Yet another imperial stout grain bill...

[Rob2010SS]

Looking to do an imperial stout shortly. I'm looking to do just a rich, vanilla bomb of a stout in which a small portion will see bananas as well. The portion that does NOT see bananas will go in a whiskey barrel. Not a ton of roast, but a noticeable roast to balance the sweet vanilla. My initial crack at the grain bill is this...

73% Maris Otter
8% Honey Malt
7% Roasted Barley
7% Briess Dark Chocolate Malt
5% Briess Extra Special Malt


Thoughts?

 

[day_trippr]

A bit heavy on the honey malt - I've found at more than ~4-5% it becomes the solo singer in the choir, which can be fine if that's what you're after, but I wasn't

Cheers!

 

[Rob2010SS]

Good info. Definitely don't want that. I want a little bit of the sweetness from it. I'm essentially wanting two variants from this - a barrel aged vanilla stout and a banana cream pie pastry variant. I don't need the honey malt stealing the show in either so I appreciate the info.

 

[BrewMan13]

I'm a big advocate of not skimping on the roast in the style, but I'd say you're actually too high on the roasted malts considering what you're after . There's 14% combined roasted barley and chocolate; I'd suggest more in the 10% range. Maybe some flaked barley, but that's personal preference.

 

[Rob2010SS]

Reworked it a bit based on your feedback and added a couple of grains for complexity, or what I'm hoping is going to be complexity.

72% Maris Otter
8% Flaked Barley
6% Briess Dark Chocolate
4% Briess Extra Special
4% Honey Malt
4 % Caramel 40
2% Roast Barley

- The slickness that flaked barley adds I thought would be a nice touch. I think that's the only one I'm questioning right now. I'm on the fence of dropping that back to 5% and adding the extra 3% back to the base malt.

- Between the dark chocolate and the reduced roasted barley, hoping to drive more of the dark chocolate flavor of the dark chocolate malt while still getting some of the roast flavor.

- Hoping to get the background notes of toasted marshmallow from the Extra Special which is why I kept it at 4%.

- Between the honey and cara 40, just hoping for some sweetness to maybe help accentuate/compliment the vanilla.

- Maris Otter is the base as I'm hoping the breadiness of maris will help contribute to the banana creme pie variant.

Thoughts now?

 

[BrewMan13]

Looks pretty solid now; I think that will give you closer to what you're after. You could go either way on the flaked barley. Last year my impy was ~5%, but I'm upping that this year to ~7%.
I've used MO as the base malt in a stout once, and I don't know that it made a ton of difference in this style, but I see a lot of people like using it. So I'm not advising against, just throwing out an observation.

 

[Rob2010SS]

Looks pretty solid now; I think that will give you closer to what you're after. You could go either way on the flaked barley. Last year my impy was ~5%, but I'm upping that this year to ~7%.
I've used MO as the base malt in a stout once, and I don't know that it made a ton of difference in this style, but I see a lot of people like using it. So I'm not advising against, just throwing out an observation.

I'm with you on the MO. I've used both MO as the base and 2 row and I can't honestly say I was able to pick it out. The flavors in this style are so intense anyway, doubt you'd be able to pick it up, unless you brewed the exact same recipe - 1 with MO and 1 with 2 row.

Thanks again man.