Russian imperial stout feedback

Hello, friends! I'm gonna be gettin hitched next year so I wanted to make something interesting and heavy for the winter occasion - why not a Russian imperial stout? The idea was to brew in January, bottle after about 6 weeks, and let em condition for a year or so. Primarily I'm looking to see what any of you may have to say about grain bill I pulled right out of my ass (and the BJCP guidelines). This is the first time making up my own recipe so any thoughts are welcome.

This is for a 10 gallon batch. I was going for moderately hopped coffee/caramel with some but not too much bitterness, not too sure how that'll pan out with the roasted barley and black patent. Hoping to get just a touch of booze that'll sort of sneak up on ya.

30 lbs Rahr 2 Row Grain 73.2 %
3 lbs Roasted Barley Grain 7.3 %
2 lbs Black (Patent) Grain 4.9 %
2 lbs Chocolate (Briess) Grain 4.9 %
2 lbs Oats, Flaked (Briess) Grain 4.9 %
2 lbs Special B Grain 4.9 %

3.50 oz Nugget [13.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 53.2 IBUs
2.00 oz Fuggle [4.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 8.1 IBUs
2.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 4.7 IBUs

Thankee.

It look good, but I think you should remove one of your three roasted grains. My vote would be on the chocolate malt. You already will have good depth from being just such a huge beer, the roasted barley as well as the special b.

I agree with too much roasted malts, even for an RIS. Youve got 3 things that you would basically rely on a single malt for. Complexity doesnt always come from complex recipes

But more concerning is the hop additions. I think you calculated somethign wrong. This is close to 200 IBU

Thanks, I'll take the grain stuff under advisement!

As for the hops, I'm not sure what you mean. Maybe you're thinking this for a 5 gallon batch? Beersmith puts me at 66 IBUs on the dot.

Caramel flavor is going to come from a medium Crystal Malt if you really want it in your beer. ~5% Crystal 60 is a good starting place.

Yeah now that you mention it I agree all the roasted grains is a bit much. Maybe I'll replace one of the to roasted malts with the same amount of crystal then. As fate would have it, I just so happen to have some crystal 120 laying around.

By the way, has anyone ever used Imperial Organic Yeast before? I saw that they've got a 200 billion cell count for $3 more than a typical vial/smack pack, which is amazeballs. I wanted to use Darkness (linked below) for this RIS but given the occasion I'm brewing for I don't want to use a yeast I'm not familiar with. Planning on making a mocha espresso stout test batch with Darkness today.

https://www.morebeer.com/products/imperial-organic-yeast-darkness.html

I get 138 IBUs from the nugget alone for a 10gal batch. That makes sense to me since that is a larger bittering addition than I would even do for an IPA in terms of hops/gal

Can you show me your calculations? Because I've triple checked this and I think we're just using different numbers. Maybe I should have started off with the rest of the specifics. Here goes:

Boil volume: 11.67 gallons
Fermenter volume: 10.5 gal
Target OG: 1.109



These figures put me at 66 IBUs (plus or minus 0.25) regardless of which calculator I use. Similar results when I do the math by hand.

Nugget alone at 13% AA and 3.5 oz for a 10 gallon batch gets you close to 100 IBU with Beersmith.

Disregard. Incorrect data with incomplete grain-bill inputted to BS. GIGO

Well I do 90 min boils so that adds to it but I'm still not sure why my IBU number is nearly half yours.

To simplify, here's a screenshot of my beersmith.

Scratch that bit on the hop utilization . The numbers seem to mesh with mine once I put in the grain bill and water guesstimate in.

Disregard my prior posts. I will edit the misleading info. Sorry for the misleading post.

IBU's seem correct

Beersmith says batches less than 20 gallons should be 100% so that's what mine is set at.

Right on. Thanks for the input.

Here's an update for anyone who cares as to what I actually did for this RIS. I ended up weaseling my way into working at a local brewery so we did a test batch with the following grain/hop bill using their test batch gear, which consists of converted half kegs for boil kettle and MLT and a counter flow chiller.


5.5 gallon batch
15 lbs Pilsner malt
1.5 lbs roasted barley
1 lb flaked oats
1 lb black patent
1 lb crystal 120
1 lb chocolate
1 lb special B
1 oz nugget FHW 90 min
0.5 oz Fuggles 45 min

Mashed in at 168, steeped at 154 for 45 min then batch sparged for another 20 minutes.

Two weeks in primary, cold crashed for 9 days. Force carbonated into soda keg to 2.3 vols of CO2. Sampling at carbonating showed a thick, heavy mouthfeel with great legs. Big notes of chocolate and bitter/smokey-ness with mild little to no caramel. Minimal hoppy bitterness. All in all a decent tasting beer but not what I was hoping for. Definitely need to increase the hops for the second round. Also plan to increase the amount of crystal 120 to get more caramel notes and balance out the roasted grains.

I didn't hit my target gravities (like, not even close --> target OG was 1.100 measured was 1.087, terminal gravity was around 1.025) but I think that was partly due to the fact that I was totally unfamiliar with this equipment and the short time spent in the fermentor. I think next time I'm going to let it sit in the fermentor for at least 3 weeks to give the yeast some extra time to chew through all the sugars.


Edit:
I'm planning on experimenting with fermenting in the soda keg and periodically shaking it to get more yeast into suspension and stimulate some more activity. Any thoughts?

25% adjunct and you made it to 71% AA?? That's pretty fortunate IME. You can basically throw away any possibility of making it attenuate any lower. I hit 76% AA @ 20% adjunct on my RIS. It's done.

Why so much black patent and why special B & C120? There's a lot of analogous specialty grains in here and I don't think it's conducive for developing complexity. I would cut the BPM in half and eliminate either special B or C120 entirely, replacing with base malt. Also...why are you using Pils versus 2-row or MO? Seems like an odd choice for a RIS. Personally i prefer drier beers, but at the very least this will help you squeeze a few more points out of your grainbill.

The base malt is what they have at the brewery. Works just fine. I'm playing around with the heavily roasted malts to see how they go together. I agree that they have a lot of analogous flavors but I'd argue that they do add to complexity; all the stuff we perceive as taste and smell is still there. Same goes for the special B and crystal malts; experimenting to see what happens. I'm rather pleased so I don't think I'm going to swap them out, particularly because I'm looking for some added sweet/caramel flavors.

As for the AA, well we pitched a pint glass of fresh yeast into the carboy. Got a ton of the good stuff in there so I'm sure that helped.

So...you're not actually looking for constructive feedback then?

Sounds like I'm wasting my breath.

Quite the contrary; you gave me pretty much the exact responses I was expecting to get. We just have differing opinions, which is just fine. Thanks for the input.

that's pretty close to what I do for my RIS, and I love how it comes out...I usually use MO with some Munich for the base. Last batch went from ~1.100 or so down to 1.024. Key is a big, healthy pitch.

Personally I would drop the black malt and sub in a body building malt like melanoidin which will compliment the special B and chocolate. Or you could use something a bit different like rye malt.