Imperial stout recipe, need feedback

I've only brewed a few recipes up thus far and really only followed them as they were laid out so this is my first attempt at creating a fairly high abv stout that my friends and I can drink around wintertime. Any pointers that might make this not taste disgusting would be appreciated. I plan to to a partial mash at 155 for 60 minutes with some American 2 row just to get myself more acquainted with the process, then follow it up with extract

Mashed at 155 for 60 minutes

Flaked oats #1
American Chocolate Malt #1
Crystal L40 #.5
Crystal L120 #1
American 2 Row #2
Carapils #.5

after the mashing process

LME #6.6
Local Honey #2

15 minutes before end of boil

DME #2.5

and the hop schedule

Magnum 1.5oz @ 60
Cascade 1oz @ 30
Saaz 1oz @ 15

Yeast
White labs 099 super high gravity yeast

I'm looking for a fairly sweet (but not overpoweringly so) stout that you can crack a bottle and be done for the day with. According to qbrew it should hit about 11.4 abv, I'm just not sure how off my numbers are or if what parts of it would equal a really bad beer. I'm planning on brewing in the next few weeks and letting it sit in my spare secondary for a few months before bottle conditioning till the middle of November. I figure 6 months of conditioning should help everything meld together but I'm still a novice so any help is appreciated.

Looks tasty to me, but a couple suggestions.

If you want it sweet though I would go with 1 lb of honey and add another pound of extract. Honey is highly fermentable, so it will lead to a drier beer.

Roasted barley or black patent are a key part of the "stout" flavor, giving coffee, charcoal, roast etc... I would go with ~.5-1 lb of either along with the chocolate malt.

Even more so than the recipe your technique will determine how drinkable this big beer is. Pitch lots of yeast (~2 L+ starter), give it plenty of oxygen before fermentation (either pure oxygen, or give it a good shake every as often as you can for the first day or so), keep the fermentation temperatures down in the 60s (~62 ambient), do your best to minimixe oxygen exposure after fermentation etc...

Good luck, and smart move starting 6 months before you want to be drinking it, I'm still brewing "summer" beers.

Thanks for the feedback, will definitely add some roasted barley to it. I want to steer clear of some of the more burnt flavors that sometimes come along with black patent, while capturing just a hint of smokiness. Would you recommend adding more LME and using it at the full boil or just tossing more DME in towards the end?

I work at a fish store and figure I will just use an aquarium pump with a sanitized hose and airstone on it to blast the wort with oxygen before pitching.

I've got a summer beer that's been sitting in my secondary for about a week now. I like to get started early.

ericsabbat said:

Thanks for the feedback, will definitely add some roasted barley to it. I want to steer clear of some of the more burnt flavors that sometimes come along with black patent, while capturing just a hint of smokiness. Would you recommend adding more LME and using it at the full boil or just tossing more DME in towards the end?

I work at a fish store and figure I will just use an aquarium pump with a sanitized hose and airstone on it to blast the wort with oxygen before pitching.

I've got a summer beer that's been sitting in my secondary for about a week now. I like to get started early.

Click to expand...

Sounds good. You could go either way (LME/DME-Early/Late), I don’t think it matters too much in such a big dark beer.

I used an aquarium pump for awhile with an in-line filter (so you aren’t pumping microbes from the air into your beer), I’ve read various arguments for and against them, but I just had process issues with it (foaming beer). Maybe run it for 20 min at the start, and then for 10 more minutes a couple more times through the first 24 hours to make sure the yeast are as healthy as they can be.

I'll probably go DME then its easier to get in #1 increments

I tend to hurt my back fairly easy and tweaked it pretty good doing my last 5.5 gallon batch, dumping that much weight back and forth repeatedly is not so much fun so I'm experimenting with other ways around it.

One of the local homebrewers suggested an aquarium pump so I figured I'd give it a go and see how I like it, need to track down an inline filter though because we stopped selling them and I don't want to have to Macgyver something up if I don't have too.

ericsabbat said:

I tend to hurt my back fairly easy and tweaked it pretty good doing my last 5.5 gallon batch, dumping that much weight back and forth repeatedly is not so much fun so I'm experimenting with other ways around it.

Click to expand...

For low gravity beers I just rock the fermenter back and forth, seems to work pretty well.

For less bach ache, getting a mini oxygen regulator is a great way to go if you don't mind spending ~$50. They attach to those red oxygen bottles from Home Depot, one lasts me ~20 batches. It just takes about a minute on low per batch and you can get higher dissolved oxygen levels than using air for your big beers.

Not the first thing I would spend money on, but it is a good option if aeration is what you want.

I think I'd get killed by swmbo if I did that right now, especially since I have a spare air pump in the living room from one of our old tanks. But will definitely add it to my list of eventual buys. I heard you can get a weird flavor if you use pure o2? or is that just if you use too much of ir?

ericsabbat said:

I think I'd get killed by swmbo if I did that right now, especially since I have a spare air pump in the living room from one of our old tanks. But will definitely add it to my list of eventual buys. I heard you can get a weird flavor if you use pure o2? or is that just if you use too much of ir?

Click to expand...

I remember hearing that as well, but I believe it was someone running it on full blast for several minutes. I've done dozens of beers with pure O2 without issue, won awards with them etc...

Ah well that's good news and puts that worry to rest. After researching prices for inline filters and the .5 micron steel airstones Its really not that much more to tack a regulator on there so I may as well take that plunge since I'm brewing such a high gravity beer anyway.

I would cut down the C120 to about a half pound and add about a half lb of roasted barley. I believe that roasted barley is critical in creating a good stout.

Also, from what I have been told before is that the Super high gravity yeast imparts an undesirable flavor. It gets the job done fermenting such huge beers but I would pitch some type of English style yeast with a HUGE starter. You could pitch the 099 at high krausen to make sure that the beer finishes at a desirable level. I have just heard that it's not a good yeast to use solely because it doesn't produce a good flavor.

I have only used 099 once and that was to get the beer down to a level below 1.015. I was going to use only it in producing a IIPA and was told that the flavor profile from the yeast would be undesirable. However, you are doing a stout not a IIPA so my two cents may not be applicable for your beer.