Planning 3rd Brew- Chocolate Stout

[JeffoC6]

So now that I've got three 1-gallon carboys and all of the equipment for them, I want to try and brew a new batch every week, so once my first brew is done (which I did on 1/12/12), I can have a new beer finishing up every week or so...

So I've been using the 1 gallon kits from Brooklyn Brew Shop, but now I'd like to try my hand at something different. My LHBS has everything I need, but I just don't know what that is yet. I want to do a chocolate stout. Is this going to be too hard for a "beginner?" Stouts are one of my favorite beers so I'd like to try my hand at it.

I don't have a recipe, but I'd very much like to find one, and then walk into the LHBS and tell them what I need (scaled down to 1 gallon). Can someone offer some assistance with this? Like I said, I'm new to this, and this will be my 3rd brew, so maybe a pretty basic stout? I plan on doing all grain, so any suggestions on how I can get this brew off the ground would be appreciated...Thanks guys.

 

[NineMilBill]

A stout is simply an ale made with darker grains - there's nothing really different about them. That is of course you're making a Choco-Cherry Hazelnut Krispy Kreme Stout. The darker grains will impart the chocolate flavor, and some black patent (say .25 lb) will add that "roasted finish" a lot of people look for...even in a Milk/Cream Chocolate Stout.

 

[JeffoC6]

I want to do something basic/easy and tasty. I'm worried though, because I don't have a yeast starter or anything, and I'm really not versed yet on measurements/jargon when working with recipes.

All I'm comfortable with right now is taking the bag of grains, mashing them, cooling my wort, and pitching my packet of yeast into the carboy hahaha. I'd like to basically go to the LHBS and be like- Hey, here's the ingredients I want for my stout, can you please scale them down to 1 gallon.

 

[BrewMU]

Try the Hopville.com beer calculator - you enter your ingredients, then edit the batch size. Are you familiar with extract potential, measured in gravity points (thousandths)?
For example, 37 PPG=37 points per pound per gallon=1.037(a typical value). In other words, one pound of the given malt will potentially yield wort of gravity 1.037 in one gallon of water. The calculator also gives these values for each ingredient. You should be able to play around with it and figure out what you need. Here are the ingredients for a stout I brewed recently that was good, but you can find a million recipes, here, on hopville, etc.
Pale malt (2-row, American or Maris Otter)
Dark English crystal
Roasted Barley(unmalted - this gives Guiness it's charcoally bite)
Franco-Belges Kiln Coffee (just a roasted grain, strictly optional)
or Chocolate Malt
or Black Patent
Cocoa nibs (not in mine, but you said you wanted to use Chocolate)
Guiness is strictly pale malt and roasted barley. Good luck.

 

[Soldevi]

I've been doing 2.5 gallon batches because i don't have a pot big enough for 5 gallons. I can fit about 3.75 gallons in the pot, but after boil-off and equipment loss I barely have 2.5 gallons left to bottle.

How much have you been ending up with in the end?

 

[JeffoC6]

Try the Hopville.com beer calculator - you enter your ingredients, then edit the batch size. Are you familiar with extract potential, measured in gravity points (thousandths)?
For example, 37 PPG=37 points per pound per gallon=1.037(a typical value). In other words, one pound of the given malt will potentially yield wort of gravity 1.037 in one gallon of water. The calculator also gives these values for each ingredient. You should be able to play around with it and figure out what you need. Here are the ingredients for a stout I brewed recently that was good, but you can find a million recipes, here, on hopville, etc.
Pale malt (2-row, American or Maris Otter)
Dark English crystal
Roasted Barley(unmalted - this gives Guiness it's charcoally bite)
Franco-Belges Kiln Coffee (just a roasted grain, strictly optional)
or Chocolate Malt
or Black Patent
Cocoa nibs (not in mine, but you said you wanted to use Chocolate)
Guiness is strictly pale malt and roasted barley. Good luck.

Reading this is a little overwhelming to me. I went over to Hopville.com and am completely lost hahaha. Any other suggestions? I want to learn all of this stuff, but, I'm so lost I don't even know where to begin.

 

[ryan09266]

Saw your message and thought I might be able to help. I just started home brewing and I'm using one gallon carboys. My LHBS gave me an oatmeal stout recipe that came highly reccomended, it uses chocolate grains. Also its already scaled down.

Grains:
2lbs. 2-row malt
1.6 oz crystal malt 60L
1.6 oz chocolate malt
.8 oz black malt
1.6 oz roasted barley
1.6 oz rolled oats

Hops:
.4 oz Willamette - 60 minutes

Yeast:
White labs Irish ale yeast ( liquid)

I've got this fermenting right now and it smells fantastic, and I used dry yeast instead of the liquid.

 

[JeffoC6]

Keep 'em comin...Much appreciated!

 

[Wig]

check out the Stout recipe section: Stout

There are several with chocolate on the first page. And I wouldn't worry to much about a yeast starter if you are pitching a full vial/pouch into 1 gallon.

 

[NineMilBill]

And I wouldn't worry to much about a yeast starter if you are pitching a full vial/pouch into 1 gallon.

^ Yea what he said

 

[JeffoC6]

Thanks for the suggestions...

I'm on Hopville.com now. As an example, say I want to do this recipe:

Hopville . "Oatmeal Stout" Oatmeal Stout Recipe

Having never used this site, I went up to the top right hand corner of this page and clicked on "clone." Then, right beneath the "Malt and Fermentables" it says "Batch Size: 5.0 Gallons (edit)"...When I try to edit it to change it to 1.0 Gallons, the LB's and OZ's don't adjust. Am I doing something wrong?

 

[djfriesen]

Or you can also buy a sachet of dry yeast and split it up, especially if you're gonna consistently brew every week.

You could take a recipe like this and omit the orange additions. If you divide all the ingredients in this recipe by 5, you'll have the amounts necessary for a 1 gallon recipe. It uses a dry yeast, which you're used to, so that will make things a little more familiar. You can either print this out and take it to your LHBS and figure it out there, or you can divide everything up beforehand and just take it in and buy the stuff. If the person working there is of the right disposition, he/she caould be a valuable resource and might be willing to talk the process through with you. Also, you can always post in the recipe thread and see if the original poster has any insight into your situation. One advantage to a stout is that it is complex-tasting enough to help hide some in consistencies in the final product. Off flavors will tend to be harder to pick up in a beer like this.

All in all, once you have the ingredients, coming up with instructions is fairly easy. Use a mash calculator to figure out what your mash and sparge temps and volumes should be, and you should be set. Again, using resources like your LHBS employees or the original brewer is an option if you run into any real problems.

edit:

Having never used this site, I went up to the top right hand corner of this page and clicked on "clone." Then, right beneath the "Malt and Fermentables" it says "Batch Size: 5.0 Gallons (edit)"...When I try to edit it to change it to 1.0 Gallons, the LB's and OZ's don't adjust. Am I doing something wrong?

I don't know this software very well, but it seems to just be changing the volume, without scaling the ingredients too. Notice the OG goes from 1.060 to 1.299. If you simply divide all quantities by 5, you'll be right where you need to be for your size of brew. I downloaded BrewTarget and found it much easier to scale recipes there.

 

[tellish33]

I just brewed my second beer today. It was called "Shot in the Dark" by South Hills Brewery. It has chocolate and coffee in it. It is all dry ingredients. I had no problem making it. I'll post the recipe for you when I get home tonight. It is for 5 gallons but maybe someone on here can help scale it down.

 

[wmarkw]

That sounds good tellish

 

[wmarkw]

JeffCo, the BBS recipe book has a Coffe & Donut Stout:

60 minute Mash @ 152 deg
2.25 quarts water, plus 1 gal for sparging
1.5 lbs Pale Ale Malt
.3 lb Caramel 40
.2 lb Caramel 120
.1 lb Chocolate Malt
.1 lb Roasted Barley
.1 lb Flaked Oats

60 Minute Boil
.3 ounce Challenger Hops divided into sixths
(1/3 @ boil, 1/6 after 15mins & 30mins & 45mins & 55mins)
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut (40 mins into boil)
1/4 cup crushed coffee beans (50 mins into boil
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar (end of boil stir to disolve)

Ferment with a Belgian Yeast
3TBs maple suryrup for bottling

 

[BrewMU]

Sorry Jeffo - didn't mean to drown you there. I'm at work, so I just fired that out in between times. Looks like someone helped you out with a small recipe. In a few weeks that jargon I threw at you will be second nature. Keep in mind, any recipe should be directly scalable; in other words, if you find a 5 gallon recipe you like, divide the quantities (not time durations) by five and brew away. Good luck, and take it easy.

 

[BrewMU]

Thanks for the suggestions...

I'm on Hopville.com now. As an example, say I want to do this recipe:

Hopville . "Oatmeal Stout" Oatmeal Stout Recipe

Having never used this site, I went up to the top right hand corner of this page and clicked on "clone." Then, right beneath the "Malt and Fermentables" it says "Batch Size: 5.0 Gallons (edit)"...When I try to edit it to change it to 1.0 Gallons, the LB's and OZ's don't adjust. Am I doing something wrong?

No, they won't adjust. You have to enter your ingredients. You may have noticed, if you enter a grain bill, than INCREASE your batch size, the gravity will drop. If you DECREASE it, the gravity goes up - same grain bill, smaller batch=stronger beer. This let's you play with your grain bill, while tracking the resulting change in gravity. Do you see where the PPG appears, to the right of each fermentable? If you add all of those 37s and 35s, etc.,each multiplied by the number of pounds of the given grain, then divide by your batch volume, you get your gravity(without the 1).
Here's a simple example with made up numbers:
8#s 2-row PPG=37 37*8= 296
2#s 20L caramel PPG=30 30*2= 60
1# rye flakes PPG=27 27*1= 27
total PPG = 383 383/5 (gallons) = 76.6
So, your projected OG is 1.0766, or, rounding up, 1.077. The reason it's so high is that I assumed 100% efficiency. Hopville starts at 75% - 1.0766*.75= 57.45, or 1.057. The efficiency can be adjusted, which provides a quick way to check your efficiency. If you run it at default and match the projected original gravity, your efficiency is 75%. If you keep bumping the efficiency up until your actual batch gravity matches the program's, you have your efficiency.
I hope that helps. If I screwed any of that up, hopefully one of the old heads on the site will correct me.

 

[JeffoC6]

No, they won't adjust. You have to enter your ingredients. You may have noticed, if you enter a grain bill, than INCREASE your batch size, the gravity will drop. If you DECREASE it, the gravity goes up - same grain bill, smaller batch=stronger beer. This let's you play with your grain bill, while tracking the resulting change in gravity. Do you see where the PPG appears, to the right of each fermentable? If you add all of those 37s and 35s, etc.,each multiplied by the number of pounds of the given grain, then divide by your batch volume, you get your gravity(without the 1).
Here's a simple example with made up numbers:
8#s 2-row PPG=37 37*8= 296
2#s 20L caramel PPG=30 30*2= 60
1# rye flakes PPG=27 27*1= 27
total PPG = 383 383/5 (gallons) = 76.6
So, your projected OG is 1.0766, or, rounding up, 1.077. The reason it's so high is that I assumed 100% efficiency. Hopville starts at 75% - 1.0766*.75= 57.45, or 1.057. The efficiency can be adjusted, which provides a quick way to check your efficiency. If you run it at default and match the projected original gravity, your efficiency is 75%. If you keep bumping the efficiency up until your actual batch gravity matches the program's, you have your efficiency.
I hope that helps. If I screwed any of that up, hopefully one of the old heads on the site will correct me.

Whoa hahaha...This is a little too over my head right now :/
I don't think I'm at the point of understanding this type of thing yet. I'm still trying to get my actual brewing process mastered (and haven't even done any bottling yet haha)...But eventually I'll get here.

Can someone confirm that if I take a recipe like this:

Hopville . "Vanilla Stout" Sweet Stout Recipe

Can I simply divide the Malts/Fermentables, Hops, Yeast (do I even need to divide the yeast?), and Misc. by 5 in order to calculate a 1 gallon recipe? Then, just follow the same process?

 

[JeffoC6]

An additional question to my one above...

This recipe (http://hopville.com/recipe/519090/sweet-stout-recipes/vanilla-stout) states that they used a secondary. Do you actually HAVE to use a secondary for something like this?

Please help...I want to go to the LHBS this afternoon to get everything I need so I can brew this on Saturday. If this recipe isn't going to work out for me (due to not having a secondary), I'll just scrap it and start over.

Thanks.

 

[atom]

An additional question to my one above...

This recipe (http://hopville.com/recipe/519090/sweet-stout-recipes/vanilla-stout) states that they used a secondary. Do you actually HAVE to use a secondary for something like this?

Please help...I want to go to the LHBS this afternoon to get everything I need so I can brew this on Saturday. If this recipe isn't going to work out for me (due to not having a secondary), I'll just scrap it and start over.

Thanks.

no, you do not need a secondary for that. add straight to the primary (or at bottling).

 

[JeffoC6]

I just read something in another thread that has me a bit concerned. I have a 1-gallon glass carboy. I don't have any plans on going bigger at this time, as I simply don't have the room.

With that said, I've brewed 2 beers thusfar, and have them both fermenting in my primary glass carboy. One was an English Brown Ale and the other was an Everyday IPA. Both had some pretty vigourous fermentations, but the IPA was a bit more active, and the krauzen started jumping up into my blow-off tube, clogging it at one point. Good thing I was home and able to replace it with another blow off tube...and then later....another.

To my point, I want to brew a chocolate stout. In a thread, I read that "bigger" beers need more head-space. Well, if I'm having this type of situation with an IPA, wouldn't I then have the same situation, if not more, with a stout? The last thing I want to do is stay up all night changing clogged blow-off tubes, or not being able to leave my place for 3 days during vigourous fermentation. The first 2 brews I made had about 4-5 inches of head-space. The Brown Ale wasn't a problem, but the IPA almost was. Would a stout be wise due to limited head space in a 1-gallon carboy?

 

[JeffoC6]

Anyone? Would like to try to hit up the LHBS tonight, so if this is going to cause me issues, I need to find another recipe to work with. Thank you!

 

[atom]

maybe get a bigger blow off tube. you shouldn't have to babysit your beers...

 

[JeffoC6]

maybe get a bigger blow off tube. you shouldn't have to babysit your beers...

I'm going to get myself one of those full size 1" in diameter blow-off tubes that I can stick down into the neck of my carboy, that way I don't have to worry about caps/stoppers, etc.

 

[JeffoC6]

Ok all, so tomorrow is my trip to the LHBS to buy the ingredients for this recipe:
http://hopville.com/recipe/519090/sweet-stout-recipes/vanilla-stout

I'm really looking forward to making this, but would really really really appreciate any feedback that you guys could give me. As I stated in my original post, I'm going to divide the ingredients listed by 5, so I can make my 1-gallon batch.

Does anyone see any issues with me doing this in a 1 gallon carboy with no secondary? I looked over this recipe a bunch of times and it seems pretty straightforward. I mash at 105 for 30 minutes, then at 150 for 1 hour, and then at 158 for 30 minutes. After that, I just follow a 90 minute boiling process, adding hops at the 60 minute mark, and the 10 minute mark, correct?

I'm a little confused on how to do the Jim Beam and Vanilla bean if I'm not using a secondary. Can anyone lend a hand here with this? I really would appreciate it, this way, I can get just want I need tomorrow night and be ready for Saturday...

Thank you!