Scaling down a recipe and brewing with coffee and vanilla

[Chris-18]

Hey everyone,

So I want to experiment as much as possible with beer to get experience under my belt. I already have 2 different all grain beers fermenting away, and since some of the darker beers, need more time to age, I figured now was a good time to start making my first Imperial Stout.

I only brew 10L at a time, simply because my kitchen isn't large enough to brew bigger batches at the moment. Plus if I screw up, the loss isnt so bad

My question is, can I simply take a 20L recipe, and cut in ingredients list in half so to speak?

Also, can you add coffee to a recipe, even when it isn't included in it? Or should you add less hops to compensate for bitterness?

And last, have any of you tried adding vanilla in secondary?

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

Yes you can change the batch size by cutting the ingredients in half so to speak.

Yes you can coffee or whatever you prefer to any recipe wether it's included or not. Beauty of the hobby. Brew what you want. Nobody's going to stop you.

And yes I've added vanilla beans in secondary(dropped into primary after fermentation finished) split the beans lengthwise soak in some vodka for a few days and toss it all into the fermenter.

Enjoy the hobby. Don't get hung up on "can do's or don'ts of brewing.

It's you beer make it your way.

Cheers.

 

[Sadu]

I'm thinking about brewing an imperial stout as well but I want to get a few more brews under my belt first before hitting the ultra high gravity stuff (I just brewed batch #9). I think once I can reliably get a good mash efficiency, can make a big yeast starter, plus make few good beers in the 6-7% range then an imperial stout could be on the cards. But if you are up for the challenge on brew #3 then cool

I think on a simple beer you could get away with halving all the ingredients but for something complex like this personally I would want to run it through Beersmith (or similar) so as not to break the fine balance that makes a good imperial stout. I'm sure someone here could do this for you if you post the recipe, but honestly if you like tinkering with recipes and getting experience with this stuff then you won't regret $27 spent on Beersmith.

Yes, people add coffee and vanilla to brews I started a thread asking about this recently for my porter and got some good advice. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=584444