anyone got a recipe/method for Guinness Foreign Extra Stout (tropical version)?

Although I'm appreciative of the Guinness FES that has recently been exported to US markets, it's quite clearly a different beast than that sold in the Caribbean. I remember drinking a bunch of them in Dominica, and the most notable difference was the distinct sour bite and an almost acrid burned finish. Not the most appetizing description, but they were delicious! It had a thin chocolate-colored head that left lacing all down the glass.

Based on my research, I'm shooting for something in the 7.5% ABV range. I have seen references to mixing in a quantity of soured Guinness, which would be difficult to replicate at home. However, I could try adding lactic acid and/or Brettanomyces to get a similar effect.

Should I just brew the Extra Lying Stout in Brewing Classic Styles and add a Brett culture after the English ale yeast has finished?

Add a pound of acid malt to the mash. It can be steeped to get the souring effect, but you will not get any of the sugars out of it.

That easy, huh? I would do it all-grain, so add the acid malt to the mash? Add it in addition to the base recipe and assume it won't add any sugars?

So what is happening in the "soured" Guinness that we are emulating? A controlled amount of lactic acid created when letting beer go "bad"?

Also, looks like the base recipe is ~16 lbs of grain. You think 1 lb of acid malt (6% of grain bill) will be enough to get the sour flavor to come through?

twd000 said:

That easy, huh? I would do it all-grain, so add the acid malt to the mash? Add it in addition to the base recipe and assume it won't add any sugars?

So what is happening in the "soured" Guinness that we are emulating? A controlled amount of lactic acid created when letting beer go "bad"?

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Acid malt has lactic acid on it. No it is not really guinness souring, but will provide some subtle sourness to the beer. If you steep, all you will get is the lactic acid, if you mash, it will contribute sugars to the same amount as a base malt will.

Just an easy way to get some sourness in the beer without much complication.

If using a higher amount of acidulated malt like this, do you have to worry about dropping the mash pH too much?

biochemedic said:

If using a higher amount of acidulated malt like this, do you have to worry about dropping the mash pH too much?

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I don't check ph. I partial mash (usually 5 lbs of grain), and have used up to 1 lb of acid malt before (20% of mashed grains), and have never had any issues in getting conversion.

6.66 lbs British 2 Row Pale Malt
8 oz oat hulls
12 oz British Roasted Barley
4 oz British Crystal Malt 55L
4 oz flaked barley
3 oz Acid Malt
8 oz flaked barley

Mash for 152 for 90 minutes
About 1/2 oz of Target bittering hops
1/2 oz East Kent Goldings bittering hops
Boil for 45 min then add 1 tsp Irish Moss
Boil for another 15
Yeast
1st Choice Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale Yeast
2nd Choice Wyeast 1098 British Ale Yeast

OG 1.044-1.045
FG 1.010-1.011
ABV 4.2

Priming
1 1/4 Muntons Light DME w/ 2 cups water
Peaks at 2-4 months but is ready to drink as soon as it is carbed. Will Keep at cellar temp for 5 months. This is the version brewed in Ireland. I have brewed it myself and it really tastes like Guiness I loved it. This recipe is from the book "Clone Brews" by Tess and Mark Szamatulski. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Edit:

Oh and a note on the PH, it was slightly lower than normal so I added a little calcium carbonate (1/4 tsp maybe) and it went from 4.8 to 5.2. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the recipe (why two separate flaked barley additions?). This looks like "Guinness Draught" which is 4.2? ABV. I'm trying to re-create Guiness Foreign Extra Stout, which is a different beast at 7.5% ABV.

Then my book is wrong. It states this is the recipe for Guiness Extra Stout, and not the one that is imported but instead the one that is sold in England and Ireland.

Edit:

I guess foreign extra stout is a specialty beer? Oh and yes correction on the flaked barley should be 8 oz only, I accidentally copied the 4 oz part from the extract/partial recipe. I don't like to brew high gravity beers but if you find a way to make this let me know how it turns out because I'm a Guiness freak!! Just wait til I figure out the black lauger.

yeah, the number of varieties is very confusing, and I think they get labelled differently based on what country you're in!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinness#Varieties

I'll repost my final recipe in this thread, and let you know how close I got to cloning it

So I may have been misguided in thinking Guinness F.E.S. is a Tropical-style, just because it is popular there. BJCP lists it is an Export-style, as opposed to Lion Stout, Dragon Stout, etc. So now I'm wondering if it is just a Guinness Draught on steroids, with a basic pale malt, roasted barley grain bill, scaled up to an O.G. of 1.070.

The crystal malt in the Brewing Classic Styles recipe seems out of place here

There is a complicated recipe for FES in the BYO "250 Classic Clone Recipes" magazine. It basically calls for brewing a base beer and a separate coloring beer. You take a small part of the base beer (19 oz.), after pitching the WLP004 yeast and pitch some Brett into it and let it ferment for 2-3 months, then heat it (to kill the Brett, I presume). At the end, you combine all three beers. Not sure how that timing works out with the long Brett fermentation and the base beer ferm.

DeafSmith said:

There is a complicated recipe for FES in the BYO "250 Classic Clone Recipes" magazine. It basically calls for brewing a base beer and a separate coloring beer. You take a small part of the base beer (19 oz.), after pitching the WLP004 yeast and pitch some Brett into it and let it ferment for 2-3 months, then heat it (to kill the Brett, I presume). At the end, you combine all three beers. Not sure how that timing works out with the long Brett fermentation and the base beer ferm.

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yeah I came across this reference from BYO:

Guinness Foreign Extra Stout clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.078 FG = 1.019
IBU = 40 SRM = 43 ABV = 7.5%

Ingredients

13 lbs. (5.9 kg) 2-row pale ale malt
2 lbs. 2 oz. (0.96 kg) flaked barley
1.0 lb. (0.45 kg) roasted barley (500 °L)
11.33 AAU Challenger hops (60 mins)
(1.6 oz./46 g of 7% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
(2 qt./2 L starter plus 0.5 qt/500 mL mini-starter)
2/3 cup corn sugar (for priming)

Step by Step

Brew pale base beer Mash flaked barley and 11 lbs. (5.0 kg) of pale malt for 60 minutes at 152 °F (67 °C) in 4.1 gallons (15 L) of water. Collect about 6 gallons (23 L) of wort and boil hard for 90 minutes, adding hops with 60 minutes left in boil. Shoot for a yield around 4 gallons (15 L). (Your SG should be around 1.093.) Cool wort, siphon to fermenter, aerate and pitch yeast from big starter. Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C).

Make stout coloring extract Mash roasted barley and 2.0 lbs. (0.91 kg) of pale malt at 152 °F (67 °C) in 80 oz. (2.4 L) of water. Stir in CaCO3 until pH value is between 5.2 and 5.4. Mash for 45–60 minutes. Collect 1.5 gallons (5.7 L) of wort. Boil for 30 minutes to reduce volume to 1 gallon (3.8 L). Cool wort, siphon to 1 gallon (3.8 L) jug, aerate and pitch yeast. Ferment at 68–72 °F (20–22 °C). Make stout Combine beers in keg or bottling bucket. — Chris Colby

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I don't see any reference to Brettanomyces. I'm hoping the acid malt suggested earlier will give me the lactic quality without the extra steps of a separate fermentation.

Here is my current planned recipe at 70% efficiency:

Amount Item Type % or IBU
12 lbs 8.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 72.97 %
2 lbs 2.1 oz Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM) Grain 12.43 %
1 lbs Acid Malt (3.0 SRM) Grain 5.84 %
1 lbs Black Barley (Stout) (500.0 SRM) Grain 5.84 %
8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (Simpsons) (430.0 SRM) Grain 2.92 %
85.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (60 min) Hops 41.0 IBU

Is ~25% specialty grains too much for this style? I tried to keep the number of grains low. I see dry stout recipes using ~20% specialty grains. Can I consider the acid malt a base grain in this case?

Considering replacing a pound or two of the Pale Malt with table sugar to make sure I get attenuated down to 1.017 or so. Planning on using Wyeast 1068 yeast from a repitch off a smaller beer.

3 oz of hops seems like a lot but it is fairly high gravity. Can anyone check my calcuations here?

I'm hoping all the 500 SRM roasted barley will give a dark brown head on the beer.

Any suggestions welcome:rockin:

That's almost identical to the recipe in the BYO mag., except he left out the Brett step. Here's the recipe in BYO:

Guinness Foreign Extra Stout clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.078 FG = 1.019
IBU = 40 SRM = 43 ABV = 7.5%

This recipe has a fairly complex set of instructions, meant to mimic how the commercial beer is made. You can simplify them by just mashing all the grains together, fermenting this wort and omitting the souring step. However, following the full instructions will lead to a better clone -- and you will have an interesting story to tell when you serve it.

Ingredients

13 lbs. (5.9 kg) 2-row pale ale malt
2 lbs. 2 oz. (0.96 kg) flaked barley
1.0 lb. (0.45 kg) roasted barley
11.33 AAU Challenger hops (60 mins)
(1.6 oz./46 g of 7% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
(2 qt./2 L starter)
2/3 cup corn sugar (for priming)

Step by Step

Brew pale base beer: Mash flaked barley and 11 lbs. (5.0 kg) of pale malt for 60 minutes at 152 °F (67 °C) in 4.1 gallons (15 L) of mash water. Collect about 6 gallons (23 L) of wort and boil for 90 minutes, aiming to end up with 4 gallons (15 L) of wort. Ferment at 68 ºF (20 ºC).

Make stout coloring extract: Mash 2.0 lbs. (0.91 kg) of pale malt and roasted barley at 150 °F (66 °C). Stir in CaCO3 until pH value is between 5.2 and 5.4. Collect 1.5 gallons (5.7 L) of wort. Boil to reduce volume to 1.0 gallon (3.8 L). Cool, aerate and pitch yeast. Ferment at 70 °F (21 °C).

Make "Guinness tang": After pitching the yeast to your pale base beer, siphon 19 oz. (560 mL) of pitched wort to a sanitized 22 oz. (650 mL) bottle. Pitch bottle with a small amount of Brettanomyces. Affix fermentation lock and let ferment. When done, pour sour beer in a saucepan and heat to 160 ºF (71 ºC). Hold at this temperature for 15 minutes. Cool the beer and pour it back in the bottle. Cap bottle and refrigerate. (For best results, ferment bottle at 70-80 ºF (21-27 ºC) for 2-3 months.)

Make stout: Combine pale beer, color extract and sour "tang" beer in keg or bottling bucket.

Does seem like a lot of hops for a stout.

Anyway I know our recipes are different but I will tell you the small amount of acid malt I used in mine worked great to reproduce that "wang" that Guiness has. I was worried it wouldn't have it.

Just a fun fact, the reason why Guiness has so many umalted grains is because in the late 1700s malted grains were taxed more so they found a way to make do without.