I think the brew shop screwed up. How to fix?

[Graciefunk]

Hi,

I'm far from an expert brewer. I have a few all grain batches under my belt which worked out pretty good.

I attempted to brew a sweet stout but it turned out... awful.

Recipe:
8 lb maris otter
0.5 lb weyermann carafa III
0.5 lb english chocolate
(1 lb lactose in the boil).

usual mash at 152 for 60 mins etc.

The guy at the brew store said they didnt have carafa III, but C-60 was a good substitute.

The resulting wort was an orange color... (alarm bells should have run, especially when I brewed a porter with 0.5 lb of chocolate malt a few weeks earlier which was dark brown/black.

The final beer after kegging and carbonation is.... sickly sweet. Like a beer for kids. Presumably, it needs the bitterness/coffee flavor of the specialty grains to balance the sweetness?

Anyway,

1. I'm assuming they forgot the chocolate malt altogether as the wort was way to light.

2. Also was C60 really a good sub for carafa III?

3. Is there a way to fix this? eg steep some chocolate malt and throw it in the keg? What I have tastes like a golden ale with added sugar.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Zepth]

C60 would be a fine substitue for Caramunich III. Carafa III is more like black patent than anything else, pushing the 400-500L range. If this is the case it would be an epic fail. I have no experience with steeping grains and mash the whole lot when I brew, so I cannot provide insight on that. Problem with "balance" from the dark grains is that you're kind of stuck with the crystal in there now, so you'd also be trying to balance what shouldn't have been in there to begin with.

I salvaged an apple-bomb canned kit (what was I thinking?) by bagging a couple oz of cascade and tossing the whole darn thing right into the keg. It's still in there as I drain the keg glass by glass. If you need bitterness though you'd need to make a hop tea and add that. Seems a good time to try out that "Bittering in 15 minutes" on the mainpage.

Other option if you're in no rush would be to brew a batch with all base grain and IPA level hopping, then blend the 2 batches post-ferment.

 

[TallDan]

1. I'm assuming they forgot the chocolate malt altogether as the wort was way to light.

2. Also was C60 really a good sub for carafa III?

3. Is there a way to fix this? eg steep some chocolate malt and throw it in the keg? What I have tastes like a golden ale with added sugar.

Thanks for your help!

1. don't think so, because:

2. No. c60 is 60 SRM, carafaIII is 525 SRM. This is why your beer is light

3. don't think that will help at all

Is this a known good sweet stout recipe? What was your actual and target OG and FG? Did it ferment completely? How big was this batch?

Personally, with one confirmed mistake here, maybe more, I'd just dump the batch and move on instead of putting effort and $ into fixing this one.

 

[b-boy]

I'd go ahead and let if finish. It might be good. You never know.

 

[brdb]

Presumably, it needs the bitterness/coffee flavor of the specialty grains to balance the sweetness?

What were your hop additions?

 

[sudbuddy]

Hi,

The guy at the brew store said they didnt have carafa III, but C-60 was a good substitute.

Thanks for your help!

Yikes!!! C60 is in no way shape or form a sub for carafa III. Midnight Wheat or Blackprinz perhaps, but not a caramel/crystal malt. Carafa III (Special) is a de-bittered black malt, meaning they removed as much of the scorched husk as possible from the barley kernel after it was roasted. This results in the wonderful black color you want from a stout without the astringent bitterness of a burned husk. C60 is a caramel/crystal malt, which is made by drum roasting the kernels at a much lower temperature to crystallize the endosperm of the grain inside the husk, resulting in lovely complex sugars, body and head retention. One could NEVER be considered a substitute for the other.

Now, how to address this? Bring a bottle of the beer into your shop with a copy of the grain bill and ask them to taste it. Explain what you think happened. They should replace the batch for you. As a shop guy myself, that is exactly how we would handle that situation. In a busy shop, especially this time of year, something might get screwed up. If that happens, the best way to rectify it is to replace the batch and make the customer whole. Grains are cheap, but a customer's loyalty and word of mouth recommendation is not. Good luck and I hope you get your brew squared away!

 

[Graciefunk]

Thanks for all your help. The recipe was cloned from Northern brewer

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-SweetStout.pdf

Old difference is the carafa III substitution I mentioned. We've established the substitution was an awful one. Surely the chocolate should have added some color?

The OG was 1.052, FG was 1.018-1.020 after 2.5 weeks in primary. Assumed it finished high due to lactose?

 

[Graciefunk]

Thank you for your comment. I thought about that but was worried they'd just point the finger at me and say I made a mistake? It can't harm though, I'll try that tomorrow and let you know how it goes!

 

[Orthobrewsky]

C60 would be a fine substitue for Caramunich III.

Yes, that was my first thought too. I'd say he got Carafa mixed up with Caramunich.

 

[northcal]

Was it a 5 gallon batch?

OG of 1052 will still be a beer so no need to dump it, might be good in fact!

 

[Graciefunk]

5 gallon batch yes. You're right it is still beer but it's just so damn sweet. I will probably drink it out of spite

 

[northcal]

but it's just so damn sweet. I will probably drink it out of spite

Gotcha!

Well maybe save it for a session beer for your buddies when they come over? LOL.

Or maybe you could balance that sweetness with some of that hop extract juice.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Add me to the "he confused Carafa and Caramunich" list. That's a pretty big mistake to make for a LHBS staffer.

And the color from the chocolate malt depends on who's chocolate malt you used. The °L can vary pretty widely. I pretty regularly use an English PALE Chocolate Malt that's only ~200 °L, and a half pound of that with some crystal and base malt, and that would put you in the reddish-copperish range. Don't know if that's what you mean by "orange".

But if you were lighter than that, then it's possible the chocolate malt was wrong too.

 

[aviator01]

Make a hop tea and steep some black patent or some more chocolate to darken it up and offset the sweetness.

Perhaps blend it with a dry stout recipe and get 10 gal of greatness.

 

[Graciefunk]

I guess copper is a better description than orange.

The English chocolate malt would have been the same malt from the same store that was in my dark brown colored porter (8.5 pale malt, 1 lb medium crystal, 0.5 lb English chocolate), so I'm guessing they forgot that too.

Will see what they say tomorrow!

 

[fimpster]

I know if my lhbs ever made that mistake, they would have no problem making it right. It was probably just a brain shart. Give them the chance to wipe it up.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Are you picking up any roast character in it? Because there's probably chocolate malt in there based on everything you've described. It's probably a lighter chocolate, but it's probably there. And dark brown for a porter is acceptable for an English porter.

 

[Rivenin]

if you have an espresso machine, could brew a shot or two, let it chill and dump it into each glass? cold steep some coffee beans and some cacao nibs in vodka and dump it in? it'd be like a golden stout.