How to make a big, low-abv Stout/Porter

[Tulbi]

Hello Everyone

I`d like to brew a big Stout/Porter, best case scenario it is better than Lil`B, Soft DK or Imperial Biscotti Break
So I want to do a thick and sweet Stout but I also want it not to have too much alcohol, an abv around 6 would be perfect.

How do I achieve that?

Things I`m considering doing, to get a high FG:
- high mash temperature (maybe around 160F?)
- low-attenuating yeast (maybe Windsor?)
- adding unfermentable Sugars (caramel malts and pure maltodextrin?)

What kind of OG and FG would you recommend I`d aim for?

Thanks for your help

 

[DPBISME]

Flaked Barley thickens up a beer and it is true to style.

I think you are on the right track with the Crystal and Caramel Malts.

I like 4% so you can drink a few.

I also like Nottingham, never had much luck with Windsor...

 

[mattdee1]

My $.02:

"Thick" is difficult to achieve with low ABV. If 6% is your ceiling, then shoot for 6%.

Be careful with caramel malts--read up on guidelines for maximum caramel malt additions, in percentage of total grain bill. Personally, I've got to have a pretty good reason to ever go above 10%.

Descriptors "sweet" and "thick" both scream for lactose -- don't exceed 1lb per 5gal, added in last 10-15min of the boil.

Windsor will get you low attenuation; I'd recommend 2 packets of it if you're doing 6%, just for good measure.

Flaked barley and oats are good additions for mouthfeel in stouts.

 

[sendai]

What kind of OG and FG would you recommend I`d aim for?

1.072/1.026 should give you about 6% ABV and the same amount of residual sugars as a mid-level RIS. That should be achievable with Windsor. You'll have to play around with the mash temperature a bit. I'd start with 156F, but that's just a guess.

In my limited experience with Windsor (two fermentations) it took about 8 weeks before the beer was drinkable. But with a big stout you'd probably be aging at least that long anyway, so that's not a big drawback.

 

[dmtaylor]

Lactose and/or Windsor will definitely do the trick.

 

[JayInAmes]

For future reference, is there a risk with bottling these high FG beers? Is there a special way of doing that? I really like a thick beer, but bottle bombs.

 

[dmtaylor]

For future reference, is there a risk with bottling these high FG beers? Is there a special way of doing that? I really like a thick beer, but bottle bombs.

Low risk if you are patient and don't bottle too early. Like I said... Lactose and/or Windsor will definitely do the trick.

 

[Tulbi]

Thank you everyone for loads of recommendation. I will look deeper into them tomorrow.

Some follow up questions:

Do I hear 'windsor is low attenuating but... also not a really good yeast' or will the yeast also be good/ineresting?

I usually try to avoid dairy products and have friends who don't consume them (not only because of health reasons). Is there some alternative to it?
What about maltodextrin.

Flaked oats/ flaked barley will give me unfermentable starches, am I right about that? I'd have to add them during the boil to not let the enzymes convert them ito sugars, right? Will starches just add body or also sweetness?

Again, thank you very much for your helpfull responses

 

[dmtaylor]

Maltodextrin is essentially interchangeable with lactose. Use that instead.

Another thing to consider is a super short mash. If you only mash for 20 minutes, you'll have tons of unfermentable dextrins left in your wort. On the molecular scale, dextrins fall someplace in between starches and simple sugars. They are just really big sugars that the yeast can fit into their tiny mouths.

 

[specharka]

1) Mash high. Shoot for 156-158F, and keep mash times short. Hill Farmsteads Everett, one of the best examples, mashes at 157F for 45 minutes.
2) Use flaked grain adjunct -- specifically oats, barley, rye or wheat. Shoot for around 4-6%.
3) Employ a lower attenuating yeast strain -- I would never recommend Windsor ale yeast. Whitbread (SO-4), London (WY1028/WLP028), or West Yorkshire (WY1469) are all excellent choices.
4) No maltodextrin. No lactose. These adjuncts do not produce the same effect as mashed grains, and can really taste gross.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Maltodextrin is essentially interchangeable with lactose. Use that instead.

Another thing to consider is a super short mash. If you only mash for 20 minutes, you'll have tons of unfermentable dextrins left in your wort. On the molecular scale, dextrins fall someplace in between starches and simple sugars. They are just really big sugars that the yeast can fit into their tiny mouths.

No no no no. Maltodextrin and lactose share a similarity in that they're predominantly unfermentable, but that's where it ends. They are NOT interchangeable. Maltodextrin is body and head building, but doesn't actually taste sweet. Lactose has an unmistakable and distinct sweetness to it.

As everyone has said, lactose is a great way to go.

If you're mashing high, 160F as you've suggested, it isn't going to matter too much how long you mash for, as beta amylase will be denatured rather quickly and alpha amylase will hack up all that starch into random sugar chains pretty quickly. You should have full conversion quite quickly and little beta activity to create an overly fermentable wort. But going 160F, you need to be very careful with the temp, as it doesn't take much higher than that to denature alpha amylase as well, and then you'll have conversion problems.

 

[ol-hazza]

I use oats for body in my porters, gives it a lovely silky mouthfeel that floats my boat.

Just add rolled oats straight to the mash, I do around 5% of the grain bill.

Oh and for yeast I use s-04, at 21°c for a bit of character

 

[tennesseean_87]

S-04 is good for low attenuation, as has been WLP002 the only time I've used it.

Mash the oats or whatever. Do mash that high. I made a mild/brown ale once using S-04, mashed at 160, and used a good bit of specialty grains. It finished at 1.018 and 2.5% abv.

Maybe take an imperial stout recipe and cut back just the base malt. That will give you lots of unfermentables and flavor from the specialty grains, and the residual sweetness from the high mash and yeast selection should help balance, I'd think.

 

[J-Drew]

Do I hear 'windsor is low attenuating but... also not a really good yeast' or will the yeast also be good/interesting?

I fermented an English Mild once with Windsor, and it placed second out of 11 entries in a local competition. I thought it was full of character, but it wasn't for me and I don't plan to ferment with Windsor again. So...I guess it is "good," but it isn't something I personally find appealing. With what you are trying to do, I would say don't let people talk you out of using it if you really want to use it; however, don't be surprised if it isn't for you. If you decide to use the Windsor yeast, I suspect you will have pretty clear feelings toward it when all is said and done.

 

[mattdee1]

I threw Windsor in a blonde ale once and it was pretty bad, but thought it was quite a good fit for a stout.

You do need to give it time to finish, though. I went ahead and bottled a split batch that used Windsor in one of the buckets without checking both to verify that they were both done fermenting. Of course the one I checked (Nottingham) was done, but the Windsor one clearly was not, because the beer was dreadfully over-carbonated. It poured into the glass like Coca Cola... blech.

 

[Tulbi]

Wow, loads of Information, thank you!
I think I`ll try to do it without lactose, if it works I can rename the thread `make a vegan milk stout`

One more follow up questions:
- will a shorter mash not mainly bring a lower efficency (but a similar ratio of fermentable/unfermtable sugars)?

Things I`m still not sure about:

+ What specialty grains and adjuncts to use.

I can`t get a huge amount of grains but a lot of german and belgian malts. But that is what I`m thinking.
- Maris Otter (base)
- caramunich dark (caramel)
- carafa III (black malt)
- roasted barley
- flaked oats
- maltodextrin (just a bit)

Do you think the carafaIII and roasted barley will clash?
Is the Maris Otter wasted in such a context (it`s twice as expensive as pale malt but still not suuper expensive)?

+ Will a lower temperature yield a genuinely lower attenuation or will the yeast reactivate once warm (e.g. for bottle conditioning)?

 

[dmtaylor]

One more follow up questions...

A super short mash of about 20 minutes will indeed hurt your efficiency slightly. Maybe takes it down by 3-5%. It's not as much as you think. However it will limit fermentability by far greater than that. If you want the best of both worlds you could mash for 30 minutes, which will get your efficiency up to within about 2% of normal but at the expense of a nearly fully fermentable wort as well. Mash longer than that and you won't be able to see much if any reduction in fermentability. (I'm the guy who's been mashing everything for 40 minutes for the past 10 years because it works and saves time.)

All those malts look great. Carafa III and roasted barley actually look and taste almost the same. Not completely interchangeable but pretty close. Carafa might be slightly less harsh. Roasted barley can be harsh to varying degrees depending on how much is used. I'm not an expert on stouts & porters so I don't want to give you exact percentages of total grist, but I'm sure other folks can help you with that.

I don't think using MO is a total waste, but it probably depends on the rest of your recipe.

Reduction in fermentation temperature will not affect attenuation unless perhaps you select a highly flocculent British yeast strain (which includes Windsor as well as most other English strains), begin fermenting warm, and then after about 36 hours or when the attenuation is where you want, you quickly drop the temperature down less than 40 F. This could potentially settle out the yeast prematurely, basically put them all to sleep and get them to quit fermenting early if you want to. However, I really would NOT recommend this as like you were thinking, the bottles could go boom if it warms up again. If kegging it wouldn't matter quite as much.

Cheers.

 

[mattdee1]

I've made the same stout recipe with both MO and 2-row, and if I said that I could tell the difference, I'd be lying. If budget is paramount, don't bother with the MO.

As for ingredients, the surest way to learn while minimizing risk of mediocre-to-bad experimental results is to do some tried and true recipes. The HBT top 100 recipes list is a treasure trove of great, proven recipes of various styles:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/homebrewtalk-top-homebrew-recipes-24-1.html

 

[Jwin]

Look into dextrin malt if you want to stay AG. I know crisp makes it. Probably others.
MO would be a small difference in my opinion.
You mentioned sweet Stout before. If looking sweet, I'd go with a caramunich and maybe a mix of c80 and c120 to add some complexity.

In regards to carafa v roasted barley, brulosophy did a good comparison of the two recently. A good read.

 

[Jwin]

http://brulosophy.com/2016/05/30/ro...ley-vs-black-patent-malt-exbeeriment-results/

 

[Tulbi]

So, after reading all your information I'll stick with MO and have a mix of roasted barley and carafa.

For the sake of my interest and this thread I'm thinking of doing a split batch. One fermented with windsor (2 packs) and one with wlp 002/004 (medium starter) or an equivalent from wyeast, which is waaay easier to get where I live.

Does that sound interesting or should I just stick with one?
Would identical circumstances except for maybe the exact cell count be fair? Or would I have to give both batches their respective optimal conditions (for low attenuation)?

Thanks so much for your help!

 

[dmtaylor]

Splitting batches for experimentation is always an excellent idea. Just recently I decided that from now on I will almost always split every batch I brew to do something different and run some minor experiment so I can learn a lot more every time I brew.

It's your experiment. Run it any way you want.

 

[Jwin]

http://brulosophy.com/2016/06/06/gr...ter-vs-domestic-us-2-row-exbeeriment-results/