Bunch of left over stuff stout

[Muckdog]

I've got a lot of grain and a couple of hops left over from my last stout and previous beers that I plan to throw together with some other stuff that I just bought to make a chocolate stout. I have no clue how this will come out or how some of this will go together. I'd like to get some opinions on the following recipe:

Specialty Grains: Steeped for 45 minutes at 150
~1.3 lb - chocolate
~.75 lb - dark crystal
~.3 lb - crystal 120
~.3 lb - roasted barley
~ .3 lb - crystal 40
~ 1 cup - carastan 30

LME:
3.3 lbs Golden light
3.3 lbs traditional dark

Boil: 60 mins
1 lb - lactose
.5 lb - maltodextrin

.5 oz magnum 60 min.
.5 oz cluster 10 min.

Thanks for the input

 

[m00ps]

I think that is going to have way too much body with all that chocolate, crystals, dark malt, lactose and maltodextrin. Not to mention a very high mash of 160F.

I'd eliminate the maltodextrin completely and cut back the chocolate. You;ve already got 50% dark malt so I think its total overkill. I'm not sure what the breakdown of dark malt extract is, but its definitely already got some roasted malts in there. I'm guessing you are looking at close to 40% specialty grains by weight which is very high. I generally see it recommended to try not to exceed 20%.

Then maybe mash at 154? I've never seen anyone mash that high. I'm not sure if you are aiming for a huge body, but with the lactose too it may end up kinda...chewy. I've made loads of great stouts with about 2 lb dark roasted malts total and a mash at 154-155. They've never been lacking in body. One that I did where I added a full lb of lactose on top of everything was a bit too cloying for my tastes.

 

[JR_Brewer]

Agree with moops that you've got a lot of specialty grain in there. I would scale it back to 1-1.5 pounds of specialty malt.

Since you're just steeping and not trying to mash your specialty grain, I would just steep for 20 minutes. You don't really need to go any longer than that.

 

[Muckdog]

Mis-type on the 160, i meant to put 150. I'll probably scale down the specialty grains then. I'd like a heavy body, but obviously not too heavy. The recipe I posted almost accounts for all of the specialty grains I have left over, minus a pound of chocolate. I've never made anything using more than 2 lbs or so of specialty grains so I was;t sure what was going to happen. If I scale down, I'm thinking:

1 lb chocolate
.3 lb dark crystal
.2 crystal 120
.1 carastan 30

I'll also scale down the lactose to .5-.75 lb, but keep the maltodextrin. In the couple of stouts I've made, I used maltodextrin in one and I feel like it turned out better.

Thanks for the heads up and advice