what makes a good stout

[bill42]

Hi everyone.
I have been looking at a lot of stout recipes trying to come up with a perfect one.

And figured to ask you who have made pale ales before and like the style.

What makes a good stout?

Is it the grain bill, is there something that HAS TO BE in there in your opinion.

Or does it have to do with hops and/or mash temp.

It is most likely a combination of the lot but what is is IN YOUR OPINION

 

[ztanner25]

roasted barley

 

[skyebrewing]

Its the totality of the circumstances. Great grain bill plus bad fermentation is just as bad as good yeast and bad grain bill. Plus your own tastes makes a good beer a good beer.
I want a really roasty not sweet beer and only 4% alc but that is not everyones cup of tea.
If you have a specific taste, we will guide you to a recipe, but ultimately it comes down to your taste and your process.

 

[Captain Damage]

Daniels (Designing Great Beers) recommends against the kitchen sink approach. Use pale malt or extract and roasted barley and not a lot of other grains. "The basic stout is so easy that the recipe can be written in less than 20 words: 90% pale malt, 10% roast barley, 1.042 OG, 45 IBU at the start of the boil. This recipe brewed with almost any water, mashed at almost any temperature and fermented with almost any yeast should give an enjoyable product." He goes on to say that many great stouts do contain specialty grains, but that it's generally 10% or less.

 

[lordbeermestrength]

When someone is brewing to a particular style, I always recommend Jamil Zainasheff. Go to http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Jamil-Show/Dry-Stout-The-Jamil-Show-02-27-06 for his take on dry stout. Listening to the program will give you a good idea how to formulate your own recipe if you don't wanna follow his exactly.

 

[Beerrific]

What kind of stout are you looking to brew? This will help a lot.

But, for most I would say the biggest ingredient should be roasted barley. However depending on the stout I like to use a variety of roasted malts, for example, in the American stout I brew I use 3 types of roasted malts to get a better spread of flavors, but in my dry stout I use only roasted barley.

 

[rack04]

My last dry stout recipe consisted of:

70% Pauls English 2-Row Pale Malt
20% Flaked Barley
7.50% Pauls Roasted Barley
2.50% Pauls Chocolate Malt
36.2 IBU East Kent Goldings
Notttingham Ale

 

[stevedasleeve]

I like my stouts somewhat dry, not sweet, and not overly roasty. My best stout recipe is easy as pie:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/nice-dry-easy-drinking-stout-223069/

 

[Homercidal]

There are a few stouts to choose from. I like mine less dry and more hoppy, usually. usually a bit stronger as well.

But at any rate, a fair amount of roast flavor from roasted malt, and some black patent or chocolate malt can add some interesting flavors too, and you can vary the amounts by a few ounces to get a different balance of flavor.

 

[KYB]

When someone is brewing to a particular style, I always recommend Jamil Zainasheff. Go to http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Jamil-Show/Dry-Stout-The-Jamil-Show-02-27-06 for his take on dry stout. Listening to the program will give you a good idea how to formulate your own recipe if you don't wanna follow his exactly.

Every time I've listened to those shows I got nothing out of it. All they did was talk about random crap, then tell you his recipe from his book, and that was it. I decided to not listen to them at all, do my own thing, and got a 43/50 from a BJCP Certified judge with my FES (bad head retention hurt my score, not sure what happened that time). Since I've brewed many Stouts, but haven't entered any since. I plan on entering more of my beers soon.

It depends what style of Stout you want. I prefer Black Barley and Flaked Barley in mine. I typically use a little flaked oats as well, along with a small amount of chocolate malt. I like to use Maris Otter in mine, along with fairly hard water (our tap water is and it works great for Stouts). I tend to stick with English Ale yeasts, not Irish Ale.

 

[iijakii]

I'm a fan of thick sweet stouts. Deschutes' Abyss is pretty much my favorite beer ever. Granted I haven't really had any other release stouts like Dark Lord and what not.

I made an Old Rasputin clone, this was the recipe I used. It was mostly copied from a couple other sources like BYO and what not.


Amount Item Type % or IBU
18.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 82.8 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 4.6 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 4.6 %
0.50 lb Brown Malt (65.0 SRM) Grain 2.3 %
0.50 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 2.3 %
0.50 lb Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 2.3 %
0.25 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 1.1 %
3.00 oz Cluster [7.00%] (90 min) Hops 50.7 IBU
1.00 oz Centennial [10.00%] (2 min) Hops 1.9 IBU
1.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50%] (2 min) Hops 1.6 IBU

I think I will double the roasted barley next time. I'm a huge fan of wheat malt for body and head retention. I'll add some oats next time too. Other than those changes, not too sure what I'll modify.

 

[KYB]

I'm a fan of thick sweet stouts. Deschutes' Abyss is pretty much my favorite beer ever. Granted I haven't really had any other release stouts like Dark Lord and what not.

I'm the same way, except switch those beers. I've had a handful of awesome big stouts, but Dark Lord has been my favorite. However I haven't had Abyss and other supposedly amazing Stouts.

My Monolith is a massive RIS, 16.3%. I've only posted the recipe once on the interwebz and don't plan to post it again (it's easy to find). I will say we had a Dark Lord 3yr vertical - we did a side by side at first, then drank the rest of the bottles in order. When we got to 2011 DL, I broke out a 2010 GI Bourbon County Coffee and my Monolith. It was just over 2 months since brewday, and people kept grabbing the Monolith bottle to refill their sample glasses instead of DL or BCC. A couple people didn't believe it was homebrew until I had to explain it. I was pretty stoked about that. I cannot wait to try it in a year. Bottling it next week. Was going to yesterday but I had another damn CO2 leak, so it's empty.

 

[lordbeermestrength]

Every time I've listened to those shows I got nothing out of it. All they did was talk about random crap, then tell you his recipe from his book, and that was it.

Yeah, I hear ya. You kinda have to wade through the filler to get to the good stuff. Either way there are some gems in there (especially with the Q&A sessions). But I prefer listening rather than reading, for others it may make more sense to go pick up a book.

 

[skyebrewing]

Take everything you hear or read, find the common ingredients and make it your own. You have already seen how different opinions can be but find the common threads and go from there.
My. 02 for a dry stout is 78% 2row, 10% flaked barley, 10% roasted barley, 2% chocolate malt. 1.040 gravity and s-04 yeast.
Take all these opinions and make your own. Since you can see we all don't have matching opinions but none are wrong

 

[commonsenseman]

What he said ^^^^^ about opinions & common ingredients. I basically took what it seemed like most dry stout recipes consisted of & came up with this. I dunno if you were looking for extract or all grain, but here's my extract recipe (within bjcp guidelines) for 2-gal:

2lbs Dark DME
4oz Roasted Barley
2oz Chocolate
2oz Caramel 120L
.75oz Fuggles - 60min
.5oz Fuggles - 5min
Nottingham (or my personal favorite S-04)

I will let you know how it is when it's finished in a few weeks.

 

[Bru]

Very similair to mine except I drop the chocolate and add 500g wheat malt.
Colour should be about 26 SRM with a bitterness ratio of about 0.7 using one hop addition at 60 mins (no aroma hops). I like fuggles in mine.
I tried one recently with fresh ginger added during the boil - it was excellent.

Take everything you hear or read, find the common ingredients and make it your own. You have already seen how different opinions can be but find the common threads and go from there.
My. 02 for a dry stout is 78% 2row, 10% flaked barley, 10% roasted barley, 2% chocolate malt. 1.040 gravity and s-04 yeast.
Take all these opinions and make your own. Since you can see we all don't have matching opinions but none are wrong