First Recipe Attempt

So I've been trying to better understand recipe formulation to better understand my beer.

My SWMBO loves sticky sweet black stouts and so that is my first attempt.

At first blush it seemed simple enough. Base malt for starters, choco malt for coffee and cocoa flavor, flaked oats for body and sticky "oatness", and Lactose for unfermented sweetness and extra body.

However when I've looked at a few other sweet stouts in recipe bank I'm seeing all kinds of stuff thrown in. One recipe had seven different malts and two kinds of coffee. Another one had white wheat malt in it.

My question is "am I missing something by aiming simple?" Is two ounces of roast barley (1%) going to change my flavor around that much (one recipe called for that)?

What do you think of this for a simple stout to start with?


Batch Size: 5.500 gal
Boil Size: 6.394 gal
Boil Time: 1.000 hr
Efficiency: 65%
OG: 1.065
FG: 1.017
ABV: 6.2%
Bitterness: 21.4 IBUs (Tinseth)
Color: 42 SRM (Morey)


Pale Malt (2 Row) UK Grain 9.000 lb
Oats, Flaked Grain 2.500 lb
Milk Sugar (Lactose) Sugar 1.500 lb
Chocolate Malt (UK) Grain 1.500 lb

Golding 5.0% 1.500 oz 1.000 hr

Wyeast - British Ale

I wouldn't concider that a stout. You need some sort of roasty flavor in the beer to make it a stout. Of course, the line between porter and stout is usually fuzzy.

I would say...lose the lactose. You'll have plenty of body with 2.5lbs of oats. Use some rice hulls so you don't have a stuck sparge because of the oats. Add a little roasted barley, maybe .5lbs. Yes, 2oz. can add a little roasty flavor, but nothing over the top. It depends on how much of that roasted flavor you enjoy in your stouts.

If she likes sticky stouts, you might try adding some molasses to the recipe.

i wouldn't consider that drinkable

Keeping it simple is a great thing to do, check out the SMaSH concept. However, a stout is not a particularly simple beer. I would recommend backing way off on the lactose, 1.5 lbs will give you a cloyingly sweet beer. If you're going to use lactose, use a 1/2 lb at most the first time you use it. Also, to fit into the stout category, you have to have some roasted malt. I would back off on the chocolate, add some dark crystal malt and some roasted malt. That's a lot of oats also and will gum up your mash, I probably wouldn't use more than a pound.

Designing Great Beers (Daniels) has guidelines which give you a great place to start. Brewing Classic Styles also has really good base recipes.

THis is a good basic stout recipe with oats (Sammy Smith clone from this forum under recipes):


Amount Item Type % or IBU
8.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 81.7 %
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 5.4 %
0.50 lb Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 5.4 %
0.50 lb Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 5.4 %
0.18 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 2.0 %
2.00 oz Goldings, East Kent [4.25%] (60 min) Hops 31.8 IBU
1.00 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min) Misc

I suppose you could add some lactose to this but it will make it A LOT sweeter.

+1 to the above info and recipe from JonK. Designing Great Beers is an incredible book for those wanting to build their own recipes.

Just a basic rule of thumb for most situations... Don't go over 5-10% with ANY specialty malt unless the style is dependent on it. Wheat is the exception. Some beers will be more than 10%, as it's not a set-in-stone rule, but for the most part it's a good thing to watch.