About to brew my own recipe for the first time, help me avoid an obvious mistake?

[ninkwood]

I'm currently designing my first recipe for next weekend and I'd like some feedback as I'm sure I should probably make some tweaks. I'm specifically looking for feedback on the grainbill, and the relative amounts of each grain. For instance, I'd like to include more chocolate malt but I was told not to use > 5%. However without any other darker malts, am I safe to bump this up and dial back the base malt? Also - is this too much oat/lactose?

I'll be fermenting with us-05 and I plan to add about 50ml of strong cold brewed coffee to each 950ml bottle at bottling time.

I'll be brewing with as much water as I can fit in the kettle (BIAB) for the mash, then sparge with the extra litre or 2 that wont fit and add that to the boil.

I appreciate any help I can get!

 

[lumpher]

I'm not seeing a stout recipe there. There's no roasted of any kind. I'd suggest 8 lbs pale malt, 8 oz C60, 12 oz pale Chocolate, and maybe 12 oz dehusked carafa 3. Throw in 12 oz flaked oats and a lb of lactose, and you'll have that Milk stout. A little light on the hops, too. But I'm guessing also using us05 you're not looking for a Milk stout, you're just classifying it as that in the software.

 

[ninkwood]

I'm not seeing a stout recipe there. There's no roasted of any kind.

I bought a kit from OBK and it supposedly is a milk stout but the grain bill is 6# 2-row, 1# chocolate and 1# lactose. So the above is me doing what I can with what I have to try to improve it, but I see your point. Crystal 10 and oats aren't really helping me much?

A little light on the hops, too. But I'm guessing also using us05 you're not looking for a Milk stout, you're just classifying it as that in the software.

I'm planning to add cold brew coffee to the bottles, so I figured that might bump up the bitterness and that's why I dialed back the hops. Does this make sense or nah?

Again, this recipe kit came with us-05. I figured the lactose would help balance out the dryness of the yeast, but I'm not sure what you mean here. Do milk stouts require English yeast or something to be considered proper milk stouts?

I appreciate your help - I don't want to waste my time with this batch but also want to use up these kits so I can start making some better recipes.

 

[lumpher]

If you're wanting a breakfast stout, the coffee will help, but not for a milk stout. Lactose won't counter the dryness of us05. When you use different yeasts, it's not necessarily to counter dryness. English and Irish yeasts bring out the maltiness, not just sweetness or twang on the other end. Lactose brings out a creaminess and some perceived sweetness. As far as "proper milk stout", as a homebrewer, forget the word "proper". No such word in this hobby unless you're submitting for contests. I'm just making suggestions to help you make better beer; not trying to slap your hand. Have fun and keep asking questions, my friend. We're here to help and will continue to do so. It's your beer and your fun, so keep it up, and "Cheers!!!"

 

[ninkwood]

I'm just making suggestions to help you make better beer; not trying to slap your hand. Have fun and keep asking questions, my friend. We're here to help and will continue to do so. It's your beer and your fun, so keep it up, and "Cheers!!!"

Love it, what a great way to say it! I might just be better off making this beer as I've already put alot of thought into it. Perhaps the best way to learn is by doing it and experiencing what's missing first hand.

I'm not certain I'm following you fully here but let me take a crack. You're saying that I'm missing the sweeter roasted malts and in addition to that, an English yeast strain will highlight the sweetness of those malts to counter the bitterness of the chocolate malt and hops? And my lactose addition will add body and thickness but won't help cut through the bitterness. Am in on the right track with understanding these concerns?

I appreciate your feedback! I'm way too green to take offense to anything here. I should be brewing other people's recipes still but I made a mistake with buying too many of these kits and don't wanna waste em!

 

[lumpher]

Not quite. Roasted malts aren't sweet. They add the roasted, almost burnt coffee flavor Stouts need (my favorite, btw). Chocolate malt doesn't add sweetness, it adds chocolate flavor. Lactose will help bring down the level of bitterness, but there are better ways, such as using dehusked carafa instead of roasted barley. The husk is what imparts most of the bitterness in the roasts. The English yeast brings out maltiness, not sweetness, different thing. Brew your recipe if you want to. It's your game, your ball, and your rules.

 

[BongoYodeler]

Here's a popular milk stout recipe that's quite good on this site. You can take a look at it for comparison. I have a keg of it going right now.

 

[Stikius]

I appreciate you have a ton of stuff/leftovers at home that you would like to use, and I also agree with lumpher that as long as you are satisfied with the recipe it's not really important if it adheres to a specific style guideline or not. If the final result tastes like crap at least you know not to reuse that recipe again...

I've been brewing kits on and off since -95, and only about 4 years ago started creating my own recipes. I would suggest (and there are probably as many opinions about this as there are members on this forum), when you've used up all of the malts/hops you have laying around, start from scratch again. I didn't really start to make good beer until I went back to basics and tried to understand what I was doing. Buy a 55lb sack of Pilsner malt and a shitload of a specific hop (for example Saaz). Brew a SMaSH pilsner with a single bittering hop drop. Next brew, continue with same malt and same hop but divide into a bittering and an aroma hop drop. How did it affect the final beer? Next time, change yeast. Then change hops, add another malt, fermentation temperature, and so on...
You can brew a million beers based on recipes that tastes really good. But it's extremely hard to build your own recipes if you don't know what effect the ingredients have on the beer.

(Sorry for giving advice you didn't ask for)

 

[bike2brew]

As others noted you need roast in the grain bill to separate it from porter. I use black malt 500L for color, just a bit will get you a lot without affecting your flavor.

 

[bike2brew]

I bought a kit from OBK and it supposedly is a milk stout but the grain bill is 6# 2-row, 1# chocolate and 1# lactose. So the above is me doing what I can with what I have to try to improve it, but I see your point. Crystal 10 and oats aren't really helping me much?

I'm planning to add cold brew coffee to the bottles, so I figured that might bump up the bitterness and that's why I dialed back the hops. Does this make sense or nah?

Again, this recipe kit came with us-05. I figured the lactose would help balance out the dryness of the yeast, but I'm not sure what you mean here. Do milk stouts require English yeast or something to be considered proper milk stouts?

I appreciate your help - I don't want to waste my time with this batch but also want to use up these kits so I can start making some better recipes.

I have added whole coffee beans 72 hrs prior to racking and gotten a nice coffee flavor to support both porters and stouts.

 

[ninkwood]

I appreciate you have a ton of stuff/leftovers at home that you would like to use, and I also agree with lumpher that as long as you are satisfied with the recipe it's not really important if it adheres to a specific style guideline or not. If the final result tastes like crap at least you know not to reuse that recipe again...

I've been brewing kits on and off since -95, and only about 4 years ago started creating my own recipes. I would suggest (and there are probably as many opinions about this as there are members on this forum), when you've used up all of the malts/hops you have laying around, start from scratch again. I didn't really start to make good beer until I went back to basics and tried to understand what I was doing. Buy a 55lb sack of Pilsner malt and a shitload of a specific hop (for example Saaz). Brew a SMaSH pilsner with a single bittering hop drop. Next brew, continue with same malt and same hop but divide into a bittering and an aroma hop drop. How did it affect the final beer? Next time, change yeast. Then change hops, add another malt, fermentation temperature, and so on...
You can brew a million beers based on recipes that tastes really good. But it's extremely hard to build your own recipes if you don't know what effect the ingredients have on the beer.

(Sorry for giving advice you didn't ask for)

This is a great idea, though I'd be worried I might lose interest if I went this route too early on. I definitely should not be designing recipes yet either though. I just didn't have the resources available when I bought all these kits to realize they were very basic/poor representations of the styles they're named for. I think I'll give this weird recipe of mine a go for the heck of it and once that's done I'll start using recipes from this forum, brew father and YouTube and just buy what I need to make those, slowly using up what I've got on hand.

 

[ninkwood]

I'm not seeing a stout recipe there. There's no roasted of any kind. I'd suggest 8 lbs pale malt, 8 oz C60, 12 oz pale Chocolate, and maybe 12 oz dehusked carafa 3. Throw in 12 oz flaked oats and a lb of lactose, and you'll have that Milk stout. A little light on the hops, too. But I'm guessing also using us05 you're not looking for a Milk stout, you're just classifying it as that in the software.

@lumpher

okay, I've made a few minor tweaks that will require a 40 min drive on Saturday to my LHBS that I was hoping to avoid, but I would much rather avoid making 4 gallons of bad beer...

My (new) plan is to bump this batch up to 5 gallons, which will require a ~1 gallon top up in the fermenter as I cannot boil more than 4 gallons in my kettle, therefore I lowered my efficiency to 65% to hopefully account for this. I need to do this because like a dunce, I mixed all my grains BEFORE posting this recipe lol... I can only adjust this by adding more grain.

I added the following grains in an attempt to copy this recipe shared by @BongoYodeler while still using up what I want to get rid of

Here's a popular milk stout recipe that's quite good on this site. You can take a look at it for comparison. I have a keg of it going right now.

1# Simpsons Roasted Barley (unmalted, 600L is all I seem to have access to locally)
1# Simpsons Crystal Medium (67.5L)
1 additional # of my 2-row base, and I increased the lactose to 1# as well.

My thoughts (assumptions) here are that my caramel 10 is fairly similar to the Munich malt, and that my 1# of flaked oats is similar to the recipes 18oz of flaked oats and flaked barley. Aside from that, the recipes are essentially identical aside from the differences (quite large) in lovibond with some of the ingredients.

I want to clarify that my goal here is just to brew something good. I don't care if it matches a particular guideline or not. So the simple answer I am looking for is will these changes improve the potential of this brew? More specifically, I'd be curious if some of my assumptions above are off base.