making sense of a recipe

[mlumps]

Hi,

I have been given a recipe for a milk stout by a friend who brews but I am unsure of weights / how to go about making it. I am aiming to brew 23 liters (5 gallons?)

So what I have been given is the following.

75% pale malt extract

10% chocolate malt

5% roasted barley

4% pale crystal malt

challenger hops to 35 IBU

2 Vanilla pods soaked in bourbon for 1 week

Add to secondary with 280g lactose

bottle.


If someone could shed some light on what sort of weights i should be using and any tips on how to go about making this would be great.

 

[kaconga]

Typically recipes like this come with an original gravity target. Do you have one? Then it just comes down to using the proper total amount of grain made up by those percentages.

 

[kaconga]

The percentages don't add up to a hundred so the 280 g of lactose must be the missing 6%. So from there you take 280/.06 to get the total grams and then multiply each percentage by that to get the amounts of each one. The ibu calculations are dependant on your specific alpha acid content so I can't be of much help there.

 

[scottballz]

There are a bunch of threads discussing milk stout recipes that you can base your recipe off of and then tweak it to make your own. just search "extract milk stout recipe" here is one that might help.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/search-chocolate-milk-stout-extract-recipe-438740/

 

[mlumps]

Thanks everyone, I will look at other milk stouts as a guide.

 

[TipsyDragon]

A good starting point is the milk stout guidelines on the BJCP. It will give you a target OG range to shoot for. The recipe as given is so it can be scaled to any batch size you want. Pick your target OG and batch size and do the math. The IBUs are given so you can easily adjust for seasonal differences in hop alpha acids. Pick your bittering equation of choice and again do the math.

I would suggest finding a brewing software and/or recipe formulation sight. They will do the laborious OG and IBU calculations for you. Just play with the numbers till they hit your targets.

 

[jro238]

So just plugged in your stuff to beersmith (I guessed on weights and came out about 5% abv) and came out with the following (this is rough and I don't really brew stouts so the hop schedule might need to be changed). Also, this has 2 row at 80% and doesnt have any lactose, so if you use lactose decrease the base malt some:

assuming 72% efficiency and a 5 gal batch:
6.4oz crystal
8 oz roasted barley
1lb chocolate malt
8lb 2 row
.75oz challenger @ 15 minutes
1oz challenger @ 60 minutes

 

[Epimetheus]

So just plugged in your stuff to beersmith...Also, this has 2 row at 80% and doesnt have any lactose, so if you use lactose decrease the base malt some

Good conversion from the software!
I thought lactose was not fermentable, that it was added to provide the milk taste in a milk stout. If so, then the 2-row does not have to be reduced?

 

[jro238]

Good conversion from the software!
I thought lactose was not fermentable, that it was added to provide the milk taste in a milk stout. If so, then the 2-row does not have to be reduced?

You're right. I forgot my gravity wasn't actually the target for the recipe