Thoughts on my first All Grain Recipe

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galifrey

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I'm really new to brewing so I thought I'd solicit some help for my first all grain recipe. I've been toying around with a recipe for an all grain Oatmeal stout. The idea for the beer is to make it an oatmeal milk stout with an ABV on the high end of an imperial stout with a chocolaty profile and a milk like texture.

Recipe as Follows for Batch size 5 gallons
Belgian Pale Ale Malt 8lbs
Flaked Oats 2lbs
Black Patent 1lb
2oz Cocoa Powder
Fermentis Safbrew S-33 Dry Ale Yeast

45Cascade 1oz
15 Nugget .5oz

Additives

1lb Lactose

Let me know if anything there is a bad idea wrought from inexperience. Also, any thoughts on yeast? Is a single packet enough? Thanks for all of the helpful suggestions.
 
For a Stout you should really have some Crystal and Roasted Barley in there.
 
What ratio would you put for those? If it's the roasted for color, I'm substituting the Black patent. What ratio for crystal would you suggest?
 
A lot to think about here.......

This is not a strong recipe. You need more like 16+ lbs for a 8% + beer. Especially without knowing your eff% since it's your first AG. I would do something like this:

10 lbs. pale
.75 Roasted Barley
.5 Chocolate malt
1lb flaked oats
hops are fine
2oz. cocoa powder at end of boil
S-33 is fine, but I'd use something on the English side (04 or Nottinghams)
You should end up with a drinkable stout. You will get your eff% and you will see what flavors you want to up and down.
 
What ratio would you put for those? If it's the roasted for color, I'm substituting the Black patent. What ratio for crystal would you suggest?

Roasted barley is the backbone flavor of a stout - black patent is more for color

I am not a fan of crystal in a stout - your choice. The more I think about it, I really think for your first AG, you need to KISS. Do a stout, an oatmeal stout, a milk stout or a imperial stout (but I don't think you should yet) - NOT all 3 at once though. I'm happy to hekp you come up with a recipe you'd like for any of those styles.
 
Thanks for the advice and patience. I'm still really new so It's nice to here some constructive feedback. I'll play around with the suggestions and see what I get. As far as oatmeal goes, how much oatmeal would you consider too much?
 
I'd reduce the black patent to 1/8 or so mostly for color, and throw in about 1lb of roasted. 2lb of oatmeal is fine - just be careful when sparging that you don't get a stuck mash.
 
So an update on how the brew is going. Went with this recipe
Belgian Pale Ale Malt 12lbs
Flaked Oats 2lbs
Chocolate Malt .5
Roasted Barley 1.5b

2oz Cocoa Powder
Fermentis Safbrew S-33 Dry Ale Yeast

2/3 oz cascade 1/3 amarillo at 60
1/2 oz amarillo at 15.


Additives

1lb Lactose
3.5 capfuls vanilla extract
10 tspns cocoa
lb of lactose

OG 1.085

It's been fermenting for about a day and already smells amazing. Good viscosity, so long as I don't screw the pooch and contaminate it should turn out pretty good.
 
Don't do a big beer as your first all grain, it never goes well and you don't know enough information and you will be kicking yourself when you find out your efficiency was 65% and wondered why you didn't hit your strike temp correctly. An imperial anything takes twice as long as normal and you are going to go to a several hour (most likely many hour) experience until you get your process down.

Try to stay in the 10-12lb area, at least for now. Also if you have not read "designing great beers" by Daniels get that book. It is wonderful. Also btw, why not try a good stand by... like an IPA or a porter.

A great porter recipe is this:
8lb 2-row
1lb chocolate malt
1lb crystal - whatever you have on hand
.5# black patent

and maybe because it's a porter... 15-20IBU bittering, maybe .5 ounce aroma hop or leave out the aroma hop all together. Believe me, I am sure that you badly want to get to the awesome strange and cool stuff with all grain... but that will come soon. Right now I would focus on the process more than anything else because things will go wrong, and you don't want them to go wrong after you spent hours heating water and mashing.
 
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