Using % of grist: flawed for high gravity brewing?

[CharlosCarlies]

So my friends finally talked me into attempting a really big ass stout, and while designing the recipe I got to thinking (which usually gets me in trouble).

Does % of grist for specialty malts actually scale up very well when doing really high gravity brewing? We generally do ~15g batches and for a 30+ plato beer, we're looking at almost 90 lbs of malt (yikes) on our system. 5% roasted malt ends up being damn near 5 lbs, where in our standard stout we're using roughly half that.

Since the total volume hasn't really changed, isn't 5 lbs of roasted malt in a 15g batch going to be roasty/astringent as hell?

 

[m00ps]

Maybe, I wouldnt go over 1lb for a 5gal batch for 5lbs would be a lot of roasted malts proportionally

 

[SpeedYellow]

5% roasted malts is by no means high for a big (like 1.100) stout. In fact, it's probably too little since I'll take a WAG and say your color would be mid 30s SRM.

I could see an argument that you shouldn't use the same % of malts like crystal & dextrine in a high-grav beer. But I'm not sure I believe it, based on experience.

 

[Hanglow]

I did a Courage Imperial a while ago that used 1.75lb of black patent in a 5 gal batch. Was a great beer once it had aged a bit

 

[CharlosCarlies]

5% roasted malts is by no means high for a big (like 1.100) stout. In fact, it's probably too little since I'll take a WAG and say your color would be mid 30s SRM.

I could see an argument that you shouldn't use the same % of malts like crystal & dextrine in a high-grav beer. But I'm not sure I believe it, based on experience.

Yeah, it was just one of those "wait a second..." moments since I haven't done much high gravity brewing.

Guess I'll just have to test it out and report back!

 

[EarthwormJim]

There was a thread about this a couple weeks back

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=525104

Basically, he suggests adjusting the gravity by increasing/decreasing the base malt. Keeping the weights, instead of percentage, of specialty grains the same should keep the flavor and color cotributions the same. There is a little more to it and some good discussion too.

 

[tagz]

Randy Mosher was on the Brewsmith podcast recently. He suggested that when converting a recipe to a higher gravity, you should not hold the percentages constant. He recommended simply using your base malt to increase the gravity rather than upping all base & specialty grains.

 

[SpeedYellow]

Randy Mosher was on the Brewsmith podcast recently. He suggested that when converting a recipe to a higher gravity, you should not hold the percentages constant. He recommended simply using your base malt to increase the gravity rather than upping all base & specialty grains.

He really shouldn't generalize on this. Can you scale up a 1.050 stout to 1.100? If your base stout has 6% crystal, yes. If 12% then maybe not! If your base stout has 7% roast malts, yes. If 15% then no! So you can't even say that in general you'd REDUCE the % of a certain malt for a high-gravity beer.

It would be far far more useful to describe what ABSOLUTE percents of certain malts do and do not work for high gravity beers.

 

[kingwood-kid]

Since the total volume hasn't really changed, isn't 5 lbs of roasted malt in a 15g batch going to be roasty/astringent as hell?

It is going to be much more roasty; that's kind of the point of an Imperial Stout. Bear in mind that if you double the OG, assuming the same attenuation, you'll end up with double the residual sugars to balance things out. I brewed the Courage Imperial too (http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2012/02/lets-brew-wednesday-1914-courage.html). It has an SRM of 129--not a typo!--and was amazing.

 

[JKaranka]

I scale speciality malts up linearly but with a slope of less than 1. More likely to add pale malt or sugars.

 

[tagz]

He really shouldn't generalize on this. Can you scale up a 1.050 stout to 1.100? If your base stout has 6% crystal, yes. If 12% then maybe not! If your base stout has 7% roast malts, yes. If 15% then no! So you can't even say that in general you'd REDUCE the % of a certain malt for a high-gravity beer.

It would be far far more useful to describe what ABSOLUTE percents of certain malts do and do not work for high gravity beers.

To be fair, he was probably referring to making an imperial version, which typically means ~3-4 point increase in alcohol.