Imperial Stout Clone Recipe Help, Please

I am planning to brew tomorrow, but......

My recipe calls for 8oz brown malt and I forgot to order it.
It's an extract so it will only be steeped. So I was wondering
if I can substitute 8oz of chocolate malt?

Will this work or be a bit of an overload of chocolate malt?

I love chocolate malt, although it's a little different than brown, which is smoother, nuttier and has less of a burnt flavor. If you have some pale ale malt on hand, you can make brown malt, kinda like this: pale ale malt is placed in pan lined with foil, baked 45min at 230F, 30min at 300F, and around 30min at 350, or until malt looks brown. It's a bit of a hassle, I would just stick with some chocolate. RIS are supposed to be really roasty and once it's aged for half a year it will mellow out and become very complex.

It's the Old Rasputin Clone from Brew magazine. They say that it is supposed to be drinkable as soon as any other ale. Would the addition of more chocolate then need it to age longer? If so, how long? Six months will be way too long for me to wait.

Maybe I should just omit the brown malt and go from there.

Well, it's been brewed. And with a heafty washed yeast cake my Imperial is already bubbling like crazy. Gonna go plug in the blow off tube and hit the hay.

Brown malt is not like chocolate. It's a base malt. I would have swapped maybe 6 oz of biscuit or something like that. There is a recipe for Old Rasputin in Beer Captured that I have made that came out pretty close.

So brew smith did you find the statement that it was "drinkable" in two weeks to be accurate? Obviously aging it would be the preferred but sounds interesting if they formulated a big beer like that and it was drinkable so early. I wonder if it does not taste as complex as some other RIS's

Brown malt used to be a base malt, not too many breweries would use it for the main portion of their grist because it doesn't contain the DP of pale ale or pils malt, plus it's not as neutral.

david_the_greek said:

So brew smith did you find the statement that it was "drinkable" in two weeks to be accurate? Obviously aging it would be the preferred but sounds interesting if they formulated a big beer like that and it was drinkable so early. I wonder if it does not taste as complex as some other RIS's

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My guess would be no, but I don't know. I let mine sit for months before trying it. I mean I sampled it after fermentation (at least 2 weeks) and letting it sit in a secondary (several more weeks) and then at bottling (a few months in the bottle). I would give it a minimum of about 2 months before I would consider it "drinkable." Everything that I have made with that high of a starting gravity has been harsh before that.

Just how long should I let it sit in secondry?

I'd say at least a month, then you can bottle. I would probably give it 3 months.

guys, I sampled my RIS from BYO before transferring it to the secondary. I was skeptical about it being ready so soon as well. I have to admit, I was kind of surpised, it wasn't that bad. I went out and bought a four pack of Old Rasputin to compare the two and it was pretty close, thats after 14 days in the primary. Granted I'm no expert, I had SWMBO try it and she thought it was pretty good as well....

Anyway, my brew day was 9/14 and I'm going to let it sit in the secondary for a couple of months and then keg it, shooting for around xmas day to drink it.

So yes, about three months and I can't see it not being good !