Help w/ AG Chocolate Stout

[michael.berta]

I used beer calculus to come up with this recipe. I am looking to make a Chocolate Stout similar to Youngs. Basically I am looking for BIG CHOCOLATE FLAVOR IN THE BEER.

10 Gallon Batch:

Malts:

18LB 2-Row Pale Malt
2LB Flaked Oats
1LB Chocolate Malt
1LB Roasted Barley
2LBs Bakers Chocolate added to boil at flameout

Hops:

4oz 5% AA East Kent Goldings Leaf (mail ordered a pound from Midwest for like 25 bucks or something cheap)

Beer calculus says that is about 18 IBU. But there are 4 formulas they use to calculat IBUs and some are as high as 40 and as low as 15.

Yeast: Nottingham Dry Ale Yeast

Other: Irish Moss 20 minutes; Cholocate Essense when racking to provide Chocolate Aroma.

Expected Original Gravity
1.058

Expected Final Gravity
1.014

Color
36° SRM
(Black)
Mash Efficiency 75%

Questions:

How does the malt bill look?
Is the ratio of roasted barlet to chocolate malt good?
Or if I am looking for big chocolate flavor should I axe the roasted barley? What about the flaked oats? Too Much?
Should I use lactose as well?
Is Nottingham OK for this recipe?
On the hops is a waste to use EKG since this isn't a beer known for hops. I have Hallertau; should I use that instead? Or a seperate low AA% hop?

Thanks in advance,

Mike

 

[strongbad]

i know this is kind of off topic, but beer calculus sounds interesting...i will look it up. have you had prior success with it?

 

[Coastarine]

Beer calculus is a nice resource for getting started. I used it way back when, but I really recommend some good brewing software once you decide it'll be worth your while.

A pound of chocolate and roasted each is huge. You may get a wallop of chocolate but you might get a wallop of bitterness from that too. If you're looking for a tried and true stout, I brewed the https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/o-flannagain-standard-41072/ a few weeks ago and I pulled the first pints from the keg today with a few friends. They went gaga for it and I must say I was impressed too. A nice hit of chocolate, coffee, and a little molasses flavor too.

If you want huge chocolate taste, have you considered using cocoa powder? It can be added late in the boil and it will settle into a sludge in the primary. The longer you let the beer sit on the choco sludge the more chocolate you get. If I had to come up with a recipe for you to brew based on what you described, I'd say take the link I posted above and add .5lb of unsweetened lowfat cocoa powder. Another option would be to use a specialty grain called debittered chocolate. I haven't used it but I find it intriguing.

edit: wow, I've had a few homebrews while brewing today and I missed that your recipe had chocolate in it already. Disregard anything you already knew about the cocoa powder. But holy crap...2lbs?

 

[michael.berta]

Yeah so I ended up brewing this the day after the original post. Instead of using 2LBs of baker's chocolate I used about 6oz. In the future I won't add them at flameout because they didn't end up melting all the way due to rapid chilling from the wort chiller.
I also used about 8oz of 100% Cocoa power.

I know a pound of roasted barley and a pound of chocolate malt seems a bit high but this is a 10 gallon batch not a 5 gallon.

Fermentation was very strong and after 3 weeks it is still going a bit. Hopefully the Cocoa power laying on the trub for the last 3 weeks will put lots of chocolate flavor in the beer.

I'm going to rack it soon and serve it on Nitro. I'll let you know how it turned out.

 

[michael.berta]

i know this is kind of off topic, but beer calculus sounds interesting...i will look it up. have you had prior success with it?

I like beer calculus. I haven't bought any brewing software yet because I use a MAC. Sometimes I have issues hitting my temperature or having too much and/or too little wort. I figure I'll learn this overtime. I've only done AG brewing 5 times.

 

[Coastarine]

I know a pound of roasted barley and a pound of chocolate malt seems a bit high but this is a 10 gallon batch not a 5 gallon.

Well I get an F for reading comprehension for that day. Sounds like it'll be pretty good.

 

[Tonedef131]

I used two pounds of roast and one pound of chocolate malt in my 10 gal Chocolate stout and it won me a gold medal. I don't think it will be too roasty at all.