Irish Stout Guinness Draught Clone

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Done this recipe now numerous times and have come up with small tweaks that might interest some people.
We use the Wyeast Irish Ale yeast, which a few others have mentioned as well, and also we have started replacing some of the marris otter with Irish Stout Malt (ending at about 3.5 lbs stout malt and 3.5 lbs marris otter for 5 gallons). Definitely scale back the grain bill if you do this as the Stout malt shoots the brewhouse efficiency way up. The stout malt definitely provides a little bit different flavor that everyone seems to love.
Just some ideas for anyone looking to change it up.

Also does anyone have ideas of how to sour easier in the KC area (Houston it would sour in 2 days)? We have made this 3 times since moving here and tried souring for a week or more just by putting a strainer on top with no success? Has adding in grain helped people with this?
 
Could add a lacto starter to the wort you desire to sour. Supposedly malted barley is loaded with lacto on the husks. Could add some of that instead of a starter, but it might also contain other wild yeasts. It likes warmer temps like 90-100 I believe. Heating pad?

TD


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I brewed this recipe today scaled down to 3 gallon batch but I fear my soured Guinness didn't sour very well. I poured a 12 oz bottle of Guinness Draught into a mason jar 6 days ago leaving it open to the air. On day 4 I checked the "souring" and detected nothing so followed advice on this thread adding a few grains of crushed malted barley and went a step further an put a thumb nails dab of Greek yogurt in it to be sure I got the lacto bacillus in the mix. This sat for two more days leading up to brew day today. Prior to dumping this in to last 10 min of the boil I sampled the "soured" Guinness again and yet again no detectable sourness. What went wrong with this? I fear my finished product will lack the classic tartness of a Guinness :-(.


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After 2 weeks of bottle conditioning (primed with DME at 1.7 vol CO2 which is low end for stouts so I could do air injection method to emulate nitro without causing a gusher in my glass) I sampled my first bottle of this clone. I used the "basting syringe inject air" method into the 3/4 glass of beer to emulate the nitro surge which worked brilliantly. At 3/4 pour I had a good 2" creamy head just from CO2 due to DME which is more than I wanted (priming with DME does create a creamier head vs corn sugar). I feared the syringe injection was going to cause a gusher but it didn't. After surge settled I poured remaining beer into glass similar to a properly poured Guinness from a stout tap leaving me a huge 4" creamy head. Next time I brew I'm going to throttle back to 1.5 vol CO2

Having recently returned from Ireland back in early June I had the taste and mouthfeel of Guinness etched into my brain and couldn't wait to give this a taste.

This brew was nearly spot on for flavor and definitely spot on for mouthfeel IMO. Color was a deep garnet and not the nearly opaque dark dark brown to black of Guinness. Taste after 2 weeks in bottle had a subtle burnt coffee taste but not bad. I suspect given a bit more time aging this will mellow out. The beer was slightly malt forward but definitely dry, not sweet. I picked up a subtle hint of sourness. If I hadn't been looking for the sour taste I wouldn't have noticed it.

When I brew this again I'd like to get the beer darker without adding any more burnt coffee flavor. For this first batch my roasted barley was around 300 L. I fear if I replace with a 500 L roast it will alter taste significantly.

Question: what's a good approach to darkening a recipe without modifying taste? Debittered black roast?

I'll also reduce amount of DME for priming targeting 1.5 vol CO2 vs 1.7 on this batch.

Attached are 2 photos. The one with 2 side by side glasses has Guinness bottle draught on the left and the "brewer's share" of my clone brew prior to bottle conditioning on the right. The second photo with one glass is my clone after 2 weeks in bottle and having just done the air injection method. ImageUploadedByHome Brew1407758335.953235.jpgImageUploadedByHome Brew1407758362.521179.jpg




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Just responding to the last post...

Mitch Steele's book on IPA (pg. 175) suggests using Weyermann's de-husked carafes special III malt. They remove the husk before roasting which gives you the colour you need without the astringency.

I also talked to a friend of mine who makes gold winning Baltic porters. His trick is to let a dark roasted malt sit overnight in cold water in the fridge. This extracts the colour without much flavour or tannins.

Another option if you do experimental 2 gallon batches is to do what Guinness claims they do which is to boil your dark malts. I bet close to the end of the boil. It's worth a try.

Hope that helps.
 
Just responding to the last post...



Mitch Steele's book on IPA (pg. 175) suggests using Weyermann's de-husked carafes special III malt. They remove the husk before roasting which gives you the colour you need without the astringency.



I also talked to a friend of mine who makes gold winning Baltic porters. His trick is to let a dark roasted malt sit overnight in cold water in the fridge. This extracts the colour without much flavour or tannins.



Another option if you do experimental 2 gallon batches is to do what Guinness claims they do which is to boil your dark malts. I bet close to the end of the boil. It's worth a try.



Hope that helps.


Thanks for this advice. As for the dehusked Carafe III would that completely replace the roasted barley or a partial substitute still retaining some roasted barley for the roasted flavor?


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I wouldn't replace the roast. You need it for flavour. Maybe substitute part or add in addition to your roast. Or if you try the cold water trick, you could add as much as you want because there is no sugar production in cold water. Just drain the dark liquid and leave the grains behind.
 
I put this recipe into Beersmith, and it shows a lower than anticipated colour of 21.3 SRM, which is really a dark brown. Looking at youngdh's final product, that does seem to be the case.

I believe that there are some roasted barleys that are significantly darker than the 300L that Beersmith uses, so maybe this does not apply to all, but I do plan on using 8 oz of Midnight Wheat to get the colour up to where I want it (~32 SRM). The wheat may give this a bit more mouthfeel, considering the low ABV, although I think that effect might be minimal, given the flaked barely already present, and I will have this on a beer gas mix with a stout tap.

I plan on brewing this tomorrow evening, going to cold steep the roasted barley overnight, and I have my Guinness (hopefully) souring away in the garage. It's been there since Tuesday evening, so hopefully it sours by tomorrow evening.
 
Are people having a good success rate with souring guinness? Seems like that is opening a can of worms.




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I think early this year was a water profile article in zymurgy about brewing Guinness. It jives also with some methods discussed in current BYO article regarding use of dark malts. Basically mash the light grains and separately mash the dark grains which are actually steeping I think instead being mashed before beginning the rest of the brew. They acquire a slight tang during this time and get added back to main mash at mash out I think or during lautering or vorlauf.


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Does this look close enough for an extract conversion? Still going to do the sour addition.


[size=-1]BeerSmith Recipe Printout - www.beersmith.com[/size]
[size=+2]Recipe: Guniess Extra[/size]
Style: Dry Stout (Irish)
TYPE: Extract
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications

Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 6.85 gal
Estimated OG: 1.058 SG
Estimated Color: 24.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 38.5 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: - %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
Code:
Amount        Item                                      Type         % or IBU      
8.40 lb       Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM)             Extract      68.52 %       
3.00 lb       Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM)                  Grain        24.49 %       
0.86 lb       Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)                Grain        6.98 %        
2.00 oz       Goldings, East Kent [6.20 %]  (60 min)    Hops         38.5 IBU      
2 Pkgs        Nottingham Yeast (Lallemand #-)           Yeast-Ale

Mash Schedule: None
Total Grain Weight: 12.46 lb
Code:
Steep grains as desired (30 minutes)
Notes:



I brewed essentially this extract recipe 4 weeks ago. White Labs Irish Ale Yeast, 5.5gal batch, SG 1.068. two weeks in primary, then racked to secondary with gravity 1.039. now two weeks later, and gravity is still 1.039 when I checked it today. I don't see an expected FG...am I stuck? should I pitch some extra to kick it back into gear? or should I just plan to bottle as is? I am concerned about bottle bombs if I add priming sugar and bottle, and kick the yeast up with that much gravity left...


The Doctor

"I came to Casablanca for the waters."
"What waters? We are in the desert."
"I was misinformed."
 
Does this look close enough for an extract conversion? Still going to do the sour addition.


[size=-1]BeerSmith Recipe Printout - www.beersmith.com[/size]
[size=+2]Recipe: Guniess Extra[/size]
Style: Dry Stout (Irish)
TYPE: Extract
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications

Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 6.85 gal
Estimated OG: 1.058 SG
Estimated Color: 24.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 38.5 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: - %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
Code:
Amount        Item                                      Type         % or IBU      
8.40 lb       Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM)             Extract      68.52 %       
3.00 lb       Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM)                  Grain        24.49 %       
0.86 lb       Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)                Grain        6.98 %        
2.00 oz       Goldings, East Kent [6.20 %]  (60 min)    Hops         38.5 IBU      
2 Pkgs        Nottingham Yeast (Lallemand #-)           Yeast-Ale

Mash Schedule: None
Total Grain Weight: 12.46 lb
Code:
Steep grains as desired (30 minutes)
Notes:



I brewed essentially this extract recipe 4 weeks ago. White Labs Irish Ale Yeast, 5.5gal batch, SG 1.068. two weeks in primary, then racked to secondary with gravity 1.039. now two weeks later, and gravity is still 1.039 when I checked it today. I don't see an expected FG...am I stuck? should I pitch some extra to kick it back into gear? or should I just plan to bottle as is? I am concerned about bottle bombs if I add priming sugar and bottle, and kick the yeast up with that much gravity left...



The Doctor

"I came to Casablanca for the waters."
"What waters? We are in the desert."
"I was misinformed."
 
Just a thought on nitro. Ive made a coopers stout which came out slightly under carbed. Tried the syringe trick and it came out with perfect foam. Thick rings on the glass. Maybe thats something u can try with this?
 
Brewed this and have a nitro system at home. What a great beer. So similar to gueness. Will definitely brew again. The only thing I did different was using safale American ale yeast. I think this was good though helped it attenuate down for a dry finish.


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Everyone was quite happy with this. Ended up a bit stronger at 5.4% but everyone seemed to enjoy the thicker taste.

I was unhappy with the process to sour. I did this outside during a few hot days we had. But this is not a repeatable process. We need some procedure that can be done in every climate.

Tom
 
Syringe trick? Do tell....

Well if you have a stout with low vol co2, I take a small syringe, suck up 5 or 10 ml of beer and forcefully squeeze it back into the glass. The tip needs to be submerged when you do this and if the beer has more than 1.2 vol get ready for a foamy mess lol. But the end result is a creamy head that is usually only produced by nitro. Some experimentation will get you that 1 inch cap that guiness lovers look for. Essentially, you are doing the same thing as the widget does in the cans...
 
I brewed this recipe this past weekend. This was the first time I have missed my OG, but I think I know what might have led to that, and I added a bit of DME to hit the number.
Anyway, the color, as other have pointed out, was around 27 SRM, and not up around 40 like you would expect from a Guinness draught. Is this because I didn't pulverize the roasted malt? Most people on this thread agree this is a very good approximation of Guinness, so I certainly have hopes mine will be as well. However, if many of us are getting a lower SRM than expected, are we not handling the roasted malt correctly to get the 40 SRM, or is there something else going on at the Guinness brewery which accounts for the darker beer?
 
I brewed this recipe this past weekend. This was the first time I have missed my OG, but I think I know what might have led to that, and I added a bit of DME to hit the number.
Anyway, the color, as other have pointed out, was around 27 SRM, and not up around 40 like you would expect from a Guinness draught. Is this because I didn't pulverize the roasted malt? Most people on this thread agree this is a very good approximation of Guinness, so I certainly have hopes mine will be as well. However, if many of us are getting a lower SRM than expected, are we not handling the roasted malt correctly to get the 40 SRM, or is there something else going on at the Guinness brewery which accounts for the darker beer?

Did you not crush your grain..? If you didn't crush the grain then that would account for your low efficiency and lighter color.
 
The grain was indeed crushed. However, I did not pulverize to dust the roasted barley as has been suggested by several other recipes and forum participants.
 
The grain was indeed crushed. However, I did not pulverize to dust the roasted barley as has been suggested by several other recipes and forum participants.

Got it. I was gonna say! I can honestly say I have never heard that advice before, I'll have to keep it in mind for next time.

I just brewed this on Saturday and had the best efficiency I have had in a while. Tightened up my mill and that seemed to help a lot.
 
I have brewed this style using a different approach: brew as a light beer and steep the roasted barley separately 1 qt/lb beginning at dough in. Could do in a grain bag in a small drink cooler for instance. Add steeping liquor to the boil kettle after you have completed the mash and sparge steps. This makes getting the mash chemistry easier, and was a featured article describing this method in a zymurgy article from last year. I think experimenting with different brands of roasted barley may also be a key to getting right flavor.
 
Thank you for responding, but my question isn't specifically about efficiency, therefore, my original question remains. For a Guinness clone, why is this not darker? Myself, and several others along this thread, have indicated we got a dark brown wort. And when you put the recipe into brewersfriend calculator, it too shows a brown beer, not the nearly black I associate with Guinness. So, are we not handling the roasted barley correctly, or is the recipe not designed to be as dark as Guinness? If it is the recipe, what is different about Guinness which makes it darker?
 
If it's not dark enough, you didn't use enough roasted barley. Plain and simple. All color of beer is determined by the malt, and further modified by the degree of volume reduction and carmelization during the boil. Use brewing software and know the color rating of your roasted barley and malt used. Pulverizing the roasted barley vs normal crush should not have a significant effect on the color. I also suspect the pulverization is a math though I have done so myself in the past. Would need a side by side blind tasting to determine if it's true or not.
 
If it's not dark enough, you didn't use enough roasted barley. Plain and simple. All color of beer is determined by the malt, and further modified by the degree of volume reduction and carmelization during the boil. Use brewing software and know the color rating of your roasted barley and malt used. Pulverizing the roasted barley vs normal crush should not have a significant effect on the color. I also suspect the pulverization is a math though I have done so myself in the past. Would need a side by side blind tasting to determine if it's true or not.

I'm not disagreeing with this at all. More roasted barley would certainly have made it darker. But again, I'm following the recipe for a clone and didn't get the color of the subject base. So are we saying this clone just isn't as dark as the original, or did I not get enough color extraction from the pound of roasted barley due to my process or water profile?

I'm very happy with the taste so far, so I'm not going to mess with that. To some degree I don't care if it came out green with pink stripes. So I'm not going to add an extra half pound of roast just to hit the color, but end up with an unintended flavor profile. I just want to understand if we are saying this is a clone of flavor, but not of color, and if so, what would it take to keep the flavor but also add the color, or is there something wrong with my process which just didn't extract enough color?
 
I'm not disagreeing with this at all. More roasted barley would certainly have made it darker. But again, I'm following the recipe for a clone and didn't get the color of the subject base. So are we saying this clone just isn't as dark as the original, or did I not get enough color extraction from the pound of roasted barley due to my process or water profile?

I'm very happy with the taste so far, so I'm not going to mess with that. To some degree I don't care if it came out green with pink stripes. So I'm not going to add an extra half pound of roast just to hit the color, but end up with an unintended flavor profile. I just want to understand if we are saying this is a clone of flavor, but not of color, and if so, what would it take to keep the flavor but also add the color, or is there something wrong with my process which just didn't extract enough color?

Mastering color in a clone is very difficult. Check out the thread you can brew it arrogant bastard clone, sorry don't have a link, and you'll see what I mean.

Each brewing system is different, and dialing in color means you generally need to brew a few times, noting if it was too light or dark, and then adjusting ingredients for the next time. The most difficult to account for is the boiling carmelization and intensity of the boil, if it can be varied, then even more so.

That said, I suspect that if things are way off, as you describe, it could be that you may have inaccurately measured the amount of grain or perhaps that your roasted barley wasn't as roasted as you thought. There are many different sources for roasted barley with °L ratings from 300 to 695, so certainly that could be a source of a color discrepancy.
 
I'm not disagreeing with this at all. More roasted barley would certainly have made it darker. But again, I'm following the recipe for a clone and didn't get the color of the subject base. So are we saying this clone just isn't as dark as the original, or did I not get enough color extraction from the pound of roasted barley due to my process or water profile?

I'm very happy with the taste so far, so I'm not going to mess with that. To some degree I don't care if it came out green with pink stripes. So I'm not going to add an extra half pound of roast just to hit the color, but end up with an unintended flavor profile. I just want to understand if we are saying this is a clone of flavor, but not of color, and if so, what would it take to keep the flavor but also add the color, or is there something wrong with my process which just didn't extract enough color?

was your roasted barley 300L or 500L?

The BierMuncher Ode to Aurthur Guinness clone uses 500L roasted barley which he mentioned in later posts on the recipe thread because several people had similar color issues.

I'm brewing this recipe tomorrow and only have access to 300L and I doubled the roasted barley and am cold steeping it, so hopefully I don't run into the same issues.
 
was your roasted barley 300L or 500L?

I don't think the bag said. I've still got it so I will check again tonight. However, I would wager it was 500L. It was very dark, and I remember holding it up to some of the other dark malts on the shelf to see what L it might be.

One thing to note, the beer actually ended up darker than I thought it would be. As the beer is clearing, the particles which reflect the light, and therefore make it lighter in color, are falling out of solution, leaving a darker solution. It still isn't up around 40 or 45L where Guinness is, but just estimating, I would say low to mid-30's now. I suspected this would happen some, but to my delight, it is much closer to color now than on brew day. This is likely due to me not being diligent about starting with a crystal clear wort.
 
I've made this 3 times. The first came out perfectly. The second ended up with a high final gravity, I only pitched one packet of yeast, so I tried to pitch another with no results. The third batch had the same issue, again used one packet. Both batch 2 & 3 ended up at about 2.2% ABV so I dumped them. The only two consistent links in this dysfunctional brewing chain is me and one packet of yeast. Anyone else had this isssue? I'm focused on the low yeast count but I've pitched single packets on higher OG's than this without issue....is it the high flaked barley content coming into play?
 
Hey guys! I need a little help here! :)
I'm about to make this recipe but I've tried 3 different brewstores and they are out of flaked barley. I'm able to buy flaked oat and flaked wheat, besides regular malts...
Thanks!
 
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