Malty High Gravity Ale Recipe Feedback

[BrannDon]

I am working a recipe for a super malty, high gravity, full bodied brown/amber ale. I am thinking something like think a high gravity Fat Tire on tap (which can totally be hit or miss on flavor consistency, but the kind that is fresh and comes from nice clean tap lines). I also don't want it to be too sweet, really just looking for a nice bready, biscuity flavor. Anyhow, let me know what you guys think or any suggestions you might have for tweaks.

12 lbs Pale 2 row Malt
2 lbs Aromatic Malt
2 lbs Melanoiden Malt
1.5 lbs Caravienne Malt
1 lb Caramunich Malt
0.5 lb Caramel/Crystal 60L
1 oz Challenger hops (7.5% @ 60 min)
0.5 oz Fuggle (4.5% @ 10 min)
White Labs British Ale Yeast (2 liter starter with nutrient)
US-04 dry yeast (just if I need it to get around a stuck fermentation)

BIAB w/ mash temp @ 156 for 60 min and boil time of 90 min
Est. OG 1.087 (est ABV 7.8%)
IBU 21.4

 

[Yooper]

To me, it's too much melanoiden and aromatic malt. I know you want it super malty, but I'd definitely lose the melanoiden malt, and I'd cut the cara- malts in half. You have 3 pounds of cara-malts in there and it's twice as much as I'd consider reasonable. I didn't do the math, but I'd go with no more than 12% cara-malts, and even then I'd mash at a much lower temperature so the beer isn't cloying in the finish, especially with only 21 IBUs.

Malty is great, but cloyingly sweet and underbittered is what you seem to have there, and I would definitely balance it out to make it drinkable.

 

[BrannDon]

To me, it's too much melanoiden and aromatic malt. I know you want it super malty, but I'd definitely lose the melanoiden malt, and I'd cut the cara- malts in half. You have 3 pounds of cara-malts in there and it's twice as much as I'd consider reasonable. I didn't do the math, but I'd go with no more than 12% cara-malts, and even then I'd mash at a much lower temperature so the beer isn't cloying in the finish, especially with only 21 IBUs.

Malty is great, but cloyingly sweet and underbittered is what you seem to have there, and I would definitely balance it out to make it drinkable.

Yeah that would cut the caramalt down to 9.68% which would be fine. Then maybe swapping the challenger hops out for something like centennial might help to balance it out a bit (looks like it would bump the IBUs up to about 30)?

 

[Yooper]

Something else to consider is that if you want a bready malt flavor, you could consider using an English maris otter malt, or Scottish Golden Promise malt. It would really bring out those bready notes you seem to want, and then consider maybe toasting some of the malt to bring out a biscuity/toasty note without too much dryness that you can get from victory or biscuit malt. Aromatic malt is Munich malt on steroids, so that would be ok there or you could use Munich malt in a higher amount (like 40% of the grainbill even). That would be a malt bomb, but not cloyingly sweet.

I'd go with a minimum of 30 IBUs there, but not centennial. I'd use a clean bittering hop, like magnum or increase the challenger hops.

 

[corax]

I went through a lot of iterations before settling on a malty brown ale recipe I really liked:

85% Maris Otter
10% aromatic type malts (split between biscuit, aromatic, victory, and/or special roast)
2.5% 75L crystal
2.5% chocolate malt

I shoot for a much lower gravity than you, but I think it would scale up well.

I prefer a more subtle crystal/caramel presence, but obviously you could boost that at the expense of the aromatic malts.

I think melanoidin malt could be interesting, but agree that it shouldn't be more than about 2.5% total.