It has finally come to this.

[Monk]

It's funny, because I actually really like stout. Especially dry stout. Despite this fact, I've gone my whole (rather short) homebrewing career brewing everything but a stout. Finally, my beautiful wife has personally requested some Guinness style stout. Problem is, there's like 400 different recipes on the net--probably resulting from the fact that, apparently, Guinness makes a new style of stout for every 50 square mile region of the world. I think they make a particular export version specifically for indigenous tribes of the Amazon basin. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration.
But seriously, there are a lot of different homebrew recipes with big differences in ingredients. Two big differences I've seen often are the amount of roasted barley (from 1/4 lb. to a full lb.) and the presence/amount of dark crystal grain. These differences seem like they would make vastly different brews.
So I've come to you guys for help. Does anyone have a recipe for Guinness draught style stout? I'm brewing extract + grains, but I could probably pull a partial mash, too.
Additionally, if anyone would like to comment on their own experimentation with stout, I'd love to hear what you have to say regarding "x amount of roasted barley tasted like this" or whatever. Thanks in advance, guys.

monk

 

[homebrewer_99]

Here's one. I haven't tried it though. I'll leave it up to you.

GUINESS CLONE

Ingredients
7 lbs. Alexander’s dark extract
¾ lb. Crystal malt 80° L
1/3 lb. Black Patent Malt
1/3 lb. Roasted Barley
2.5 oz. Willamette whole hops (for 60 minutes)
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale
2/3 cup corn sugar

Method
Steep grains in bag in 3 gal. of water for 20 minutes.
Remove bag and bring to a boil.
Add extract and hops.
Boil 60 minutes.
Remove hops and cool wort.
Rack to primary and top off up to 6 gal.
Pitch yeast at 70° F. and ferment for 7-8 days.
Rack to secondary for 7 days.
Keg or bottle with corn sugar and condition for 7 days.

 

[Monk]

Here's one I found online:

6 lbs John Bull Pale Malt Extract
1 lb Flaked Barley
1/2 lb Roasted Barley
1/4 lb Black Patent
1 oz Northern Brewer whole hops (7.7% alpha)
1 tsp gypsum
Wyeast #1084 (Irish Ale)
1.5 cups Pale Dry Malt Extract for priming

...and the one used by a major online supplier and called dry irish stout:

1 lb. Roasted barley
6 lb. Gold malt syrup
1 oz. EKGolding (60 min)
1 oz. EKGolding (20 min)
Irish Ale Yeast

[[Notice: no black patent, no crystal, and the roasted barley isn't specified as "black" roasted barley. ??]]

The one I found online is pretty close to HB99's, but without crystal. It's hard to decide when there are such big differences. Anybody know anything about it? Thanks HB for the recipe.

monk

 

[mysterio]

I've got a couple of recipes, one is in Clone Brews and the other is in Brew Classic European Beers at home. They are both fairly similar, with around 12oz of roasted barley in each. If you want the exact recipes I'll post them, monk.

Let us know what you decide on -- I'm thinking of brewing my first stout sometime, too.

 

[BrewProject]

these recipes sound great. a Guiness Stout clone is going on my to do list...

 

[Vagrant]

I actually just brewed a Stout very similar to Guinness (By my account and other's trying it and loving it.) I just sent this recipe in a PM to one of the users on this forum so I'll just post most of it here.. Lemme know whatchas think.

Here's my recipe:

2.75g boil topped off to 5g in the primary fermenter
90min Boil
OG: 1.063
FG: (Need to check this again)

6.5lb Dark LME
1lb Flaked Barley
.5lb Black Patent
.5lb Roasted Barley

1.75oz Northern Brewer @ 90min (start of boil)
.25oz Northern Brewer @ 73min remaining

Primed with Corn sugar

Whitelabs Irish Ale Yeast

Put the grain in the cold water, brought temperature up to 150-160 and held it while steeping grains for 30 mins. Sat in Primary for a week, secondary for a week and a half. Bottled it and tried one after 1 week in the bottles and it was wretched! It smelled like soy sauce and tasted worse. Didnt even come close to finishing the bottle.

For a week I went over what I did wrong.. was it the 30 minute steep? Did I add too much black patent? I tried another one a week later and it mellowed up a bit, and was half way drinkable.. I let it sit for 3 weeks and that was the magic number. I brought a few into work for a few co workers and now I get people asking me to bring a bottle for them based off my other co workers loving it.

That hop schedule was kind of an error on my part, so this could be tweaked, but if I were to do it again knowing how it tastes now, I wouldnt adjust anything. I was looking at this website: http://www.brewsupplies.com/hop_characteristics.htm and wasnt trying for a masterpeice, I just wanted to see how adding a little bit of hops later on would affect the end product.. I ended up reading the graph backwards and instead of adding the hops for "Flavoring" at 17 minutes from the end of the boil, I added it 17 minutes into the boil.. rad. Overall, I think it turned out great though.

 

[Monk]

Mysterio, I have the clone brews recipe and have been eyeing it as a definite possibility. I can't figure how they get such a high SRM from the recipe, though. I'll have to run it through beertools again. Maybe they mean black roasted barley when they say roasted barley? BTW Besides color, what's the difference between these two grains?

Nobes, I like your recipe, too. About how bitter do you think it came out? Do you have an IBU count, by any chance?

I think the recipe in Dave Line's book (BBLTYB) is for the export style or maybe "extra stout". It has a whole pound of roasted barley.

monk

 

[Cregar]

I was re-reading "TCJOHB" 3 edition and on page 206 there is a recipe for Toad Spit Stout, which might be a Guinness clone.

Toad Spit Stout
3.3 lbs. John Bull hopped dark malt extract syrup
4 lbs. plain dark dried malt extract
3/4 lbs. crystal malt
1/3 lb. roasted barley
1/3 lb. black patent
1 1/2 oz. Northern Brewer hops (boiling): 14 HBU
1/2 Fuggles or Willamette hops (finishing)
8 tsp. gypsum
1-2 pkgs. ale yeast
3/4 c. corn sugar or 1 1/4c. dried malt extract (for bottling)

Add the crushed roasted barley, crystal and black patent malts to 1 1/2 gallons of cold water. Bring it to a boil and remove the grains after about 5 min. of boiling. Add the malt extracts and boling hops and continue to boil for around an hour.

Add the finishing hops for the last 10 minutes or so of boiling (Guinness type stout does not have a hoppy taste but this recipe will have a subtle hop flavor but trust me, it's really good)

Sparge the hot wort into the fermenter and cold water. Pitch the yeast when cool. Bottle when the fermentation is complete (all the bubbles start to die down, it takes close to a week). It should be ready to drink 3-4 weeks from the day you start it.

 

[Vagrant]

IBUs came out to 81.3 in Promash. From tasting it, it's pretty bitter and the grains definitely add some bitterness to it too. It's got that nice bitter stout "bite" to it, but it's balanced.. fairly heavy in the mouth, nice light brown head on it. It's black as night too.. When it was steeping after 20 minutes you could see about half an inch of grain bag.. Promash calcs this out at 42.1 SRMs. I cracked one right now to give a good description

 

[chillHayze]

If you are mashing you can throw in like 4 oz of acidulated 2-row malt. It adds a little sour bite and acidifies the mash a little which can help with efficiency.

 

[mysterio]

I was re-reading "TCJOHB" 3 edition and on page 206 there is a recipe for Toad Spit Stout, which might be a Guinness clone.

Regarding this recipe, I read on another forum a brewer who had emailed Papazian asking about the abnormally high Gypsum content in the recipe. I forget what Papazian's reply was exactly (something along the lines of he formulated the recipe when he was less experienced and would probably tone back the gypsum if he were to write it today) but he mentioned that through feedback from people who had brewed his recipes, Toad Spit Stout was by far the most popular, alluding that it might be because of the high gypsum content.

Monk, I've not got his book but maybe Dave Line's recipe is for 5 Imperial (British) gallons? That would be equivilant to 6 US gallons, hence the extra roasted barley - in which case a full pound sounds about right.

 

[Monk]

Monk, I've not got his book but maybe Dave Line's recipe is for 5 Imperial (British) gallons? That would be equivilant to 6 US gallons, hence the extra roasted barley - in which case a full pound sounds about right.

Ah, good play M. I forgot about that. I must be careful to find out what system he was using before I try any of the other recipes in there (I might've had some extra extra extra special bitters!--EEESB?).

Cregar: As for Toad Spit, that's a recipe I was indeed checking out. I have to admit, I've never brewed one of Charlie's recipes exactly how he wrote it. My only problem with the Toad is the use of the stout kit. I don't have easy access to John Bull kits and with shipping, it'd come out to about $20 just for the kit. Also, the roasted barley seems kinda low.

I'll tell you what, I'm going to stop quibbling and just brew one of the recipes. I'll let you all know how it goes and what changes I would make. I think I'll shoot for a brew somewhere between Guinness draught and "extra stout" as far as roasty bitterness. Feel free to keep the advice coming, though, if you've got it.
Thanks, guys.

monk