First PM, stout not so stout...

So my first Partial mash went well, thanks to much of your help and I'm sure the beer will taste fine. However my stout turned out to be a brown ale. I guess the easy answer to my problem would be that I had too much top off. So... I'd like to hear your suggestions. Here is the recipe

6# Pale LME
1.5# 2 organic 2-row
.5# crystal 20
.5# chocolate malt
.5# roasted barley
1# 2oz. roasted quick oats
2oz tettnang
munton's dry yeast

I did a ratio of 1.5 qts per # of grain, same ratio on the sparge. mashed @ 155F for 60min and sparged (tea-bagged for 15 minutes and drip drained)

with 2.5 gallons of top off I still reached my destination of OG 1.053 so the efficiency seemed OK though not really calculated

But what's up with the color being in the mid 20's for SRM? I thought any more chocolate or roasted barley would start to get astringent.

You can definitely go with more chocolate or roasted barley and still avoid any astringency!

Color is often a very tricky thing to predict, good ol' fashion trial and error is usually the best indicator.

two words:

black patent.

I did a 3 gallon batch using .5lb chocolate, .25lb crystal 40, .125lb chocolate, .125lb roasted barley, and .125 black patent. Its pitch black. This was my first all grain.

JoMarky said:

two words:

black patent.

I did a 3 gallon batch using .5lb chocolate, .25lb crystal 40, .125lb chocolate, .125lb roasted barley, and .125 black patent. Its pitch black. This was my first all grain.

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I hear ya. I avoided that one because I wanted it smooth and never liked the robust almost burnt flavor of the patent. Did you find that yours was still pretty smooth in flavor?

I had the same thing happen to a porter I made. Turned out to be a great brown ale though!

I was wondering if my rolling pin crush method was the problem. In the tastybrew calculator it was suppose to be black. I had a mix, in about the same quantities as JoMarky, of dark chocolate malt, crystal 80, and black patent, but only steeped the specialty grains. Just the slightest hint of coffee in my porter tuned brown ale and I like it that way.

Next time I will do a half pound of each, dark chocoalte and crystal, and quarter pound for the patent in a three gallon batch.

I've used as much as 4.25 lbs of chocolate in a 5 gallon batch without astringency - so long as it does not get too hot, I don't know why that would be a concern. I prefer loads of chocolate over using black patent, which has those burnt things going on in the flavor/smell region.

I have 2 lb in a dark mild that's going right now, and the hydrometer sample was lovely on the way to secondary.

jmo88 said:

I hear ya. I avoided that one because I wanted it smooth and never liked the robust almost burnt flavor of the patent. Did you find that yours was still pretty smooth in flavor?

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Its only 3 days old soo.. I hope its smooth, I tried modeling it after Young's double chocolate which to me is the definition of smooth.

I used black patent once in a brown ale, and didnt get any burnt flavor. Id think you'd be much more likely to get an excess of those flavors from the roasted barely anyways. I guess we'll both find out.

JoMarky said:

Its only 3 days old soo.. I hope its smooth, I tried modeling it after Young's double chocolate which to me is the definition of smooth.

I used black patent once in a brown ale, and didnt get any burnt flavor. Id think you'd be much more likely to get an excess of those flavors from the roasted barely anyways. I guess we'll both find out.

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Have you seen the BYO special edition of their 150 clones? They do a young's clone and it looks good but there is no patent. I can post for you if your interested.

I'll give the patent a try for my next stout.

Thanks

I tried finding that recipe but couldn't. I thought i saw somewhere it didnt have any roasted barley either.

JoMarky said:

I tried finding that recipe but couldn't. I thought i saw somewhere it didnt have any roasted barley either.

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Here ya go:

5 Gal batch AG

OG 1.053 FG 1.013 IBU=28 ABV=5.2%

6# 14 oz 2-row pale ale malt
11oz crystal 60
13oz chocolate malt
12oz lactose
8oz invert sugar
4oz cane sugar
6oz cocoa powder
.33oz liquid chocolate extract
tsp irish moss
1/8 tsp yeast nutrients
1.5 oz fuggles 60 min
.25 oz kent goldings 15 min
Wyeast 1318
3/4 C priming sugar

mash at 153F with 10.5 qts water for 60min yielding 4.25 gl wort after sparge. add 2.25gl water and boil for 90 min. Add sugars, moss and yeast nutrients at 15 min left to boil. add chocolate extract to secondary.

I'm gonna try this one soon. Good luck