Amount of caramel extract in a 16% stout?

In February me and a friend will be brewing a stout roughly based on World Wide Stout but sweeter - it will be somewhere around 16%, hopefully more. The recipe is all set but we want to smooth it out with some caramel extract. We're brewing a 13-gallon batch and I see that caramel extract is commonly sold in 2 oz bottles. The question is does anyone here have experience with caramel extract and how strong is it? I've made the mistake of overdoing vanilla extract in the past and we don't want to screw this batch up. It should be noticeable but not overtake the flavor - we're not looking to make caramel stout. Any ideas?

I've honestly never heard of anyone using caramel extract. Caramel types of flavors are pretty easy to get with malt selection, but perhaps not as intense as you may be going for. Melanoidin, aromatic, and, well, caramel/crystal malts are all intensely sweet and caramelly.

Post the recipe. Otherwise, it's all just speculation. Caramel extract doesn't really sound like a good idea, but it's hard to tell without the rest of the recipe.

I won't have a copy of the recipe until near the end of January but I'll bump this thread up and post it then.

On a related note, has anyone here tried Saranac Caramel Porter? It has a really low rating on beeradvocate (C+) but me and my friends loved it. Our stout would not have that much caramel flavor but as a reference I'd like to find out how they made it - it seems to have a flavoring in it, beyond just the caramel malts.

I've had the Saranac caramel porter a bunch of times and always liked it.

Caramel is made with butter, milk or cream, which you absolutely do not want to add to the beer.

Before you actually add it. Pick up an imperial stout from your beer store (something like Sam Adams will do for the purpose of the experiment), and add a little bit of the extract to it (one drop at a time) and see how you like it first. If you don't, at least you haven't ruined the batch. If you do, use it. I can already tell you that I wouldn't do it though.

BarleyWater said:

Caramel is made with butter, milk or cream, which you absolutely do not want to add to the beer.

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I was talking to one of the guys at our BOP and he said some customers had tried adding caramel to their batches. He didn't mention anything about the taste, but he did say that the caramel didn't fully melt and some of it hardened in the colder fermentation temperatures. After that conversation is when I considered caramel extract but if the extract also contains milk/cream, then we definitely won't put it in our beer.

I think the best option suggested here was using caramel malts but I'll save that idea for a different beer because we're not changing the base recipe this time. Caramel isn't really a necessity in this case - we were just considering any possible flavor additions. Our other idea is adding vanilla beans so we might just skip the caramel for this one.

However, I still want to make a Caramel Porter or Brown Ale someday, so it will be a good challenge of how to add that flavor without screwing up a batch of beer. After I posted this thread, I read that Saranac's porter likely has some kind of artificial flavoring so it must exist in some form with no milk products in it. Maybe I could outdo Saranac by adding some lactose sugar in with caramel malts and only adding a small amount of artificial flavor if necessary AFTER tasting the base recipe first. Hmmm...

Thanks for everyone's advice

gabeweisz said:

I've had the Saranac caramel porter a bunch of times and always liked it.

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I've only had it once so far but I'm hoping to grab some more this winter if it's still around. I was really surprised to see it had such a below average score on BA. That's ok - more for us.

David said:

I was really surprised to see it had such a below average score on BA. That's ok - more for us.

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I'm really not that suprised. I thought it was pretty thin and artificial tasting (for lack of a better word), without much chocolate to back up the "caramel."

David said:

I think the best option suggested here was using caramel malts but I'll save that idea for a different beer because we're not changing the base recipe this time.

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Makes no sense. If you want a flavor that easily be incorporated by changing the recipe, then the recipe should be changed.

Yuri_Rage said:

Makes no sense. If you want a flavor that easily be incorporated by changing the recipe, then the recipe should be changed.

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The head brewer has been working on the recipe and we won't talk to him until the week before we brew it so I don't want to start changing it now. He knows the recipe and I've only been brewing since last spring so it's all good - we'll try it out first and we can make changes next time if we want. The only reason for the vanilla beans is because we like to do at least one thing different so our batches are a little unique from what other customers have done. Plus we're getting this batch for free. I just started getting my equipment to brew at home so I think I'll save the caramel experiment for a 5-gallon batch.

But I still got some good advice in this thread even though it won't apply to the stout. Once I get a copy of that recipe, I'll post it in a new thread followed by some tasting notes.