Adding color to a dry stout without touching flavor.

[arover]

Hey guys, I'll be brewing a classic dry Irish stout recipe tonight (Jamil's recipe from BCS, 10/20/70 roasted/flaked barley/2 row, never fails me) but the LHBS only has 300L roasted barley. This seems very light to me, and I really enjoy that jet black color in my dry stout. Without modifying the recipe much I was considering adding 5% blackprinz or midnight wheat to darken a bit. This seems very uncommon for stouts, but I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this?

I know blackprinz has a more pronounced smooth yet roasted flavor, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Thanks for the advice as always!

 

[aiptasia]

I'd probably use debittered malt. In the words of Spinal Tap, "How much more black could this be? And the answer is, none really. None more black."

A small amount of debittered black malt added to your beer will add the color you want and very little bitterness and astringency. Figure on a 5-10% grain bill addition depending on how dark you need it.

 

[Foosier]

Gordon Strong in Brewing Better Beer indicates another option is creating a roasted malt extract. One method is to cold steep the roasted malt and then add the resulting extract direcly to the fermenter. He indicates the benefits are that it provides color without the astringency which can come from mashing the roasted malts and boiling the extract.

That being said, I have not tried this, but it seems like an option you could consider.

 

[RedShirt]

Briess has a "Midnight Wheat" that adds practically nothing but color. Does your LHBS stock that?

 

[Calder]

There is some black coloring you can get, I think it is called sinamar. Adds nothing to the beer except for color.

 

[iijakii]

I've heard of people adding roast when sparging to get the color but minimal flavor. Maybe add some of those malts you mentioned that way.