Imperial Stout

[nors]

Hey all,

I want to get feedback on a hoppy imperial stout recipe. I typically write my own recipes, but I mostly mess with the hops (yeah, I'm a hophead). I don't know much about grist complexity, which is pretty important for this style.

0.5 lbs rice hulls
14 lbs US pale malt 6 row
1.5 lbs flaked oats
1.5 lbs roasted barley
0.5 lbs chocolate malt
0.5 lbs special b
2 lbs dark candi sugar

1.75 oz glacier, first wort
1.75 oz glacier, 90 min
1.75 oz glacier, 15 min
1.75 oz glacier, 10 min
1.75 oz glacier, 5 min
1.75 oz glacier, flameout

wyeast 1028 london

1.75 oz glacier, dry hop 14 days
1.75 oz glacier, dry hop 7 days

2 step mash with 30 minute protein rest and 30 minute sacch, 90 min boil

 

[giraffe]

Actually that looks fairly reasonable. I like invert #3 at around 10% in my RIS to lighten the body, dark candi sugar is fairly close.
The amount of roast malts looks about right. Never saw the attraction of flaked oats in a RIS, but its common and there isnt
a ton of crystal, so I dont see it being a problem.

Why the 6row? There isnt a ton of adjunct, unless you are trying to use it up, Id go standard 2 row pale ale malt.

Unless your mash set up has problems, the rice hulls are completely unnecessary.

A protein rest probably isnt necessary with only 10% oats. If you want to be safe id do around 10-15 min at 131. 30min at 120, according to common opinion, may hurt head retention with all the well modified malt. Also, it depends on your mash temp, but you might want to mash longer on such a big beer, there really isnt a concern about the beer drying out too much, id go longer to be safe.

How long you intend to age it? The malt complexity will increase with age, this is a batch that will age well. But the pile of finishing hops will fade considerably. (I mean there is a pile of them, so I expect some hop flavor still after a year.)

 

[JKaranka]

Sounds great. Do you need that many hops? Just sounds like it will make the brew unnecessarily expensive and you won't get that much bang for the buck.

By they way, first time around I got confused and thought you were using 14oz of Polaris! :cross: