First Brew Experience and Second Brew Recipe

Greetings. I’m new to the hobby although I’ve been a craft brew enthusiast for years. I worked as a server at larger brew pub for about 5 years during college.

I thought I would post my experience on my first recipe and get some feedback on a recipe I plan on brewing this Saturday.

I brewed the Rogue Brutal Bitter kit on new years eve. Everything went smoothly except for a few missteps. When transferring to the fermenting bucket, I thought it would be a good idea to strain it through cheese cloth on top of a colander to remove the whole hop cones that were added at flame out. This was not a good idea, as it clogged almost immediately and I had to remove the cloth to get it to flow through the colander.

I pitched the Wyeast slap pack at 75° and fermentation started with in 24 hours.

It has been in the primary for two weeks, and I just took a reading and its at the target FG of 1.012. I took a taste and as expected it has a very hoppy aroma and a smooth mouth feel. I plan on letting it sit for another week and then bottle it next weekend.

Secondly, I am planning on brewing a stout this weekend in hopes it will be ready for Patty’s day. Here is the recipe. I cobbled it together from some stout recipes here on the forum and other resources. I plugged it into iBrewmaster iPhone app. To get the stats. Let me know what you think. Any suggestions based on my planned recipe?

A few questions:
Will one vial of the yeast (given I do a starter) be enough?
What do you think about my hops? Enough, too much? I know stouts generally have a higher IBU to balance the malt and roasted flavors, but how accurate is this software at predicting the IBUs?
How should I handle the flaked barley? Can this steep?
Should I add the Amber DME first, and then add the Dark about at 15 min?


Style: Stout
Calories: 256
Type: Extract
IBU's: 56.43
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volume: 5 Gallons
Primary: 21 days @ 65°F
Aging: 21 days @ 70°F
Color:***32.9 SRM**
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Est. Orig. Gravity:
1.078
Est Fin. Gravity:
1.022
Est. ABV: 7.34%
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Grains & Adjuncts
1.00 lbs Crystal Malt - 90L
0.33 lbs Black (Patent) Malt
0.33 lbs Roasted Barley
0.50 lbs Barley, Flaked (For Head)
Steeped at 150° for 40 min

2.75 lbs Dark Dry Extract
5.00 lbs Amber Dry Extract
*
Hops
1.00 ozs Pearle - 60 mins
1.00 ozs Chinook - 60 mins

Yeasts
1.0 vile British Ale - White Labs WLP005
**
Notes
4 oz Cold toddy coffee added to half of the batch at bottling to create a coffee stout.


Thanks for looking.

1) 1 vial will be enough if you do the starter
2) If you go with the late add for the dark DME, I calculated the same IBUs the software gave you (if you do a 3 gallon boil). If you use balance value, it looks like you are in a good range for a stout, but I'm not sure how to compensate for the coffee: http://beercolor.netfirms.com/balance.html
3) If it's only in there for head, I think you can get what you need out of it just by steeping.

dcp27 said:

. If you use balance value, it looks like you are in a good range for a stout, but I'm not sure how to compensate for the coffee: http://beercolor.netfirms.com/balance.html

Click to expand...

Great link, although I just skimmed it, the info will no doubt be a valuable resource as my brewing progresses.

Thanks for the response.