RIS attempt questions

[Jack]

We are expecting our second kid this winter, so I know I probably won't have time to brew for some time. I was thinking about brewing a RIS 1-2 months before the due date so it can bulk age in the secondary.

I read a bunch of threads on the topic and came up with the following composite recipe:
75% Marris Otter
10% Munich 10°L
7% roasted barley
4.5% special B
3.5% chocolate malt

EKG hops to achieve 60 IBU added at 60 minutes
EKG hops to achieve 30 IBU added at 20 minutes

Wyeast 1028 London Ale

Scaled to produce a wort with an OG of 1.100.

Questions:
0. Does the above look about right?

1. I have had 2 oz of "house toast" French oak wood cubes sitting in a jar of Canadian Club for about three years now. If I wanted to oak this beer, I've read I should add the wood (but not the liquor) to secondary and let it have a few months of contact time. The flavors meld better and better over time. Is this correct?

2. If I already have some weyermann pils malt, would there be any issue using that in lieu of MO?

 

[day_trippr]

That's a lot of roasted barley...I'd change half of that to the chocolate.
As for the pils sub, never done that, but I'd be inclined to make a couple/few pounds of it a C20/Carapils or something similar...

 

[MapleGroveAleworks]

It's not a lot of roasted barley at all. You have 10.5% overall roasted malt in this recipe which is fine. You can even go up to 12-13% too if you want a stronger flavor.

I would not use pils malt in a RIS. Use US 2 row or something like Maris otter or golden promise.

My last RIS had special B in it and it really amps up the sweetness. I'm not a fan anymore, but I'm assuming you are since you included it in the recipe.

I would add a couple layers of crystal malt to balance some sweetness to all that roasted grain.

 

[Raoul_Duke_PhD]

I second the notion of using some crystal malt in there. The pilsner malt will be fine. A RIS is so roasty, that the base malt will be very muddled anyways. Leaving it sit for a couple months will definitely help settle out a lot of the harshness from the roasted malts.

 

[Lefou]

If you swap out the Munich 10L with Vienna malt, your diastatic conversion rate changes upward and could give you the wiggle room to add that extra caramel, crystal, and roast malt.
Adding pilsner malt does the same thing but you rarely see pilsner in the darker, heavier styles.

I was spending a few hours with Brewer's Friend yesterday trying to get a brew recipe that crosses multiple styles with a minimum of ingredient changes. It was a pain in the butt trying to choose malt combinations in order to get a compromised recipe that works for a brown ale, porter, and stout - but I did it and without using a lot of Special B.

 

[Jack]

Thanks for all the thoughts. If my math is right, the above works out to have an average DP of 94°Lintner so I'm not especially worried about having enough conversion.

My thought was that the sweetness of the special b would be balanced by all the roast barley and chocolate malt. From your experience, that assumption sounds like it might be wrong!

If I were to use crystal malts instead, does this look better?
75% MO
10% Munich
7% roasted barley
4% chocolate
2.5% crystal 40
1.5% crystal 80

 

[Kent88]

Congrats. I wish I had thought ahead like this earlier in the year before my son arrived. I've hardly had any time to brew since then.

Recipe looks fine, but I'm not a pro at recipe design. There is no lactose or oatmeal in this stout so I'm a little lost. I don't think I use roasted barley for my stouts, I usually use a debittered black malt of some sort.

Use the wood, not the booze. Do you keg? I feel like trying to get the yeast to carb a beer this strong (even before extra booze) in the bottle might be tough.

Use Maris Otter or another english pale malt, I prefer MCI stout malt. Try to get a lager going this fall to use up the pils malt.

 

[Sadu]

I wouldn't worry about lactose or oats, these aren't short on body and too much sweetness can make them hard to drink. I would stick with MO personally, not that pilsner wouldn't work, but I think the English malt is part of the flavour profile.

 

[Kent88]

I wouldn't worry about lactose or oats, these aren't short on body and too much sweetness can make them hard to drink

I should have said "You aren't making a sweet stout or an oatmeal stout..." rather than "There is no lactose or oatmeal in this stout...", I didn't intend to suggest that lactose and oats be added to the recipe. My bad.

 

[MapleGroveAleworks]

Recipe looks great. Brew it up, it will turn out great. Don't forget a **** ton of yeast and oxygen. And be prepared for it to have quite the blowoff.