Cream Stout Kit - Want to dress it up

I've been doing kit brewing for the past year or so and I still have a few kits to burn through before I move on to creating my own recipes or trying ones that I find here. I have a midwest cream stout kit that has the following ingredients:

6 lb. Dark liquid malt extract
8 oz. Lactose
8 oz. Black Malt
8 oz. Caramel 80L specialty grain
1 oz. German Northern Brewer bittering hops

I'd like to turn it into a Bourbon Barrel Cream Stout, and up the alcohol percentage quite a bit since I plan on letting it age on Oak cubes for several months.

I'd like this to be around 8-10% when finished and plan on letting it age out about a year. I'm open to suggestions for the recipe but I was going to add 3lbs DME and 1lb Dextrose to give it the extra kick I'm looking for. Should I be adding any extra hops to offset the extra malt?

Other than ciders, I've really only done kits so far and I usually add a little extra dextrose, dme, or honey to kick up the abv % but thi is the biggest beer I've attempted so far and I want to make sure it comes out balanced. I'm doing full boils.

I don't have a lot to offer, but more then what you've recieved so far...
the extra DME will help, the dextrose will only give it a thicker mouthfeel.
If you're planning on waiting that long to drink it, I recommend follow a proven recipe. There are several on here for the style youre looking for. Old Rasputins somthing-or-other & Founders breakfast stout are both imperial stouts, founders is an oatmeal stout I believe. Search those & you should come up with somthing great!
Regards,
P.S. I admire your patience, I hate let beer age at all...:cross:

An extra pound of Dextrose will be SUPER sweet. I would add somewhere between .5 and 1 pound (TOTAL) dextrose to this recipe, depending on how thick/sweet you want it to be. Adding the extra 3 pounds DME will increase the ABV by about 50%, but you will need to increase the hops by 50% also, in order to keep the balance. If you choose to use the extra 3 pounds of malt, I would increase the hops to 1.5 ounces also.

According to my calculations, you will need more like 12 pounds of Dark LME to get to 8% (it gets really expensive to brew high-gravity extract beers!) Here is an example of my recipe calculations to get you to 8% ABV. As you can see, 2 ounces of hops only gets you 22 IBU at this gravity. I think it may be better to use 3 ounces of hops for 33 IBU, but that is up to your taste preference as to how bitter you want the beer to be.

isn't dextrose just corn sugar? wouldn't that get eaten up by the yeast and get turned into alcohol? are you guys thinking of Lactose, which is milk sugar, and isn't eaten by the yeast. the amount of times i put dextrose in beers it was to dry it out, and it never gave a thicker mouth feel.

dkm11b said:

isn't dextrose just corn sugar? wouldn't that get eaten up by the yeast and get turned into alcohol? are you guys thinking of Lactose, which is milk sugar, and isn't eaten by the yeast. the amount of times i put dextrose in beers it was to dry it out, and it never gave a thicker mouth feel.

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You are correct. DEXTROSE will ferment completely, resulting in a dry finish and higher alcohol. For some reason, I thought the OP wanted to add an extra pound of LACTOSE. I simply read it wrong... If you look at the recipe calculation I posted, I did not add any dextrose, and I left the Lactose addition the same, to prevent the finished beer from being too sweet. Sorry for the confusion.

ok, all the -ose sugars get me mixed up too.....did i make a milk stout, or a dry stout??? lol.

I would be careful with the wood chips. My only experience with them did not go well as I left them in the fermenter too long...do plenty if research prior and lots of tasting during. This was my one beer that did not get better with time. Even after removing the chips, the wood flavor continued to get stronger and stronger.

bobbrewedit said:

I would be careful with the wood chips. My only experience with them did not go well as I left them in the fermenter too long...do plenty if research prior and lots of tasting during. This was my one beer that did not get better with time. Even after removing the chips, the wood flavor continued to get stronger and stronger.

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Thanks I found a thread on aging with oak and the difference between cubes and chips. Chips impart flavor really quickly and people are saying 1 week is usually good. I'm considering using cubes though since I want to age this out a bit anyway but thanks for the info.

DrummerBoySeth said:

You are correct. DEXTROSE will ferment completely, resulting in a dry finish and higher alcohol. For some reason, I thought the OP wanted to add an extra pound of LACTOSE. I simply read it wrong... If you look at the recipe calculation I posted, I did not add any dextrose, and I left the Lactose addition the same, to prevent the finished beer from being too sweet. Sorry for the confusion.

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I will only be adding the 8oz of lactose that came with the kit. Adding a lb of lactose would probably ruin we hat I'm hoping will be a very good beer.