Sweet Stout Deception Cream Stout

I've made this a few times, and really liked it, but I want to increase the mouthfeel. I just emptied my keg of the last of it, and I'm about to brew again.

Anyone have any thoughts on making it a bit thicker?

I was thinking of either increasing the mash temp to 158-162 to get more dextrins. Or I could replace the 2-row with munich. Or I could add some oats or rye (which would also improve the head).

Or I could do a bit of all three - raise the mash temp to 156, replace 1lb of the 2-row with munich, and throw in 8 oz of oats.

I am also going to increase the grain bill and try to get a higher ABV - it's a Christmas beer, and you should have a red nose after a couple of pints.

Comments welcome.

PuppetmanInBC said:

Anyone have any thoughts on making it a bit thicker?

Comments welcome.

Click to expand...

The common consensus is that it can use a full pound of lactose (a more typical amount for sweet stouts). You could also mash higher, probably wouldn't hurt. Depends on how thick you want to go. Also depends on whether you want a milky or a more malty sweetness. Lactose will make it thicker, without a doubt.

Just got finished brewing this, pretty excited with all the positive comments about it! Because of the fermentor I'm using (4 gal PETE water jug) and the sizes of DME available at my LHBS (1 and 3 lbs), I adjusted the recipe to 3.3 gal. so I could use the whole bags of DME. With that conversion I stuck to the original recipe except for the lactose which I doubled as has been mentioned before. I also added Irish moss toward the end of the boil and used wyeast 1084. I really just want a thick and tasty beer I can sip on and enjoy and I think this should get me there. I had an O.G. of 1.060 which I think is about right? Had my first boil over too....minor because I caught it as it first started to jump up and took the pot off the burner so I spared my floor of any wort, but still a facepalm moment. Lost very little wort and otherwise all went really well. This was my 4th brew. I'll post updates when the beer is further along!

Brewing this today using Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) yeast with a 2L starter. Waiting to drink it is always the hardest part! The extract ingredients were going to cost over $60 at Northern Brewer, but got all the AG ingredients for $42 including shipping.

5 1/2 gallons in the fermenter. I'm anticipating an aggressive fermentation based on prior posts. I largely went with the original AG recipe with 7lbs base malt and .75lbs lactose.

Just kegged and tried this beer, turned out great highly recommend it. Had to substitute hops for Galena with 13.2%aa because my local homebrew store didn't have the original hops that this recipe called for. Also not sure how but my original gravity ended up at 1.078, it fermented out to 1.021.

Have all the ingredients for this. Going to make a couple changes though. Going with Pale Chocolate in place of the Chocolate malt. Black barley in place of roasted barley and adding .5lb munich malt and going with 1lb of lactose from the recommendations. I have some washed wlp002 from a porter, i got good attenuation in that brew so should be good.

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This is a pretty dark beer, but I decided to do a time lapse video of the first 5 days of fermentation. It's interesting to watch the fermentation pick up, see the bubbles behind the clock in the sanitized water, watch the temperature pick up during fermentation, and of course watch the yeast cake develop on the bottom.

[ame]http://youtu.be/oZRxDb63_dY[/ame]

I'm blogging my brew days now here:

http://boykingbrewhaus.com/?p=217

Really looking forward to drinking this one in February sometime!

bredle said:

This is a pretty dark beer, but I decided to do a time lapse video of the first 5 days of fermentation. It's interesting to watch the fermentation pick up, see the bubbles behind the clock in the sanitized water, watch the temperature pick up during fermentation, and of course watch the yeast cake develop on the bottom.

http://youtu.be/oZRxDb63_dY

I'm blogging my brew days now here:

http://boykingbrewhaus.com/?p=217

Really looking forward to drinking this one in February sometime!

Click to expand...

Nice video and website. I love watching the time lapse of the fermentation. It always makes me want to brew more beer.

Brewed this on Sunday and checked on it Tuesday morning to find no sign of yeast activity, decided to button the bucket back up and give it more time, using WLP002 and it's apparently known to be a slow starter. I was a little worried since i'm using washed yeast that I store in an outside fridge and temps have been -20+ with windchills. Last night the sound from the blow off bucket was like a machine gun, yeast must be having a big old party in there, I use plastic buckets so I don't get to see the show

I thought about opening it up and trying to top crop some yeast. I got 81% attenuation from this yeast on a porter I made, which for the strain that seems to be exceptional. I still have another large mason jar with enough yeast to split into to White Labs tubes. This yeast doesn't seem to get much attention, not sure why. I'll see how it finishes on this brew, if it does close to what it did on the porter I'll be keeping this one around for English styles, porters, and stouts.

Brewed this up today, the wort smelled phenominal from start to finish. The FG numbers from Original recipe didn't add up in beersmith so I mashed at 157. Also wanted it a little bigger so, OG: 1.063, expected FG: 1.017. Didn't have immediate access to Denny's so I pitched some Nottingham. Also threw in a pound of flaked oats.

Just curious as to how the FG in OP's post are so high? Attenuation with Denny's seems to be on par with say 1056 which would bring the FG to well below 1.020. Especially with a 152 mash. Am I missing something here?

Are you figuring the non-fermentable lactose?

bleme said:

Are you figuring the non-fermentable lactose?

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Yup, everything in original recipe plus a pound of flaked oats scaled up to 1.063 in beersmith. Highest FG I could get was 1.017 with a mash temp of 157/158.

Just kegged this one after 3 weeks in primary. FG came out at 1.018. I put 3 gallons in the keg as brewed, and racked 1 gallon to secondary over vanilla bean, and 1 gallon over 2oz. toasted coconut. The hydro sample tasted great!

Just checked the gravity on mine. Its down to 1.016 about where expected. Still needs a little time to come together but the hydro tastes pretty good. Looking forward to bottling in a week at two then enjoying for the end of winter in the northeast.

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Just wondering from others experience on this. How much of that coffee/roasty flavor are you guys getting on this? I didn't pick up much roastiness or caramel/toffee from the hydro sample. I got a little bit of booziness which I find strange because i kept the temp right around 65/66 for the fermenting time and have had it at 64 after the first week.

bolus14 said:

Just wondering from others experience on this. How much of that coffee/roasty flavor are you guys getting on this? I didn't pick up much roastiness or caramel/toffee from the hydro sample. I got a little bit of booziness which I find strange because i kept the temp right around 65/66 for the fermenting time and have had it at 64 after the first week.

Click to expand...

I would say the predominant flavour is the caramel chocolate malt, I'm getting minimal coffee flavour on mine. There are high levels of roastiness especially on the finish but nothing astringent. Also very smooth mouthfeel, like velvet. Not sure what factors contribute to mouth feel but I'm guessing the lactose has a bit to do with it. Would more be better next time or is there an optimal level? What main flavours did you get in your hydro sample?

I would say i'm getting most of what you said, mostly chocolate, not much caramel but it's there if I'm looking for it. From the hydro i didn't get much roastiness though, that's what I was really hoping to get. It had quite a bit of carbonation in the hyrdo, should just be residual CO2 from fermentation that will fade out.
Once that carbonation settles out I really hope to get the roastiness and smooth velvety mouth feel that others have stated. I used a whole pound of lactose, added some munich, and mashed at 156 so it should end up pretty smooth. I'm planning on carbing to about 1.6/1.7 because 2 always seems to still have some prickle to it that i would like to avoid in this.

Is the AG recipe on Page 1 the most updated version?

Yes. The only exception is that some have said to use a full pound of lactose instead of just 1/2 a pound.

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I ended up ramping the recipe up to about 9% alcohol, using a pound of lactose and finishing it on bourbon soaked oak spirals. Absolutely fantastic.

It turned a really great milk stout into a really great milk stout based winter warmer!

I tasted my first few glasses out of the keg - and this tastes really good. I can see how this will age well.

I decided to do two separate 1 gallon secondaries. 1 gallon racked onto a vanilla bean and the other racked onto 2oz. toasted coconut. Looking forward to trying those!

Just finished bottling this. It finished out pretty high..about 1.026, but the sample tasted great, not too sweet at all with plenty of flavor. I did ramp up the lactose so I know that has something to do with it. I tried gently stirring the yeast and warming the primary for about a week, that got me a few points and then it was done again so I just cold crashed and bottled. Pretty sure I'll be brewing this again. Can't wait 'til it's carbed up and ready to drink. I do plan on keeping some more long term, but I want to see how it progresses from early on. Thanks for the recipe!

Gunna be brewing this again this week to donate to the St Patty's Day festivities.

Bottled this today. Mine finished at 1.016 so not extremely sweet. The upfront taste is caramel and smooth chocolate malt. The finish has a nice mild roastiness to it. Looking forward to this carbing up and seeing what difference that makes.

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Hello all - dont post much around here yet but have been reading the threads for quite some time. I read ALL of this one as I was looking for a new stout recipe to try out (amazing how many times the same questions get asked and answered in a thread this long eh?).

Anyway - I have not done an extract brew for a long time, and was looking for something quick and easy so I grabbed on to this recipe with both hands. Unfortunately I forgot something - I was just making a 2.5 gallon batch to start with (need to keep the 5gs available for an IPA I have coming this week so I used an old MrBeer LBK, great for test batches I think). In beer smith I must have done everything as a 5 gallon batch and didnt realize it until I was getting my OG before adding yeast ( I really should do more gravity checks during the process but - haste makes waste right?).
Couldnt get my hands on lactose so I added a bit more grain and 8 oz Malto Dextrin. I used S-04 instead of dennys as I had some on hand. To say I missed the OG by a tad would be an understatement.
For those considering making this into an imperial, well, my OG was 1.114 @ 74F, Holy Moly. I filled it to what I considered the 2.5 gaqllon mark in the LBK and put it in a broiler pan just in case. Thank God (I have been reading about the many overflows with this one). Lets just say that now I am at MAYBE 2 gallons of wort left by the time it finally calmed down,maybe less. This one is going to have to condition until the end of time lol - guess I will start another batch of it muy pronto but may have to tie up one of the 5 gallon fermenters, cant make this same mistake again. I dont think I adjusted my accounted for the DME and put the efficiency at around 65% as if doing a BIAB or something. I cant even blame this on sampling too many homebrews during the process, as I had to crank this out early in the morning.
So there may be a report on an imperial version of this coming - but it may take a while :fro:
Cheers, do I get a prize for screwing up the most?
Manowarfan1

I just did the All Grain version. Up'ed the wheat to 2 pounds and used a full pound of lactose. 5.5 gallons of 1.074 wort into the fermentor. BeerSmith says that is 91.8% efficiency. Whoops!

Mine (ag version) turned out horribly hoppy. Like a black IPA but sweet.

Have no idea why. I know I added the 60 minute hops before actual boil, but didn't think it would make that much difference.

AG = hard to get girlfriend.

Watch the gravity, gravity means everything.

Good luck.

Did you check the AA on the hops you got? The magnum I got had higher AA and I only used .33oz to match the IBUs.

Mine has been bottled for almost 4 days so I haven't tasted yet. The final hydro I had wasn't hoppy at all though and I haven't seen any other posts of this turning out hoppy.

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Didn't check the AA, really should have. Super disappointed because, like you, my hydro sample at bottling was fantastic.

Is there some sort of infection that could have caused the change in flavour perhaps? I had just put the change in flavour down to carbonation and chilling.

Not sure how much time you've given it, but could just be green. I popped a bottle open tonight, after only 4 days in the bottle. Still tastes like it needs to come together, but has a nice roast to it. Wife, far from a beer drinker but tastes almost everything I make, commented that this tasted like cold coffee, no bitter bite, no detectable alcohol, perfect carbonation makes it silky.

My only complaint is the aroma needs to come together along with the initial taste. The roasted flavor doesn't seem to linger as much as I would like. If anybody has any ideas on how to get a longer lasting roast taste that it would be great. Other than that this brew is excellent and I'm sure will get better with another week or so of conditioning.

I had mine bottled since Dec 7th. I tested it at two weeks and it had a weird taste almost like it was infected. An off bitter taste. However I tasted two bottles over the weekend and it tasted great. It seems that those of us that got a higher gravity may need to wait longer for this to Melo out.

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How high did you go with the og? Did you achieve it with extra two row or did you increase each grain proportionally?

I increased each grain proportionately. I used beer Smith for the adjustments. My OG was 1.075

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Thanks, sounds good.

I increased OG to 1.065 with just two row, does anyone know if that would have affected the flavour profile at all?

So... this was supposed to be me saying how I'm going to really enjoy making this... but instead this is me saying... AHB messed up the grain bill which now will be...
7lb 2row
1.5lb white wheat
14oz chocolate
12oz victory
8oz Crystal 90
8oz roasted barley

So... this will not be anywhere near this beer... I hope it turns out good... but I'm not holding my breath

HBrew71 said:

I keg conditioned my first batch 2+ months. Second batch 7+ months. Both were good. But guess which one was better.

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Well crap. Lol I bottle this in two weeks. Not sure I want to wait another two months. Better get something else brewing ASAP.


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OK so following up on my brew day post of 1/21, I totally botched this in that i basically made the 5 gallon batch into a 2.5 gallon batch and ended up with an OG of 1.114 at 74F.
One month later my gravity is still at 1.040 for a couple days running. From what I can tell that would be about 10% ABV at 63% attenuation. I did rock the LBK (using an old mr beer fermenter for trying new recipes out - ale pale is occupied) to see if maybe the yeast could be roused into chewing thru a little more, no change.
Would you all:
A) Add more S-04
2) Shake up LBK for another day or two
C) Bottle - this kind of scares me (Bottle Bomb potential) coz the gravity is still so high (i didnt have lactose on hand so it isnt that) but I did add malto dextrin and more crystal to get some sweetness and mouthfeel.
Thanks for any feedback.
Cheers
jeff

Go in your brewing software and put in only your maltodextrine amount with a final volume of 2.5 gallons to see what it predicts the OG to be. Subtract that from your original gravity and your current gravity to see what your actual attenuation is. Look any better?