Can I make a Stout from the Mexican Cerveza can?

[Shamus O'Sean]

I have a Mexican Cerveza can in the cupboard and it is time to brew another Stout or Porter.  Can I make a Stout or Porter from the Coopers Mexican Cerveza can?

I have several grains that could help in this regard:

• Carafa Special II
• Chocolate Malt
• Midnight Wheat
• Roasted Barley

Cheers Shamus

[Otto Von Blotto]

I don't see why not. All stouts and porters are made with pale malt grains of some type as the main portion of the fermentables, with the dark roasted grains making up the rest for the distinctive flavour and colour of the styles. 

You'd probably need to add a reasonable amount of bitterness to it as well, but obviously not that hard to achieve. 

[Shamus O'Sean]

Thanks for that.  I would have overlooked the bitterness aspect without your comments.

I will have to have a bit of a play around with some recipe software to get close.

I was thinking similar to you that a stout is largely pale malt and that the Cerveza can could bring that part of the recipe to the table

[ben 10]

Easy one for sure. Add some malt too I hope?

500g choc and 200g carafa just went into a black ipa (stout grain bill) 

[Shamus O'Sean]

Yep. At least a kilo.

I was also thinking about a possible mini-mash of some extra pale ale grains instead of LDM.

I was hoping for some replies from the partial mash brigade too.  They often have to be creative to get a particular style out of a basic kit can.

[The Captain!!]

I would try and mash in a little of flaked barley for some mouthfeel too. 

[Instigator]

7 hours ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

Can I make a Stout or Porter from the Coopers Mexican Cerveza can?

Of course you can. Just make a toucan with a can of stout.

[King Ruddager]

22 hours ago, Instigator said:

Of course you can. Just make a toucan with a can of stout.

Hah, exactly what I was about to say

[Otto Von Blotto]

On 4/23/2020 at 1:21 PM, Shamus O'Sean said:

Thanks for that.  I would have overlooked the bitterness aspect without your comments.

I will have to have a bit of a play around with some recipe software to get close.

I was thinking similar to you that a stout is largely pale malt and that the Cerveza can could bring that part of the recipe to the table

I daresay most if not all beers are largely pale malt of some kind. You don't need a lot of dark malts to get the colour and flavour from them. I can't remember the percentages in mine but the pale malt would be at least 80%, maybe 85%. The rest is made up of a bit of crystal and 2 or 3 roasted grains like chocolate, roasted barley and black malt in varying amounts. 

[Maurice79]

No reason it wouldn't work.  It would be better to use as a base for a partial and add the extra bitterness using a 30 min boil. Could use EKG etc for English or The C's for American.  

For example the ROTM Turbo Charged APA is a great beer based on the Mex kit. https://www.diybeer.com/au/recipe/turbo-charged-american-pale-ale.html

I brewed one using WY1272 and gave my dad one for Christmas brewed using US05. as an experiment.  Damn fine beer in both instances and it would be hard to tell it was a kit beer.

[Shamus O'Sean]

This idea is coming together.  Firstly I found a recipe for an Irish Stout (David Heath Homebrew Youtube channel):

• 23L batch
• 3.3kg Pale Ale
• 0.87kg Flaked Barley
• 0.47kg Roasted Barley
• 0.06kg Chocolate Malt
• 0.15kg Wheat Crystal
• 60 min mash @65°C / 10 min mash-out at 75°C
• 30 min boil
• 40g Challenger hops 30 min boil
• 10g East Kent Golding hops 15 min boil
• OG: 1.044; FG: 1.010; ABV: 4.4%; IBU: 38.2; EBC: 83.6; BU:GU 0.872

Then I put the Mexican Cerveza into the IanH spreadsheet to see what values I get from it:

Next I put a very basic BIAB recipe in the lesser known IanH BIAB spreadsheet.  The goal was to determine what simple ingredients produced similar specs to the Mexican Cerveza can.  I am using Magnum hops because that is what I have in stock:

Then I put the above ingredients into a blank BIAB spreadsheet and overlaid them with the Irish Stout recipe.  The next step was to reduce the amount of Pale Malt and play with the variable 'second' Magnum addition to get the OG and ABV and IBU's close to the original Irish Stout recipe.

I think this will be the plan for this weekend.  I will probably do this as a stove top partial BIAB and add the Mexican Cerveza can right at the end of the boil.

Can anybody see any holes in my thought process?  A possible one that comes to mind for me is I will not be doing a full volume boil, only around 10L, so I may not get full extraction of bitterness from the hops.

Comments appreciated.