Feedback on Imperial Stout recipe

[Queequeg]

This is what I have so far. I plan to brew this weekend so a quick response would be welcome

Batch size 3 US gallons
Mash eff. 60%
est SG 1.113

15.5lb mild ale malt
1.5lb brown malt
1lb Best smoked malt
0.3lb Black malt
0.3lb pale english chocolate malt
0.3lb crystal 80
0.25lb Simpson DR crystal 150L

Target at 60 min to yield 70 IBU's

Pitch at 1.5/ml/P and double aeration with pure O2.

Ferment with Nottingham at 65F and ramp to 70 as fermentation slows.

I really want feedback on my grain bill, especially the amount of roast and crystal malts

I also am considering adding a adjunct like flaked barley or oats, but I want to keep the grain bill as simple as possible and not sure these make much of a difference in such a high dextrine wort anyway.

All thoughts and suggestions welcome.

 

[stieg000]

Where's the roasted barley?

 

[BrewMan13]

Yeah, I agree with steig000 about adding roasted barley (at least a pound), as that's barely any dark/roasted malt for an impy stout. My standard recipe calls for 2.25 total pounds of various roasted malts and isn't overwhelming. The crystal malts should be ok, but could even be bumped up a little. I use flaked barley in mine, but definitely not a necessity.

 

[Queequeg]

Roast barley isn't compulsory for a stout and I don't really want to get into that debate.

I have use black malt instead because I have read that is compliments brown malt better and in this beer my aim was to have brown be the star.

 

[Queequeg]

Remember this is a 3 gallon batch. So I was working to a 0.6 lb per gallon principle i.e 3lb in 5gallon batch.

This would equate to 1.8lb in a 3 gallon.

I am counting the brown malt as a roast grain. So I am actually using 2.1lb of roast grains. That's 0.7 per gallon.

Now the question is should I count the brown malt to my roast malt allowance.

 

[Queequeg]

Ok so i did some more research and these are my findings.

-Brown malt in high quantities will provide and sweet roast barley character
-Recipes which use brown malt as the primary source of roast character use less other roast malts

Therefore I have increased the brown malt to 2lb and the Crystal 80 to 0.5Lb. This comes out as 15% roasts and 4% crystal. I expect the mild malt and brown will produce a lot of additional sweetness hence the crystal is on the lower side.

 

[Schreiner]

I was surprised by the large amount of smoked malt.

 

[Queequeg]

I never used best smoked before, but I have weyerman. I used 1lb in a 5 gallon batch of old ale and you can't really taste it. Especially after 3 months of aging. So I have doubled it for this beer. Best is supposedly stronger but people commonly still use it in excess of 50% for a smoked beer. At 5% in an impy I am hoping it will only enhance the smoked character of the roasted malts.

Briess' recipe for a smoked porter uses 2.5lb in a 5 gallon batch, but that's less than half the SG of this beer.

 

[Queequeg]

This is what I have so far (remember this is a 3 Gallon batch (fermenter volume))

15.5Lb mild malt
2lb brown malt
1 lb smoked malt
0.5lb crystal 80
0.3lb black malt
0.3lb pale chocolate
0.25 DR crystal 150
20g warrior @60min
28g Admiral @15min
28g Saaz@5min

 

[Queequeg]

So brewed this today. Of difference is upped the BM and chic to 0.5lb each and changed to hops to warrior and Styrian Golding's at 15 mins. SG was 1.106, annoyingly my boil off rate was quite enough, though mash eff was spot on.

From my initial tasting of the wort I got lots of chocolate and coffee.

Smoke didn't really come through, if I made it again I would probably double it. Best smoked malt tastes/smells amazing btw.