Recipe Critique: Darkness Imperial Oatmeal Stout

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Harrydan

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I wanted this one to be black as night with a thick mouthfeel and pack a wallop. I added some dark brown sugar and blackstrap molasses to dry it out a bit. Any suggestions? The guy at the LHBS gave me a weird look when i put all the ingredients up on the counter. :confused: I am pretty excited about it though... just got Beersmith and am riding the newbie recipe train.

Partial Mash



60min boil

2lb 10oz Pale Malt, Maris Otter
2lb 10oz Melanoiden Malt
1lb Black Patent
1lb Chocolate Malt Flaked Oats
2lb Flaked Oats

2lb 10oz Sparkling Amber DME(Briess)
1lb Blackstrap Molasses
1lb 6oz Dark Brown Sugar

1oz Willamette 60min
1oz East Kent Goldings 30min

Irish Ale Yeast WLP004

1.085 OG
1.014 FG
9.5% ABV
 
Two things I see right away. Your base malt to specialty malt ratio seems to heavy towards specialty malt. You have waaaayyyy too much melanoidin malt. And I'm not sure what your IBU calculation is, but with that hopping schedule it doesn't seem like it is high enough for that OG. Looks like it is around 30ish, and you really want more like 50-70.
 
Thanks a lot. Yeah I was planning on adding another hop addition or at least bumping one of them up to 2 oz. Just as a curiosity since I am a newb, what is the issue with having two much specialty? Do they not convert as well?
 
Thanks a lot. Yeah I was planning on adding another hop addition or at least bumping one of them up to 2 oz. Just as a curiosity since I am a newb, what is the issue with having two much specialty? Do they not convert as well?

It is understandable to be excited, but you want to make something drinkable.:)

Yes, you probably have too much specialty malt. Your base malts (maris and the LME) only make up 40% of this recipe. The base malts should make up about 70-80%. 1 pound of roasted barley is an awful lot. That should be cut in half. The melanoidin is really too high as well.

In Beersmith, change the Style to Imperial Stout in your recipe and you will see some ranges you should be in for IBU, SRM, etc. As a beginner, you should follow the Max in Batch recommendations in BeerSmith for each grain.

Also, you can check out the BeerSmith recipe database online. Go there and look at some of the recipes that people have posted for Imperial Stout to get some guidelines.
 
Thanks. Definitely want something drinkable... I made a delicious oatmeal stout recently based loosely on Yooper's Recipe and I had some leftover grains I was going to make a 2 gallon batch with. I then used the scale tool on beersmith to convert it to a 5 galoon to see what you guys thought. Thanks for the note on the specialty to base ratio, I guess i wasn't thinking of Melanoidin as a specialty :eek:
 
Sherma has it pretty much right except for the roasted barley. 1 lb is fine in an Imp stout. I use 1.5lb IIRC in mine.

yes, roasted barley is fine in that amount. HOWEVER, I messed up and said roasted barley, when his recipe has black patent. My bad. :eek: I think you do not want to use 1 pound of black patent, but you could use 1 pound of roasted barley.
 
What is the Diastatic Power of that Marris Otter? MO can be a pretty low DP malt and with all that specialty malt you might not get conversion..
 
The 2 gallon test recipe was:
Maris Otter: 1lb
Melanoidin: 1lb
Black patent: .5lb
Flaked oats: .5lb
Amber DME: 1llb
BlackStrap Molasses: .5
Dark brown sugar: .5
Willamette 1oz @ 60min
EK Goldings 1oz@ 30min

This was a leftovers experiment. I also have some chocolate malt to substitute?? I guess what I am asking is should I scrap the leftover recipe and just buy some more grain for a full 5 gallon solid recipe... keeping the 1lb of melanoidin and adding more MO, hops and extract?
 
Actually, this could be a good opportunity to try something out.

I still think that is a lot of black patent and melanoidin but making 2 gallons could be an experiment to see what YOU think.
 
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