First recipe - Gingerbread Stout

[PortlandBrewers]

This is my first time formulating a recipe, I combined and tweaked elements from some recipes here and elsewhere on the internet. I just brewed this up yesterday, so I will update as I go. It is a PM 5 gallon recipe.

Extract:
4 lbs Amber DME

Grains:
12 oz caramel/crystal 60
12 oz German munich malt
12 oz biscuit malt
12 oz roasted barley
8 oz black patent

Hops:
2 oz Perle (60 min)
1 oz Willamette (10 min)

Other:
31 oz sweet molasses (60 min)
12 oz blackstrap molasses (60 min)
1 oz fresh ginger, chopped (10 min)
1 cinnamon stick (10 min)
5 allspice berries (10 min)
5 whole cloves (10 min)
1 lb lactose (15 min)

Mashed trying to hit 155 for 1 hr, ended up missing temps and waffling between 145 and 155. I am a stovetop BIABer so dunk sparged at 170.

I got an OG of 1.078, the wort smelled just like gingerbread and the taste was very sweet at first (as expected) with a spicy molasses finish. Didn't really taste much ginger or individual spices, may have to add ginger/spice tea to secondary as I may not have used enough, there was a lot of molasses in there.

I welcome any suggestions or comments while the primary bubbles away!

 

[william_shakes_beer]

Sounds tasty. Was it the color of gingerbread? with 8 oz black patent I suspect it was pretty dark.

 

[PortlandBrewers]

Yes it was very dark for sure! So dark that I couldn't see the 5 gallon sharpie mark on the carboy after I covered it up... so not really the color of gingerbread!