Too much Black Malt in Milk Stout

[worthog79]

Had my first big oops this weekend.
Got a little excited to brew my first Stout and forgot to measure out the Black Malt before dumping the whole pound of grain into the mash :smack:

I gave it a little taste before pitching. It smelled like I expected, but had a strong black coffee flavor. I'm hoping the lactose will balance out the bitterness from the malt.

Has anyone used this much Black malt or did this same error in adding more grain than your recipe called?

Here's the original recipe:
Mash 75 Min @ 152
Fermentable Amount PPG Color
Pale 2-Row (US) 10.0 lb 78 % 37 1 °L
Flaked Barley 1.0 lb 7 % 32 2 °L
Chocolate (US) 1.0 lb 7 % 29 350 °L
Roasted Barley (US) 8.0 oz 3 % Mash 33 300 °L
Black Patent (UK) 4.0 oz 1 % Mash 27 525 °L - added 1 lb instead of .25 lb

Boil
Hop Amount Time Form AA
East Kent Golding (UK) 1.0 oz 60 min Pellet 5.7%
Magnum (US) 0.33 oz 60 min Pellet 12.6%
Extras
Irish Moss 1 tsp 15 min
Cherry Extract 2.0 oz 10.0 min Extract
Chocolate Extract 2.0 oz 10.0 min Extract
Lactose 16.0 oz 10.0 min Boil

Yeast
Name Lab/Product
Irish Ale Wyeast 1084

 

[m00ps]

are all your malts already ground and you toss them in one by one into the mash? I always measure all my malts, grind them into a bucket, then that goes into the mash. I don;t think you;d want to be dumping directly into the mash as you measure grains....it takes a while and the first grains you toss in would steep much longer than the last ones...

I think you might be alright, but that amount of black malt is certainly going to be noticeable. With a full lb of black malt, youd still have a stout even without the chocolate and roasted barley. Maybe you could add some dissolved DME, sugar, or other syrup to kind of up it to an imperial stout and thin out the body a bit. Just an idea...

 

[worthog79]

are all your malts already ground and you toss them in one by one into the mash? I always measure all my malts, grind them into a bucket, then that goes into the mash. I don;t think you;d want to be dumping directly into the mash as you measure grains....it takes a while and the first grains you toss in would steep much longer than the last ones...

I think you might be alright, but that amount of black malt is certainly going to be noticeable. With a full lb of black malt, youd still have a stout even without the chocolate and roasted barley. Maybe you could add some dissolved DME, sugar, or other syrup to kind of up it to an imperial stout and thin out the body a bit. Just an idea...

I added all the malts together in a container prior to mashing in. I measure out and combine all the malts before the mash, but this time I dumped the whole pound of black malt into the bucket before measuring it. One of those things were I was gabbing each malt, weighed and then added to the bucket, but skipped the weighing part for the last grain - brain fart.

Thanks for the suggestion on adding additional suger/DME Biggest thing is wanting to make sure a beer with that much black malt is drinkable before dedicating the time to bottle.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

I've never used more than one dark roast malt in my stouts, typically I'll use 70% Pale Malt, 20% Flaked Barley and 10% Roasted Barley Malt to get ample amounts of roasted coffee, not sure why Black Malt would be needed.

 

[worthog79]

I've never used more than one dark roast malt in my stouts, typically I'll use 70% Pale Malt, 20% Flaked Barley and 10% Roasted Barley Malt to get ample amounts of roasted coffee, not sure why Black Malt would be needed.

Thanks for the feedback on the recipe. I may just skip the black malt all-together next time I brew this one.

 

[iluvmysh]

So how did this turn out?

 

[worthog79]

So how did this turn out?

Actually really good. It is BLACK! I was a little worried it would have too much of a coffee bitterness to it since it was a pretty strong presence when I bottled it. That mellowed out significantly after four weeks in the bottles.

View attachment 1422108348191.jpg

 

[Horseshoot]

Awesome! So you made beer! Glad you didn't dump it!!!