Imperial stout grain bill

I'm planning a brew for a bourbon imperial stout. I've got 4 oz of oak chips soaking in about 5 oz of bourbon. I plan on only adding the chips with about 2 oz of the bourbon.

I was pumped and amazed that I emailed St Arnold at about 9 pm last night and got a reply almost immediately from (according to the signature) Brock Wagner. For most of you who haven't had a chance to try their bourbon barrel stout you're missing out on one of the most incredible liquid substances on earth.

A few tips I got from him were,

"As for doing your own, go light on the bourbon. Too much will make the beer taste like you just added bourbon. Also don't go too heavy on the hops in your stout. The sweet malt flavors work much better with the barrel flavors"

"We use black malt for the stouts although you don't want to get the harsh astringent notes that can be leached from these grains. About 50 IBUs is probably good."


Batch Size: 6.00 gal
Boil Size: 7.56 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00


Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU
18 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 80.90 %
2 lbs Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 8.99 %
1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 4.49 %
12.0 oz Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 3.37 %
8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 2.25 %
1.10 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] (60 min) Hops 51.1 IBU

Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.092 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.023 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 9.03 %
Bitterness: 51.1 IBU


I plan on mashing at 152 and adding the black malt at the last 15 minutes of the mash. I'm going to go with some harvested wlp001 and build up a gallon starter.

Any tips would be great. My main concern is the amount of roast I may get from the quanity of roast malt I'm including and if I'm using too much crystal.

Thanks HBT

Wayne

 

I think you're pretty much set. Compared to the size of the grain bill, .75 lb is not much and certainly not enough to cause the levels of roastiness you're concerned about. Your crystal is also fine, IMHO. The only thing I would do, and some will probably disagree with me, is to drop the Victory to 1 lb and sub in another pound of base malt. I made this call on my imperial stout I brewed last weekend when I read that Victory (aka Biscuit) can easily be overdone. I'd rather undershoot it and add more on my next batch than add too much and make the current batch worse.

 

agree with nuke on the victory. i'd up the dark malts some - 5.5% is on the low end for an imperial stout. i did one fourth of july with 10% (black and chocolate malts) and when i sampled it racking to oak a few weeks ago i wondered if it could even have tolerated more.

 

I can omit the victory all together. I'm not set on using the victory I just had around so I thought I would put it in there.

 

If you want, but I personally think the bready, bisuity character would go well with a RIS.

 

That's what I was thinking when adding it. I'll be brewing this in the next week or so. How would a late addition of something like Willamette fare you think?

 

Ok. I'm brewing this on Thursday. Here is what my final grain bill will be for now. Yell at me if there are any glaring problems please.

19 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 80.85 %
1 lbs Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 4.26 %
12.0 oz Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 3.19 %
12.0 oz Caramel Wheat Malt (46.0 SRM) Grain 3.19 %
12.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 3.19 %
12.0 oz Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 3.19 %
8.0 oz Carafa II (412.0 SRM) Grain 2.13 %
1.25 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] (60 min) Hops 55.9 IBU

Est Original Gravity: 1.097 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.025 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 9.57 %
Bitterness: 55.9 IBU
Est Color: 53.4 SRM

 

I love late additions of Willamette in a stout, personally. An oz @ 10 & 5 each is what I usually do, though I've never done an imperial. Just stout in the 6-7% range.

 

Good point. I forgot that I got a lb of it a few weeks ago. I'll for sure add a late addition. Thanks!

 

Agreed about the Willamette. I think you could up the IBU's to 75 or so and be pretty happy about it. Totally up to your taste buds, just saying with a RIS, you have a lot of room for IBU's w/o it being the focal point.



The one thing I would do differently is use Roasted Barley in place of the Chocolate and Black Patent. Roasted Barley takes my efficiency down a little so I have to plan accordingly.

 

I agree with adding late additions, I have a lot of hops layin around for the amount of brewing I do, so i feel im doing them an injustice when I dont add more, IMHO C' hops might work well with oaking.

 

Can you give me a reason to knock out the Chocolate and Patent? I figure it will add some complexity and some of my favorite stouts are made with patent in lieu of roasted barley.

 

I definitely wouldn't get rid of the chocolate malt but I would do 12 oz of Roasted barley and 4-8oz of black malt and ditch the carafa. You have plenty of dark malts to cover that base.

I agree on the Willamette, you could scale it to a 20 and a 10 min addition if you're worried about the hops interfering with the wood character. You'd have to adjust your bittering addition to compensate, of course.