I'm brewing a milk stout extract brew that I picked up from my brew shop.
I was aiming to make it a bigger beer with more body to it. The shop guy recommended steeping the specialty grains an extra 15 minutes (from 30 to 45) and to add 1lb of Briess light malt dry extract. He also changed the yeast to White Labs Cali Ale WLP001. Here is a link to the base recipe http://brewersconnection.com/recipes/CactusMilkStout.htm.
They recommend racking to the secondary after 5 days, and bottle 7 days later... I'm assuming since the og is so high that this beer is going to be bigger then I expected to plan on leaving it for much longer then this.
When should I rack to the secondary?
How long should I plan on leaving it in there? I know not to bottle till the fg is the same for 3 days, but if this thing is going to take 60 days I don't want to start checking it after a week.
Since the og is at 1.08 is there anything I need to add to the batch to help fermentation? Ive never brew a beer that was this high to start.
Playing around on Beersmith (don't know it all that well yet) my estimated og was 1.067, and my estimated fg should be 1.012. Is this what I should plan for? It also says my estimated abv is going to be over 9% which is way more then I had planed on (was shooting for 6% based on the shopguy)
Lastly I was planning on racking on to 8oz of cacao nibs for a little chocolate kick. Any recommendations on how and when to add these to the beer?
Thank you for any input!
I was aiming to make it a bigger beer with more body to it. The shop guy recommended steeping the specialty grains an extra 15 minutes (from 30 to 45) and to add 1lb of Briess light malt dry extract. He also changed the yeast to White Labs Cali Ale WLP001. Here is a link to the base recipe http://brewersconnection.com/recipes/CactusMilkStout.htm.
They recommend racking to the secondary after 5 days, and bottle 7 days later... I'm assuming since the og is so high that this beer is going to be bigger then I expected to plan on leaving it for much longer then this.
When should I rack to the secondary?
How long should I plan on leaving it in there? I know not to bottle till the fg is the same for 3 days, but if this thing is going to take 60 days I don't want to start checking it after a week.
Since the og is at 1.08 is there anything I need to add to the batch to help fermentation? Ive never brew a beer that was this high to start.
Playing around on Beersmith (don't know it all that well yet) my estimated og was 1.067, and my estimated fg should be 1.012. Is this what I should plan for? It also says my estimated abv is going to be over 9% which is way more then I had planed on (was shooting for 6% based on the shopguy)
Lastly I was planning on racking on to 8oz of cacao nibs for a little chocolate kick. Any recommendations on how and when to add these to the beer?
Thank you for any input!