Advice for partial-mash stout

I want to do a dry stout with a partial mash (probably DB method) anyway I was thinking of something like this:

.5lb crystal 60
1lb flaked barley
1lb roasted barley
.5lb black or chocolate
3-4 lbs base malt
3lbs dme

Anyway I was wondering should I use light or dark extract? Is a pound of flaked barley enough for decent head retention? Also I'm kinda stumped on what hops to use. I want to go with English ingredients in the malt and hops, any ideas? I'll probably use Irish Ale yeast. Any feedback would be appreciated, this will be my first time doing a partial mash, I'm pretty excited.

 

That looks good, but you may not need the crystal.. it serves very little in flavor or coloring at this point.
I would use the light extract to bump up the OG. like many others in the forum, I do not like the fact using dark extract - as we don't know its exact composition.
1# of flaked barley would be good..
For the hop, you can pick any neutrual bittering hop. I think 60 minutes addition is good enough for a stout. you can try 1-2 oz kent goldings. It all depends on what you are looking for.

For me, I think stout is all about grains...it has a very complex flavor. so yeast and hops are not my top concern in most case.

 

1056 worked out real well for my oatmeal stout, but I've tried nothing else. I agree the Crystal may not be worth adding, lot's of dark malts in there providing the color and complexity you are looking for in a stout.

Make sure you have extra Dry Light Malt Extract on hand in case you don't hit the numbers you expect with the mash.

 

i don't know if it's free online, or not, but BYO had a great article a few months ago on PMing dark beers. The gist is that the dark malts are very acidic and PMs don't have enough base malts to balance it out. What it suggests is dividing the malts into to two groups, base malts and such that need mashing, and dark malts that can be steeped. Steep the dark ones with some baking soda for balance and mash the other part. I did this for a stout and it turned out great.

just a thought.

 

That's not a bad idea. I actually could do a variation of DB's method and steep in the other pot while the mash is going. Maybe I'll try that. I'll probably drop the crystal too, it seems like I use it in almost every recipe anyway. Thanks for the ideas, I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

 

That's a very good idea, and I encourage you to try it!

I also second the notion of dropping the Crystal malt. For that matter, I also encourage you to further simplify the grist. Dry Stout is one of the simplest grists imaginable:

70% Pale Malt, 20% Flaked Barley, 10% Roasted Barley.

That's it. It's that simple. And if you brew it well, it's freakin' outstanding!

For 5 US Gallons, I'd mash 2 lbs of 2-row and 2 lbs of Flaked Barley (and steep the Roasted Barley using the above-referenced method). Collect enough wort and steep liquor to do a full boil, and add 3 lbs Light DME. Using a 70% efficiency on the mini-mash, you should see a wort of ~1.050 after the boil.

Looks like it could work! Report back here when you're done.

Bob

 

I got the ingredients and plan to brew this tomorrow. I took your advice and simplified the hell out of it:

3.3lbs briess gold lme
3 lbs marris otter
2 lbs flaked barley
1 lb roasted barley

1 oz kent goldings hops (4.8%)

notty yeast

It still seems a little light on the hops. Seems like 1 oz for 60 min would put the ibus in the 20's. I don't want overpowering bitterness but this seems pretty low.

 

Yeah, I'd kick that up a bit. You get some bitterness from the roasted barley, but there needs to be a nice smack of hops bitterness in there, too. BJCP says 30-45 IBU for Dry Stout. I recommend using a less-flavorful (and less-expensive) hops variety, like Willamette, and increasing the amount until you get ~35IBU out of your software.

Bob

 

I like to use Fuggle as my hop, it works very well with the roasted barley. Also I use choco wheat. Here is the recipe that I use.

4 lbs Golden Promise
1 lbs Roasted Barley
.5 lbs Chocolate Wheat
.5 lbs Flaked Barley
3 lbs Light DME
1 oz. Kent Golding 60 min
1 oz Fuggle 5 min

S-04 yeast

I love this stout.

 

Ok so I finally got to brew this last night and it was definitely a learning experience. I had 2 gal of strike water in pot 1 at 170, added the 3 lbs of maris otter and 2 lbs of flaked barley and ended up at 157 (152 by end of 60 min).

30 min into my mash I had 1.5 gal of steeping water at 175 and added my 1lb roasted barley in pot 2 and let both go another 30 min.

(mmmm, blackness)

Thats when I ran into a little problem. I went to sparge my mash grains in pot 2 and it was way too small, the water would have spilled everywhere. So I guess I didnt get to sparge at all (which is kinda the whole point of the second pot, doh, time to get a bigger pot I guess)



I combined the two worts and ended up with almost exactly the 3 gallons I was shooting for so that put me back in a good mood. I boiled this for 60 min with 1oz Kent Goldings pellets at 60 and then at 30 min, then added 3.3lbs briess gold lme at flameout.

Chilled wort put in fermenter with top off water and took my SG and it was 1.072?!? Is that even possible especially considering I didn't even sparge? I feel like I can never get a good reading with my hydro. Oh well, its still a beer.

 

Any updates?