Founders Breakfast Stout clone, one week past bottling

Hello fellow home brewers!
After last winter's disappointing autumn in my kitchen -- I was wanting a lot of malt, but for one reason or another kept falling short -- I dove into the deep end this year. I started out brewing a Scotch Ale in mid-September, and I opened the first bottle mid-October. As soon as I opened the first of those bottles, I sampled a bottle of Founders Breakfast Stout and fell head over heels in love like I did with another dark-haired brunette when I was a teenager. I love beer -- it was beer. I love coffee -- it tasted strong of coffee. I love chocolate -- it had that, too. It was so malty, it make my tongue sticky. Plus, it had enough punch to keep me warm on a chilly Appalachian night.
So, I came home and did a quick Google search, finding BYO's clone recipe HERE. Looking it over, I knew of some changes I wanted to make. First off, I trust my local HBSS very much and told him if he needed to make any malt substitutions to just do it. He had to make one or two, which ones I can't recall. But he made several mentions at how much grain this was for a five-gallon batch. So much that I had to use two grain bags. I *almost* needed a third bag just for the flaked oats.
Next, I substituted the bittersweet chocolate with 100% unsweetened baker's chocolate. Why? Because I added a pound of lactose to this batch. I wanted this to resemble more of a creamy mocha stout than just a black coffee stout.
Lastly, because I mostly try to use what I've got, I used 100% Starbucks Pike's Place medium roast coffee instead of two different types of coffee. Whatever. I don't know if it really made that much of a difference.

The beer has been in the bottles for a week now, and last night I couldn't help myself and opened one up. It's got the most lovely khaki brown head on it, and it smells so strong of coffee that you can smell it across the room. Will this intensity go down once it has aged for a while? It completely overpowers the chocolate at this point.

Another question... This is my first time brewing with lactose. How does it affect your gravity readings? I started out with 1.066 and ended with 1.025. It should have been lower than that after 10 days in a primary and 10 days in a secondary. I was expecting it to finish at 1.017 or so. I mean, I understand why having lactose would cause the overall gravity readings to be higher, but shouldn't it still have ended up lower?

I'm still counting this as another successful brew, even if the coffee flavor doesn't die down. It's delicious -- even after only a week. I highly recommend it, though the ingredient list is a little pricey.

Check out this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/founders-breakfast-stout-clone-139078/

One thing that looked a bit off is your OG. However, I've never used lactose before, so I can't really offer any advice. In any case, my OG was 1.086 and I bottled at 1.025. Since I mashed at a relatively high 155 F, this was expected.

1) The coffee will die down with time, that is a beer that needs at least 6 weeks or more in a bottle to reach its prime.

2) Between all the roasted malts and the lactose that's a pretty reasonable gravity, a milk stout finishes out at 1.020-1.022 usually.

Like Doc said, the coffee will mellow a lot, but it needs several weeks.

You'll still have a very strong coffee beer though. I would personally find that level of coffee undrinkable, especially if you followed the BYO method of just dumping the coffee in, instead of steeping it for only a few minutes. Just my 2c.

The biggest pain was bottling. The grains kept stopping up my bottling tube.

I've opened three bottles so far, and the coffee is mellowing slowly. I'm still not tasting as much chocolate as I would have hoped. I'll post pictures of a pour soon...

germanywx said:

The biggest pain was bottling. The grains kept stopping up my bottling tube...

Click to expand...

another great reason to just steep the coffee for a few minutes. I honestly can't understand why BYO would suggest simply tossing the grinds into the beer. There's no need for extra contact time, like with hops, and seems more likely to extract bad flavors with extended time. And coffee is cheap enough that if you want more flavor, just use a little more instead of extending the contact time. It's just bad advice.

I love the opportunity to learn new things when brewing up something. This was the first time that I've used ingredients this far outside of the Reinheitsgebot guidelines. Other than a little citrus rind here and there, I like sticking to the basics of what beer should be. So, to brew up something that was so far outside of my realm of experience and preference was an interesting undertaking. I enjoyed the brewing process... it was just not my normal undertaking. With more "pure" beers, I have a pretty good routine in getting them made and bottled and have become quite efficient. Everything in this brew seemed to take much longer and was more complicated. Perhaps Reinheitsgebot is just as much about efficiency as it is purity.