Imperial Chocolate Stout Help Please

[matthew_reagor]

Im working on an Imperial chocolate stout recipe that i can do a partigyle with and have a nice normal stout with the second runnings.

so far this is what I have in mind. Please let me know if this is going to be awful, because this is the first time I have tried formulating a chocolate stout, and my first time formulating a partigyle.

22# 2 row
7# flaked oats
5# crystal malt 60
2.5# roasted barley
2.5#chocolate malt
1# cara-pils
.5#black patent

mash at 150-153 for 1.75 hours

boil for 90 minutes.

in the strong first runnings batch do

1oz warrior @60
1oz admiral @60
1oz fuggle @ 45
1oz challenger @45
4oz nibs in the primary
1 vanillia bean in primary



so do you think this will work? what kind of yeast will I need to eat up all of those sugars? any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

 

[matthew_reagor]

for a 5 gal batch this recipe says it will be 17% abv, but i will try to get it closer to 14% by mixing the first and second runnings.

 

[tootal]

General rule of thumb. On most beers you should have only 20 percent specialty malts in the recipe. (max) On stouts you can go 30 percent. You have 22lbs. of base and 18.5 of specialty. You are actually doing something I did 2 years ago. I did an Imperial oatmeal cream stout. It was horrible so I let a friend distill it. Made good moonshine!! Too many specialty malts. I would back them down to 30 percent.
Try using just a .5 lb. of the 60, roasted barley and chocolate.
If you're trying to get more chocolate I'd skip the black malt and go with a .5 lb. of 120L malt. Chocolate and 120L seem to really pop the chocolate flavor. I just carbonated an Imperial stout and it's really got some chocolate flavor as I don't make hoppy Imperial's.

So using the 30 percent rule with 22 lbs. of base malt you can have 6.6 lbs. of spectialty malts.

.5 choc.
.5 120L
.5 60L
.5 roasted
1. carapils. (you could skip this too and mash at 156 for more mouth feel.)
3.5 lbs. oats.

Plug that in and see what you get gravity wise. You may need more base malt or use syrup/sugar to reach your gravity goals.

Sounds like a nice beer, have fun!

 

[dcp27]

it looks as though you kinda put the specialty malt together like you were making an 10gal batch of RIS. while you may be makign 10gals, IME the grist for the finished partigyles work out around 2:1. you definitely have too much crystal in there and theres no need for carapils in a beer this big esp with other crystal and flaked barley, and you really need more base malt. personally I prefer capping with the dark grains after the mash for a partigyle (and in general now), that way there's less acidity issues and gives a smoother roast, plus then you know exactly how much dark grain is going in each batch. if you wanna go all in one mash tho, i'd switch it up to around
30# 2-row
3# flaked barley
1.5-3# C60 --> personally I'd split this with special B
1.5-3# chocolate
1-1.5# roast barley

as far as abv, im predicting your splits will be around 1.133 and 1.067 (its about 1.100 as 10gals), so like 13-14% & 6.5-7.5%. i'd keep your mash a lil lower, like 148-150, as you'll be pushing the limits of most yeast and there will be plenty of body left, you just dont want to get stuck at too high an FG. shouldn't be an issue, but if the smaller one goes too low, you can always add some lactose or malto-dextrin to bump it up a lil.

I made something similar last year (also a partigyle but i steeped the dark malts) with Wy1318 thats fantastic. since yours is a lil bigger (mine was about 11.5%, 1.118 to 1.03), I would go with S-05 for the yeast or maybe something like WLP530/Wy3787, basically something with good alcohol tolerance that can handle temperatures well. nottingham or WLP007 would also be good choices. be very careful to keep your temps low otherwise this could be an extreme fusel bomb and be sure to pitch plenty of yeast. good luck!

 

[matthew_reagor]

thank you guys so much!!! i am changing the recipe now.