 1.053 (78% efficiency)
FG: 1.013
Yeast: WLP007, English Dry
Color: 33L
ABV: 5.3%

% LB OZ MALT OR FERMENTABLE PPG °L
67% 8 0 Golden Promise 32 2
8% 1 0 Munich Malt 37 9
8% 1 0 Flaked Oats 33 2
8% 1 0 Carafoam 33 2
4% 0 8 Chocolate Malt 34 500
4% 0 8 Black Barley (Stout) 25 500
12 0 TOTAL GRAIN BILL

Irish Moss @ 15min

Hops: 1oz Nugget leaf (13%AA), 60 minutes

IBU's might be a tad over style guidelines at that... it hits over 40, though just.

I am not familiar with GP as a base malt. I would love to sample some of that!

Yeah, on Hopville, the IBUs are at 34.9, but I may back it off to 0.75oz of Nugget. These are home-grown Nuggets from a friend, so it's actually hard to tell where the AA% is on the particular hops, but there's no question that I don't want a lot of hop character, just the bitterness in the background.

This'll be my first time using Golden Promise, as well. It sounds like it'll be malty and good.

I see a lot of people using hopville leave the boil volume at 3 gallons.

I usually set it for a 6.5 gallon boil. I get 34.9 IBUs when set to "Average" calculation on Hopville. It must be in the calculation method - there are several options:

Tinseth: 40.2
Rager: 52.1
Garetz: 44.9
Hopville: 37.2
Average: 34.9

Which really makes you wonder what "Average" means, if all of the numbers of the individual methods are well above the "average"!

So I'll back it off to 0.75oz, and that puts me squarely in the mid-30s on IBUs.

Thanks for the feedback!

I never noticed that. I have made some beers that I thought were more bitter that it showed. I put in the boil volume as all my runnings and the seemed to help. I also have tended to shoot on the low side of IBUs most of the time. I think just being used to one formula is more important then it's accuracy.

You don't need the carafoam, although it won't hurt

Your recipe is much like my https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/irish-owl-dry-stout-58364/ that I'm drinking right now. For the latest batch I subed flaked oats for the flaked barley and it may be the best, easiest drinking stout I've had in a loooooooooooooooooooong time.

niquejim said:

You don't need the carafoam, although it won't hurt

Your recipe is much like my https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/irish-owl-dry-stout-58364/ that I'm drinking right now. For the latest batch I subed flaked oats for the flaked barley and it may be the best, easiest drinking stout I've had in a loooooooooooooooooooong time.

Click to expand...

Agreed, the oats will give you plenty of head retention and body. Looks like a good recipe.

Well, I'm just finishing cooling the wort prior to pitching, and I ended changing the recipe a bit:

8lbs Golden Promise
1.5lbs Flaked Oats
1.5lbs Honey Malt
1lb Chocolate Malt
0.625oz Magnum Pellets (12.1%AA), 60min

I wanted something halfway between sweet and dry, and the Honey Malt seemed to fit the bill better than the Munich. We'll see how it turns out. The mash smelled marvelous, like a tasty coffee, so I hope it holds out!

I also am doing a small beer - a dark Munich Lager - off of the second runnings, in order to test the Vierka Dry Munich Dark Lager yeast. I got 3.75gal of second runnings after I drew the wort for the stout, and I didn't want it to go to waste, so we'll see what happens.