What the hell would this taste like? (Imperial Stout)

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BrewerBrennan

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So, I've been thinking of brewing up a big imp stout soon. I've pieced the recipe together from so-called clones of some of my favorite stouts. I really enjoy heavy roasty notes, coffee, and chocolate. With that being said, I'm thinking of doing this recipe. Any suggestions are appreciated!

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: WLP007 Dry English Ale
Yeast Starter: Two 2L starters, one on a stir plate, one not. Both decanted.
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.094
Final Gravity: 1.022
IBU: 95.8
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Color: 65.5
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 4 weeks @66
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 8 Weeks @68


Ingredients.
Brewhouse Efficiency 72%

13.50 lbs 2-row (2.0 SRM) 72.0%
1 lbs Chocolate Malt (450 SRM) 5.3%
1 lbs Roasted Barley (300 SRM) 5.3%
1 lbs Flaked Oats (1.0 SRM) 5.3%
.9 lbs Crystal 80L (80 SRM) 4.8%
.9 lbs Black Patent (500 SRM) 4.8%
.4 lbs Peat Smoked Malt (2.8 SRM) 2.2%

1.75 oz Columbus [14.00 %] (90 min) hops 74.3 IBU
1.50 oz Columbus [14.00 %] (10 min) hops 21.6 IBU
0.75 oz Columbus [14.00 %] (0 min) hops 0.0 IBU

Mash for 60 minutes at 153
 
WLP007 is Dry English Ale. California is 001. Given the rest of the recipe, I don't think it makes much difference which one you use. The recipe looks nice, certainly heavy on the roasty flavors you're after. Don't listen to anyone who tells you not to use the peat malt; it's great stuff.
 
Oops, that was a typo. I copied that from a previous recipe and forgot to change the name. I plan to use 007.

As for the peat malt, I love this stuff! I've used it in a porter before and I love the smokey flavor it gives.
 
I think this looks like a great stout recipe! My only piece of advice would be to mash a couple degrees lower to make sure you hit your FG.

Good luck!
 
Soooo, tasting notes.

I ended up not hitting my final gravity. It stopped around 1.026.

Besides that, its actually probably a good thing that it didn't get much lower, its pretty astringent. I think I went a little heavy on the roasted barley, considering it tastes mostly like coffee. There is some chocolate, but really not that much. I also actually get a lot of hop bitterness, which I think I might tone down. Either way, I have ~5 gallons of a quite tasty stout :) I just need to keep tuning the recipe. Any suggestions for some more chocolate flavor? I was thinking of using some cacao nibs next time. Any tips?
 
Yea, my thoughts would be to tone way down the black patent malt (I avoid using more than about 4oz in a 5 gallon batch, but that's me), and if you're looking for chocolate flavor, tone down the roasted barley a little, and bring up the up the chocolate malt the same amount. +1 on mashing lower - with that high a gravity and that low a percentage of base malt, I would mash at about 149F.

I had a pretty decent turn out for a brew I aged on cacao nibs. Only problem is that they're pretty pricey.
 
Hmmm, alright. Good to know! I've been doing AG for a while and I have a knowledge of how to brew, but I'm pretty new to recipe formulation. I guess its just trial and error for now.

After seeing that comment and thinking about it, I ended up mashing at 150-151ish. That being said, I still was stuck at 1.026.
 
A high fg isn't really too terrible for a style like imperial stout, as long as you hopped enough, and I think you did. Pretty sure the high FG is due to the high amount of less modified grains you used. Again, for this style, that's not necessarily a problem. For smaller styles I try to keep base malt to a bare minimum of 80% of the grain bill. All the specialty grains, especially the darker malts, produce sugars that are less ferment able - the more specialty grains you use, the more nonfermentable sugars, the higher the FG. Just time thing to think about in recipe designing.

But again - in this case, the high FG may just work in your favor. Cheers.
 
Btw - for what it's worth, 1.026 is still in-style for an imperial stout. Up to 1.030 FG is considered in style.
 
Yea I'm not really worried about it. I'm actually kinda glad it finished at 1.026, any thinner and it would have been a little too dry. I still plan to add more chocolate, tone down the patent quite a bit, and bring the roasted barley down a little. I also want to add a little more oats. I'm pretty familiar with the unfermentables the unmodified malts add, I guess I just didn't realize how much I really added. Thanks for the info though. I'll probably reformulate and brew within a month. I'll keep this updated!
 
If this is only about a month old you should give it a bit more time and I have a feeling everything will start to round out. I imagine the extra IBUs will allow you to age this stout for some time to come.
 
That's a lot of IBUs for a stout, right?

It is a lot, but it works well in a big imperial stout like this, especially one that finishes in the 1.020s. He's at about 1.02 for BU:GU, which is in line, albeit on the high end, for the style.
 
I made a pretty good Extra Stout and used 1/2 pound each:

Chocolate Malt
Roast Barley
Extra Dark Crystal (Simpsons)
Dark Crystal (Simpsons)

I think this really had a nice well rounded roasty taste with some subtle chocolate. I bet if you just upped this combo for the Imperial it would be great. I agree that .9 lbs Black Patent is an awful lot.
 
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