Stout Recipe Critique

[hopbrad]

This is for an 8 Gallon Batch (extract)
steep grains in 4 gallons of water. then bring 9 gallons up to a boil. add half of the extract. add 2nd half with 20 minutes left along with sugar.

- 15 lbs of Dark LME
- 1.5 lbs of brown sugar

- 12 oz of black patent
- 12 oz of roasted barley
- 16 oz of chocolate malt
- 4 oz of thomas fawcett amber malt

- 1.5 oz Magnum 60 min
- 1 oz Kent Golding 15 min
- 1 oz Kent Golding 5 min

S-05. trying to keep ferm temps in the mid 60's.

after 3-4 weeks in the primary i plan to secondary half onto Toasted Cacao Beans and the other half onto cold brewed coffee

the specialty grains are my question marks. any feedback would be great

 

[JR_Brewer]

First off, looks like a pretty high-gravity beer. Be sure to pitch extra yeast, and make sure it's very healthy.

When using those dark specialty grains, you don't necessarily need to use Dark DME. You can use Golden or Amber DME, and your color will come from the specialty grains.

Speaking of the specialty grains, that's a LOT of those really dark malts. I can't say if it's TOO much, but I can say it's more than normal. Can anyone else weigh in on this?

Also, thomas fawcett amber malt I believe needs to be mashed; it is not a specialty/steeping grain. And that being said, 4 oz of amber malt is going to be lost in that grain bill, so I would just eliminate that.

Hop profile looks good to me. Yeast choice and temperature look good, but like I said, make sure you pitch enough into this monster!

 

[hopbrad]

The only malt i have found here is a Darkish Amber LME from Chile. its a tad sweet so i usually put in some table sugar to help dry it up.
my brewing software has OG at 1.069, FG at 1.017. 6.7%
so not quite an imperial. which is what im going for.

i went off this recipe from Northern Brewer, which got pretty good reviews.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/ImperialStout.pdf

maybe ill tone down the specialty malts a bit.
8 oz black patent
8 oz roasted Barley
10 oz Chocolate malt
and nix the amber
i have a yeast cake from a pumpkin beer, so i'll have plenty of s-05 slurry. otherwise i would go with 2 packets.

 

[JR_Brewer]

When I punched the recipe in, I got an OG of 1.090+. Did you make sure you entered the DME and Brown Sugar as Extract? Otherwise, if it thinks you're mashing it (even though it mashing DME/sugar makes no sense) it will apply an efficiency factor reducing your gravity.

The NB recipe looks good, and yeah, it looks like you basically scaled their beer up to 8 gallons. So don't let me discourage you from the amount of specialty grains; looks like it worked in their recipe at those levels, and everything I've had of theirs has been good. Let 'er rip!

Good luck, let us know how it turns out!

 

[BlackGoat]

yeah, looks like too much DME and too much roasted grains to me, I'd reduce both.

 

[DuckiesRevenge]

So I humbly disagree with some of the previous posters. The op said LME not DME which brings it to 1.079 by my calculations. Which isn't too bad.

A yeast starter is a REALLY good option. Hops look good. I would replace the dark LME with golden LME. And cut two of the three dark gains in half (your choice). Get rid of the amber, maybe add in crystal 80 or something instead.

It's your beer so do what you want but this is my opinion.

Cheers!

 

[JR_Brewer]

The op said LME not DME which brings it to 1.079 by my calculations.

Good catch, you are correct, sir!

So back to the OP, overall, what you posted looks ok. Lose the amber and you'll have a nice, big, imperial stout.

 

[BlackGoat]

yep, good catch, my bad. Still 1.079 is still up in the imperial range so if that is what is intended then this gravity should be fine.

 

[hopbrad]

I think i will go with this for the specialty grains then.
1 lb of Chocolate malt
1/2 lb of Roasted Barley
1/2 lb of Black Patent

as for the Gravity - i get gallon jugs of this darkish/amber LME - 3.5kg / 7.7lbs. One of these jugs in a 5 gallon batch gets me about 1.045 and 13 SRM, which is less gravity points than what i use to get in the states. i made a custom category in my software since that amount would normally equate to higher gravity.

I plan on brewing her up early next week. I'll post results.
Thanks for the information. It is my first stout.

 

[DuckiesRevenge]

That sounds a lot like one of my first stouts (which was VERY tasty). Ultimately I have kept the same type of recipe and have gotten a 38 and a 35 for each time I entered it and medal-ed once in competition. I used a 6lb jug of LME, 1.5lbs of honey, .75# chocolate malt, .25# pale chocolate malt and .5% carapils with cascade and willamette hops. In any case, I think what you have will have a mighty fine brew.

Let us know what happens!

 

[hopbrad]

brewed this up last night. I took the gravity sample of 7.5 gallons and it was 1.080. i then added a quart of top off water to each fermenter so im guessing it would be in the 1.075 range.
woke up this AM and its bubbling away nicely.

 

[hopbrad]

the FG came to 1.015. so almost 8%. 20 days in the primary.

I bottled 4 gallons with cold brewed coffee. 3.5 oz of a light nicaraguan roast. cold steeped overnight in water(i forgot to write down the amount of water. i think between 2-3 cups).

The other 4 gallons:
I transferred 1 gallon into a secondary which had 1 oz of cacao beans. The beans were roasted and crushed to make nibs. i let the nibs sit in vodka(just enough to cover) for a few days to extract the flavor and sterilize. then dumped the liquid and some nibs into the secondary. let sit for 3 days.

the last 3 gallons are regular stout.

they've all been bottled for about 2 weeks.

 

[hopbrad]

the regular stout is a bit sour/acidic. possibly too much black patent? the choco and coffee are nice, maybe they hide the harshness of the black patent?

 

[ahurd110]

Hmmm, your recipe didn't seem to have too much black patent, and even if it did that would make it ashy or acrid, not tart. Maybe a water/ph issue? If the problem gets worse than it may be a sanitation/bacterial issue.

 

[hopbrad]

i think it might be a water issue. i am reading up on it now.