Suspect Shakespeare Stout recipe....

Hi Everyone,

I found this Shakespeare Stout extract recipe in an earlier thread. However, I'm a bit suspcious of it. Why use amber LME instead of Dark? In the past the Amber has not given me the color I was looking for.

Also, the rogue website says they use 135L-165L crystal malts. Could I use those as a substitue for the Special B?


High Gravity Brew had a Extract/Steep kit for "Thespian Stout", here's what it had:

Code:
Inspired by Rogue’s Shakespeare Stout
Starting Gravity = 1.064
Final Gravity = 1.014
IBU = 68
(5 gallons, extract with grains)
Ingredients (Included):
5.5 lb Muntons Amber LME
1.0 lb Muntons Amber DME
1.0 lb Briess 2-Row Pale Malt
0.5 lb Dingemans Special B
0.5 lb Muntons Chocolate Malt
0.25 lb Muntons Roasted Barley
0.5 lb Briess Flaked Oats
1 oz Cascade (Bittering 1st Addition)
1 oz Cascade (Bittering 2nd Addition)
1 oz Cascade (Flavoring)
1 oz Cascade (Finishing)
1 tsp. Irish moss
3/4 cup corn sugar to prime
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale or WLP004 Irish Ale

The Northern Brewer Homebrew Forum • View topic - Rogue Shakespeare Stout clone

And to convert that recipe to extract

Mashweasel said:

For you extract brewers substitute, 6# of pale LME and .5# Light Laaglander DME for the pale malt and oats.

Click to expand...

That looks like an ok recipe to me. With just quarter of a pound of roast barley, it will be pretty subtle on the roasty flavors, but it does have a reasonable amount of chocolate to make up for that.

Yes, it would be reasonable to swap Special B for a very dark (100+) crystal.

Amber extract is usually a mixture of pale base malt with some proportion of medium crystal (40 or 60), plus occasionally some Munich malt. Dark extract, on the other hand, contains some amount of black malt. Trouble is, you don't generally know exactly what is in either of them or what the proportions are, which makes it hard to figure out how they will interact with your other specialty grains.

If you're worried about exactly predicting the color, I would actually go the other way: replace the amber extract with pale, then add 12 oz of crystal 60 to compensate. Then you can enter your ingredients in Beer Smith to see what color it predicts, and compare that against the typical range for the style you are making. If it is wrong, you can adjust the color of the crystal, or tweak your roast barley quantity, until you get the outcome you are looking for.

I have this kit sitting in my basement and I thought the same thing when I opened it. Hopefully I can brew it this weekend and let you know about the color..I did brew a porter in the past that looked a little lite. I suspect that after steeping the grains the pot should look completely black or at least close to it.

yes, it will be completely black.

I use only 4oz of chocolate malt in my black cider and it is completely black.

I just brewed a porter using 8 oz of chocolate malt and 4 oz of Patent Black Malt and its only a very dark amber color. Maybe I did something wrong.

Straight from John Maier:

Shakespeare Stout
66.2% 2 row
10.5% C120 Great Western
10.5% Baird chocolate
9.7% Regular Rolled Oats
2.9% Baird Roasted Barley
Mash at 148

Interesting the difference from the Rogue Website though.

Hops are all cascade, IBU's 69 O.G. 1.060
Whirlpool hops are half the amount of the boiling hops, you can hop twice in the boil or just once at the start.

The instructions call for a 90 minute boil. Does anyone know what the advantage of this is versus a 60 minute boil? Is it to get more bitterness out of the hops? It doesn't have a ton of malt in it so maybe is it to counter act the dark specialty grains? I have no idea.

i've never got a black beer from using 4 ounces of chocolate malt...even when i used the darker british stuff. i don't see how that's possible.

cercueil said:

The instructions call for a 90 minute boil. Does anyone know what the advantage of this is versus a 60 minute boil? Is it to get more bitterness out of the hops? It doesn't have a ton of malt in it so maybe is it to counter act the dark specialty grains? I have no idea.

Click to expand...

you can do a 90 minute boil for hops utilization or to boil off DMS from pilsner malt or other grains.

i don't see why it would be necessary in this recipe.

Thanks DeathBrewer..I brewed this on Sat and the color was definitely black. Something I noticed with their instructions was to sparge with 2 gallons of water..Previously I sparged other recipes with about a half a gallon of water and I didn't seem to get the full flavor out of the specialty grain. I am new so this was definitely a good tip. Also, I thought it was strange that a stout had 4 oz of hops. This is what the kit contained:

Inspired by Rogue’s Shakespeare Stout
Starting Gravity = 1.064
Final Gravity = 1.014
IBU = 68
(5 gallons, extract with grains)
Ingredients (Included):
6.0 lb Muntons Amber DME
0.5 lb Dingemans Special B
0.5 lb Muntons Chocolate Malt
0.25 lb Muntons Roasted Barley
0.5 lb Briess Flaked Oats
1 oz Cascade (Bittering 1st Addition)
1 oz Cascade (Bittering 2nd Addition)
1 oz Cascade (Flavoring)
1 oz Cascade (Finishing)
1 tsp. Irish moss
3/4 cup corn sugar to prime
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale or WLP004 Irish Ale

I put this on tap and it wasnt quite carbed yet but you know you have to try some..The flavor from the specialty grain was great..Nice and chocolatey..I just had a question about the body of the beer. It was very light..I mean I know its not supposed to be like a guiness but I would have suspected the body to be heavier..What contributes to the body of the beer? Is it the specialty grain? If so was there something missing from the recipe above that would have added more body?

I make a sweet stout and I use 3/4 to one pound of british chocolate malt, 1/2 pd debittered black patent, 1/2 pound wheat malt, 1/2 pound honey malt, 1/2 pound victory malt, 1/2 pd 40L crystal, 1 pound lactose, 3/4 pd molasses, and 4 pds light DME.
I've used Target hops in the past but will use what I have on hand also. Yeast has been Muntons premium dry yeast. will go with Safale-04 next time.
Light DME's have more fermentables in them than the amber and dark DME's, which already have some crystals added.

I'd rather use the light DME's and add the crystal's myself so I know what the actual amounts of each are.

It has very good body, chocolate flavor, nice mild sweetness, and dark as night.

I am thinking of subbing some special B for the blk patent as money is tight and I have most of the ingredients on hand.


DC

I just learned recently about using the lightest extract and then flavoring with specialty grains. Like you said you dont know how must crystal is in it. The grains below looks like you did a partial mash? Sounds interesting with the molasses. I just got a burner and a 7 gallon pot so hopefully I will be doing full boils or maybe partial mashes soon. I want to do all grain but I made the mistake of tell SWMBO that it takes 6 hours..That was really stupid!!

DeathBrewer said:

i've never got a black beer from using 4 ounces of chocolate malt...even when i used the darker british stuff. i don't see how that's possible.

Click to expand...

Could it be due to a difference in water pH? Maybe a bicarb rich mash would really bring out those luscious tannin/melanoidin compounds.

Not really sure what I was talking about, there's a ton of amber extract in there.

cercueil said:

Inspired by Rogue’s Shakespeare Stout
Starting Gravity = 1.064
Final Gravity = 1.014
IBU = 68
(5 gallons, extract with grains)
Ingredients (Included):
6.0 lb Muntons Amber DME
0.5 lb Dingemans Special B
0.5 lb Muntons Chocolate Malt
0.25 lb Muntons Roasted Barley
0.5 lb Briess Flaked Oats
1 oz Cascade (Bittering 1st Addition)
1 oz Cascade (Bittering 2nd Addition)
1 oz Cascade (Flavoring)
1 oz Cascade (Finishing)
1 tsp. Irish moss
3/4 cup corn sugar to prime
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale or WLP004 Irish Ale

Click to expand...

I know this thread is way dead but cercueil I am thinking about doing a similar recipe this weekend how did the above turn out?

It was decent if I recall correctly. As long as you have nice and fresh extract it should taste good. I believe my FG was a little high so it had some sweetness to it but not a bad brew overall.

I did the all grain recipe to this (Its on tap right now) and its actually very different from the above recipe. This recipe looks like it still has its purse on compared to the the one I did. From memory I used 1.25 lbs. of chocolate malt and I believe 1 lb of roasted barley. I also upped the oats to .75 lb. and toasted them at 325 for around 1/2 hr. Its AWESOME!!!