Feedback on a Stout Recipe

Hi everyone - before I brew my stout, I wanted to get some feedback. It's try number 3 of coming up with my own recipe (i.e. no experience in formulating recipes, but I am tying to learn) and wanted to get feedback prior to brewing this one. I bought the following ingredients:

6 lbs Light DME
1 lb Muntons Roasted Barley
1 lb Flaked Barley
4 oz Muntons Black Patent
2 oz Cluster hops for 60 minutes

Wyeast 1056 (more by default as I harvested a ton of it)

It's a 5 gallon batch.

The roasted barley and black patent were already bought and mixed/milled. I am not averse to splitting the milled grain, mixing is with something else (I have crystal 60L and 40L on hand). I also have Wyeast 1332 on hand, and a pretty large variety of hops.

Anyway, any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

You'll need something with diastatic enzymes to convert the flaked barley in a mash.

944play said:

You'll need something with diastatic enzymes to convert the flaked barley in a mash.

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If he's looking for fermentables, yes. If he's looking for some body and head retention, no. For what's most likely an extract with steeping grains recipe, I wouldn't worry about this.

I would probably only use about half of your roasted barley / black patent mixture and add 8oz to 1lb of your Crystal 60L, depending on how much you like those flavors in a stout.

Choice of hops is unimportant for bittering in a stout, so Cluster should be fine.

Have you used a tool (like Hopville) to calculate your expected OG/FG/IBUs? I find seeing those numbers (especially in comparison with the BJCP guidelines) helps me formulate and modify recipes. I don't always stick within the guidelines, but I like to know where I'm falling compared with other beers of that style.

It is an extract with steeping grains.

For the original recipe above, hopville gave me:

1.059 OG
1.015 FG
5.9% ABV
32 SRM
38.6 IBUs

You will still get body and head retention after converting the starches of the Flaked Barley. I personally wouldn't want any starches floating around in my beer on purpose other than to feed wild yeasts (i.e. turbid mashes for lambics and what not).

If you are against a partial mash to convert the flaked barely I would suggest replacing it with a dextrin malt such as Cara-pils to mimic the head retention and body enhancing effects. It only needs to be steeped along with your other specialty grains.

I just looked up the easy partial mash thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/

If that's all there is to it, I will do the partial mash with the flaked barley and specialty grains. No issues there.

944play said:

You'll need something with diastatic enzymes to convert the flaked barley in a mash.

Click to expand...

If I do a partial mash, I would need to get some base grains to get the conversion?

Yes. I believe 1 lb of 2-row should have enough diastatic power to convert your 1 lb of flaked barley.