Kentucky Breakfast Stout Recipe

I posted this in recipes/ingredients but got no responses. Trying one last time here before I buy ingredients tomorrow.

I have acquired a 15 gallon oak barrel, and I'll be using it to make a KBS. Eventually, this will turn into a documented process including equipment, construction, and process. But for now, I'm generating a recipe. I'm doing 3-six gallon batches to provide 18 gallons in a 20 gallon primary.

Recipe: Kentucky Breakfast Stout
Style: Imperial Stout

Recipe Specifications
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Boil Size: 7.25 gal
Post Boil Volume: 6.25 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 6.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.75 gal
Estimated OG: 1.111 SG
Estimated FG: 1.031 SG
Estimated Color: 53.2 SRM
Estimated IBU: 68.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
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Amt Name Type # %/IBU
20 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 79.2 %
1 lbs 14.7 oz Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 2 7.6 %
13.3 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 3 3.3 %
13.3 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 4 3.3 %
13.3 oz Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 5 3.3 %
13.3 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 6 3.3 %
1.50 oz Nugget [13.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 7 46.3 IBUs
1.75 oz Willamette [5.50 %] - Boil 25.0 min Hop 8 14.5 IBUs
1.75 oz Willamette [5.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 9 7.5 IBUs
1.0 pkg Irish Ale Yeast (White Labs #WLP004) Yeast 10 -

Add 4oz 100% Cacao Unsweetened Chocolate at 15 min remaining
Add 2 oz coarse ground Sumatran coffee at flameout
Add 2 oz (grounds) cold brewed Kona coffee in secondary barrel
Add 2 oz whole roasted beans of Kona coffee in secondary barrel

Total Grain Weight: 25 lbs 3.9 oz
Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, 155.0 F, 60 min.

Primary fermentation at 65F for 4 weeks
Secondary fermentation in bourbon barrel for 4 weeks (based on tasting)


The questions I have to you folks:
Any opinions on using 100% Cacao at 15 minutes? The only ingredient is unsweetened chocolate, is this the same as using cacao nibs? Some folks are critical of using chocolate in the boil too.

Should I use coffee at flameout? I would typically only use coffee as a secondary as a cold brewed option. But I've done something similar to this before, and it came out well. I think the residual sweetness, barrel aging, and other flavours of the beer will make it work.

Is Irish Ale yeast ideal for this application? It's the only White Labs product that came close to the intended FG of 1.030. I normally use California ale yeast for everything, but I've found it finishes stouts way too dry. Of course, I will make a large starter.

I might make 5 gallons of this a Canadian Breakfast Stout by using maple syrup to bottle prime. Northern Brewer has this information in the priming calculator. Has anyone ever tried this?


Thanks for any help you can provide, and hopefully this can lead to a definitive KBS clone recipe.

I have made a KBS clone similar.
Add the cocoa nibs in the secondary.
I used Cally V yeast and it turned out good.
I added some (very small amount) of lactose to the priming sugar at bottling to give a little of the body back.
I also left mine on the barrel for 90 days. We had a bottle after storage for 2+ years and it was still good, but the BBL flavor had deminished.
I also remember the dark malt (roasted barley or black patent) was 20 ounces, FWIW.
Good Luck

volsfan5012 said:

I have made a KBS clone similar. Add the cocoa nibs in the secondary. I used Cally V yeast and it turned out good. I added some (very small amount) of lactose to the priming sugar at bottling to give a little of the body back. I also left mine on the barrel for 90 days. We had a bottle after storage for 2+ years and it was still good, but the BBL flavor had deminished. I also remember the dark malt (roasted barley or black patent) was 20 ounces, FWIW. Good Luck

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I'm glad someone finally had something to say.

Are your numbers based on a 5 gallon batch? And how big was your barrel?

I'm going to stick with the Irish ale yeast, it is supposed to be the best for this type of beer.

Also, I've been able to get cocoa paste, which is supposed to be the raw chocolate flavour used in making chocolate dishes. I used nibs (and a lot of them) in a much smaller stout and didn't get much chocolate.

I made a 5.5 gallon batch. The barrel was 6.5 gallons.

I did nb's chocolate milk stout kit. it called for the cocoa nibs two weeks before bottling. Turned out real nice. The trub tasted like chocolate covered expresso beans.

Cocoa powder is just ground nibs. Shouldn't make a difference.

Next time I do a breakfast stout I am going to use belgian cocoa powder

I just didn't get a whole lot out of the nibs. It seems akin to adding whole roasted coffee beans to room temp water for 2 weeks. Without temperature or surface area, you won't extract much flavour.

The step after cocoa nibs is chocolate liqueur or chocolate paste. It is supposed to have the most chocolate taste possible. Cocoa powder is a derivative of liqueur, with less chocolate mass.

ivegot2legs said:

Add 4oz 100% Cacao Unsweetened Chocolate at 15 min remaining
Add 2 oz coarse ground Sumatran coffee at flameout
Add 2 oz (grounds) cold brewed Kona coffee in secondary barrel
Add 2 oz whole roasted beans of Kona coffee in secondary barrel

Click to expand...

That is a lot of coffee. I did a founders breakfast stout clone and added 2 oz at flameout, well after I chilled to 197-200 degreesish for about 5 minutes, then chilled down to pitching temps. After fermentation I added 2 oz of grounds as a dry hop and the coffee flavor was very pronounced. If that is not enough coffee for you I would at least crack the whole beans. I hope you like coffee.

DrunkleJon said:

That is a lot of coffee. I did a founders breakfast stout clone and added 2 oz at flameout, well after I chilled to 197-200 degreesish for about 5 minutes, then chilled down to pitching temps. After fermentation I added 2 oz of grounds as a dry hop and the coffee flavor was very pronounced. If that is not enough coffee for you I would at least crack the whole beans. I hope you like coffee.

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It is a good amount of coffee, but I am a big fan of coffee in beer. I also think the heavy flavours of chocolate, malt, bourbon, alcohol, and oak will stand up strongly to coffee.

In order to avoid the heat creating a bitter coffee flavour, I'm using cold extracted all the time. I have 2 oz steeping in cold water right now for a few days, which I will add post boil, at about 170 degrees. This will avoid the bitter effect, excess oils, and still provide pasteurization.

After barrel aging, I will test and perhaps add more cold extracted coffee at bottling, but skip the whole bean or ground coffee dry hop.

I seem to recall using 4 oz of grounds to make cold press coffee for another strong stout and it came out well. But after filling my press with coffee yesterday, seems that maybe it was more like 2-3 oz.

4oz is a lot. I hope it comes out good. If so I will be making some. You going to age it any or just drink it fresh?

DrunkleJon said:

4oz is a lot. I hope it comes out good. If so I will be making some. You going to age it any or just drink it fresh?

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It seems like a lot. That's why I'm starting with 2 oz of grounds (for each 6 gallons) to be cold extracted and adding more from that.

It'll be fermented for probably 4 weeks in primary, and aged 4-8 weeks in the bourbon barrel. I bottle everything, and it should yield about 170 12-ounce bottles, which means some of it will be aged for a few years to come.

When I've used coffee in my stouts I always added the grounds after flameout and then add cold-brewed coffee when kegging or bottling. I've gotten some really nice coffee flavor going this route.

NateLTB said:

When I've used coffee in my stouts I always added the grounds after flameout and then add cold-brewed coffee when kegging or bottling. I've gotten some really nice coffee flavor going this route.

Click to expand...

How much do you add for 5 or 6 gallons?

Also, any have anything to say about a 155 mash temp? I might change it to 154, not that it will change much.

ivegot2legs Did you brew this batch? I am thinking about picking up a whiskey barrel and giving a KBS clone, something similar to this, a try.

I did. I made three 6 gallon batches in two days.

It is still in the barrel right now, but I bottled one to taste it and determine if I needed to add anything during aging. The barely aged bottle was delicious. I will look at my info at home and provide more information later.

Cool thanks for the info!

So here’s how it all went-

All numbers are in reference to one nominal 6 gallon batch.

My grain bill and hop bill are the same as described above. I changed to a 90 minute boil with an 8 gallon boil volume, this increased the IBU to 72.2.

A few days earlier I started a 5L starter on a stir plate (actually a 2L and 3L). This was supposed to be a good amount for 6 gallons, which I would pitch on day 1, and then it would be active and stepped up for day 2 when I added 12 more gallons.

I used a mash temp of 155F, because, with the Irish Ale yeast, I was aiming for a final gravity of 1.029-1.030 (more on that later).

My mash tun can hold about 23-23.5 lbs of grain while at 1.25qt/lb. So in order to fit this all, I had to mash thick. I had trouble hitting mash temps (too low), but no trouble fitting everything inside. I would add more hot water to account for the temps, and it worked out ok. The last batch I finally aimed high enough with the temps and hit 155 on the first try. My mash calculator and temps are normally spot on.

Mash went fine, I use a 10 gallon cooler. Temp was fine, fly sparge was fine. After collecting about 8 gallons of wort, I was still getting some strong stuff so I started collecting in another pot to make a second runnings breakfast stout (more on that later).

The boil went fine, and I did the small 2 gallons of second runnings on the stove with some spare hops.

I added chocolate paste with 15 minutes remaining (4 oz). Chocolate paste, or chocolate liquor, is just ground cocoa nibs. My girlfriend is a professional chef and got me a bunch, as it is what they use for chocolate flavor. It’s the most chocolate flavor available, with no added fats or butter, other than the fat inherent to cocoa. I never got much chocolate from nibs, so I went with this method. More on how this worked out later.

I made cold brewed coffee with a French press (100g of coarse grounds in 1L of water at room temp for 2-3 days) and added during the wort chilling. I normally only add at bottling, but I thought a bit of bitterness would be ok in this beer, and it adds the safety of pasteurization.

Stuff goes in buckets, yeast it pitched, everything seems ok, but my gravity is low. Really low at 1.088 for 6 gallons, and I normally get very good efficiencies. Clearly the thick mash hurt me, so now I have to make up gravity with the next two batches.

At this point I realize I should have not bothered with a second runnings beer, but tried a longer boil to get the right gravity. I even have a refractometer, but didn’t use it because I’ve never had issues. I used it judiciously for the next batches to calculate volumes and gravities to make sure I could get it right.

For the second and third batches (done at the same time with a friend), I collected extra wort for a longer boil, and collected even more and boiled it without hops or anything, just to get more sugars. I ended up with another 5.5 gallons at 1.112, 5.5 gallons at 1.102, and 1 gallon at 1.195. This brought my mixed gravity to 1.106 for 18 gallons, which seemed pretty good.

After a good fermentation, it was time to add it to the barrel. 13 days got my gravity down to 1.030-1.031, which was ideal. I added a handle of heaven hill (and previously a bottle of Dad’s Hat Rye – the original spirit of the barrel), to keep the barrel wet. Some bourbon was still present in the bottom, but I just left it.

I deliberately aimed high on my final gravity for several reasons. The bourbon would contribute alcohol and reduce gravity. Along with additions of more coffee or chocolate to lower gravity, I thought it was best to aim high.

When adding to my barrel, I came up short of the 15 gallons needed. There was a lot of junk in the bottom of the fermenter. I knew I needed even more than the 15 gallons so I could keep topping the barrel off. So I had to use my second runnings breakfast stout to top it off, because it seems paramount to have a completely full barrel.

After two weeks in the barrel, I bottled one 12 oz bottle for testing. I had some KBS a few days prior, so I had a good reference. The KBS was very heavy on chocolate, and very sweet, with minimal coffee. My bottle had the correct aroma, but less chocolate and sweetness (the ideal amount, in my book) and minimal coffee. Using the chocolate paste finally got me a good chocolate flavor, but it was still less than the ridiculous amount in KBS.

I love coffee, and I wanted more coffee than KBS had, so I made another batch of cold brewed coffee, boiled a bit of chocolate paste in water to add some flavor that will eventually fade, and added about 4 oz of Dad’s Hat Rye that I had. I thought this would provide a better coffee profile, a matching chocolate flavor, and bring the gravity to the right place with some extra bourbon for alcohol, and completed with oak and vanilla from the barrel.

That’s where I’m at now. It’s in the barrel (around 7 weeks now), and I’ll bottle in a few more weeks.

This is fantastic information thank you for posting. I think I will be attempting a similar batch once I source a barrel. Do you plan to add more coffee at bottling? Or are you set with the barrel addition.

I'm not currently planning on more coffee. Founders describes it as having a hint of coffee, it seems a lot of that comes from the barrel instead of actual coffee.

I think I'll have a moderate coffee taste. Thing is, I really like coffee. So maybe I'll add extra coffee to 20 bottles or so. And another 20 with the maple to make a CBS.

How did the CBS turn out for you? I'm looking to do a variation of this soon so it's ready in the colder months, but there aren't many opinions or recipes on CBS out there. I don't have a barrel so I'm looking to add the bourbon, oak cubes, coffee, and maple syrup into the secondary to make sure the maple has time to marry with all the favors.

I think soaking oak cubes in bourbon and adding those to a secondary is a good plan.

I would not add coffee beans or grounds to the secondary. It's ok to add some coffee (the liquid) to the end of a boil or to the secondary. It's best to aim low and add more later.

It seems that maple does not contribute much after fermented. Adding it to the secondary won't do much.

After some aging, I recommend bottling one bottle from the secondary, carbing it, chilling it, and drinking it as normal. It's the best way to tell how the flavours are working, and what you need to add more of. Then add appropriately and continue to age.

I use maple syrup as a priming agent for some bottles, and it seems to have worked fine. It still doesn't contribute that much flavour to such a large beer. Maybe if you used it to carb up a hefeweizen, you would notice something.

The maple extract seems to have worked well. I have the exact proportion and product written down, if you want the info.

The bottles with maple extract seem to have carbonated less, or more slowly, than other bottles. I would say normal dextrose primed quickly, maple syrup primed less quickly, maple syrup with maple extract primed the least, or the slowest. Maple extract is mostly alcohol, and while it is a very small amount that is added, it may have had an effect on the yeast, or something. (Also, always add fresh yeast, which was done here.)

However, I did open a few CBS bottles, and poured it well to get a moderate and appropriate head, and it was great. Good maple flavours and it worked well overall.