Winter stout recipe feedback

[Tone boy]

Hey team, 

With winter coming up gonna throw down a partial mash stoutish number. It’s my first time with this recipe so looking for feedback, all comments welcome…

Amber liquid malt extract 1.5kg

Real ale can 1.7kg (or Aussie pale ale)

600g LDME (that’s what’s leftover) 

250g roast barley 

250g chocolate malt

100g crystal 

300g quick oats

600g Pilsner malt

25g Fuggles @ 30 min

25g Fuggles @ 5 min

M42 New world strong ale repitched

Cheers gang

[Shamus O'Sean]

Looks pretty good @Tone boy.  I did a similar thing a while ago using the Mexican Cerveza can as the base.

With these types of brews I add in 150 - 300g of Flaked or Torrified Wheat Malt.  It will help with the mouthfeel and head retention, like the Quick Oats.

As the Amber LME has Crystal Malt in it already, you could drop the 100g, or not.

[Tone boy]

Thanks Shamus great tip. I’ll get rid of the crystal. I don’t have any torrified wheat malt, but I do have ordinary wheat malt that I could chuck in for extra mouthfeel and creamy top…mmm….maybe?

The byo.com recipe that I based my recipe off (below) had one pound of crystal, which I thought was a bit much. Not sure what % is in the amber extract…

I also went for Pilsner malt for the extra enzymes to help convert the oats, and maybe a longer mash time…

• 6 lbs. amber, dry malt extract
• 1 lb. crystal malt, 60° Lovibond
• 1.5 lb. American six-row pale ale malt
• 18 oz. oatmeal (quick)
• 0.5 lb. chocolate malt
• 0.5 lb. roasted barley
• 1/2 tsp. Irish moss, for 15 min.
• 2 oz. Fuggles hop pellets (4.2% alpha acid), for 45 min.
• Wyeast 1084, Irish ale yeast

[stquinto]

2 minutes ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

Looks pretty good @Tone boy.  I did a similar thing a while ago using the Mexican Cerveza can as the base.

With these types of brews I add in 150 - 300g of Flaked or Torrified Wheat Malt.  It will help with the mouthfeel and head retention, like the Quick Oats.

As the Amber LME has Crystal Malt in it already, you could drop the 100g, or not.

@Shamus O'Sean @Tone boy just out of interest fellas, do you mill the oats or not ?

I'm about to do a recipe (AG) for Guinness, have just been delivered the grains I was missing. In my recipe it's flaked barley, roasted barley and pale malt. But most stout recipes have oats in too.

The Brewfather doesn't have oats (I think it's a rehash of this one from the Wheeler book), nor does one from the Grainfather app.

I intend setting aside 1 litre of the brew, then fermenting the rest, and when it comes to kegging, splitting the brew into two lots of 10l.

That way I can sour one batch with the brew I set aside, and sour the rest with some lactic acid I got in the order.

Side by side comparison so to speak...

This will be the first time I will be adding stuff like baking soda, gypsum etc. to the water, as per the recipe, since I have my super-accurate drug-dealing scales

 

[Tone boy]

5 minutes ago, stquinto said:

@Shamus O'Sean @Tone boy just out of interest fellas, do you mill the oats or not ?

I'm about to do a recipe (AG) for Guinness, have just been delivered the grains I was missing. In my recipe it's flaked barley, roasted barley and pale malt. But most stout recipes have oats in too.

The Brewfather doesn't have oats (I think it's a rehash of this one from the Wheeler book), nor does one from the Grainfather app.

I intend setting aside 1 litre of the brew, then fermenting the rest, and when it comes to kegging, splitting the brew into two lots of 10l.

That way I can sour one batch with the brew I set aside, and sour the rest with some lactic acid I got in the order.

Side by side comparison so to speak...

This will be the first time I will be adding stuff like baking soda, gypsum etc. to the water, as per the recipe, since I have my super-accurate drug-dealing scales

 

Hey Sainter, this will be my first time using oats, so no expert .
I’m using quick oats, which are like rolled oats but finer, so they don’t need to be milled. They can just go in the mash as is. 
I have seen a lot of stout recipes without oats, I just wanted to have a play with them for fun…

I haven’t mucked around with water yet, or souring, one rabbit hole at a time my friend

I’ll post the final recipe up on the brew day whatchya got thread when I brew it…

[Shamus O'Sean]

6 minutes ago, Tone boy said:

Thanks Shamus great tip. I’ll get rid of the crystal. I don’t have any torrified wheat malt, but I do have ordinary wheat malt that I could chuck in for extra mouthfeel and creamy top…mmm….maybe?

The byo.com recipe that I based my recipe off (below) had one pound of crystal, which I thought was a bit much. Not sure what % is in the amber extract…

I also went for Pilsner malt for the extra enzymes to help convert the oats, and maybe a longer mash time…

• 6 lbs. amber, dry malt extract
• 1 lb. crystal malt, 60° Lovibond
• 1.5 lb. American six-row pale ale malt
• 18 oz. oatmeal (quick)
• 0.5 lb. chocolate malt
• 0.5 lb. roasted barley
• 1/2 tsp. Irish moss, for 15 min.
• 2 oz. Fuggles hop pellets (4.2% alpha acid), for 45 min.
• Wyeast 1084, Irish ale yeast

Hey Tone, The wheat malt would do it.

1lb does seem like a lot of crystal malt.  I do not know how much is in the Amber LME either.

Using Pilsner for conversion is appropriate.  I used 1kg of Pale Malt in the Mexican one I did.  But I had no LME.

Their recipe only uses hops for bittering.  They do not use a hopped extract like Real Ale or APA.  Have you compared the IBU's between their version and yours?  I guess you have because your additions are at 30 and 5 instead of all at 45 minutes.

[Tone boy]

2 minutes ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

Have you compared the IBU's between their version and yours?

I did, and am leaning towards the APA kit because it has lower bitterness. 
I don’t think I’ll get a heap of bitterness from the Fuggles but haven’t plugged it in to Brewfather yet…

The byo.com recipe states 34 IBU -I don’t mind going a little higher though…I noticed Sainter’s recipe has 45 IBU

 

[Shamus O'Sean]

16 minutes ago, stquinto said:

@Shamus O'Sean @Tone boy just out of interest fellas, do you mill the oats or not ?

I'm about to do a recipe (AG) for Guinness, have just been delivered the grains I was missing. In my recipe it's flaked barley, roasted barley and pale malt. But most stout recipes have oats in too.

The Brewfather doesn't have oats (I think it's a rehash of this one from the Wheeler book), nor does one from the Grainfather app.

I intend setting aside 1 litre of the brew, then fermenting the rest, and when it comes to kegging, splitting the brew into two lots of 10l.

That way I can sour one batch with the brew I set aside, and sour the rest with some lactic acid I got in the order.

Side by side comparison so to speak...

This will be the first time I will be adding stuff like baking soda, gypsum etc. to the water, as per the recipe, since I have my super-accurate drug-dealing scales

 

You can mill the Flaked Oats.  I have had Stout grain bills with the oats already mixed in.  So I had to mill them.  When I have done the grain bill myself, I have mixed the oats in and milled them with the grains.  As long as they are mixed in well, it will be fine.

It is best to use Quick Oats like @Tone boy says.  They are ready to use in the mash.  Rolled Oats need to be put through a Cereal Mash before adding to the main mash.  Seems like unnecessary work to me.  Beersmith has a good article on Cereal Mashing.

Your experiment with souring sounds great.  Never done it myself.  I am looking forward to the results.

[Tone boy]

Just following up with some feedback on my stout recipe. It turned out to be absolutely delicious so thought I would let you know in case anyone ever stumbles across this thread…

A few changes were made to the original recipe:

1. I used the Coopers pale ale can instead of the real ale 

2. I added 650g of LDME, not 600g as originally written 

3. I added 250g of wheat DME

4. I upped the quick oats to 350g

5. I omitted the crystal (which was a good move because there is enough sweetness there)

Everything else was as the original recipe. FG turned out at 1.018 (OG was 1.070)

Cheers

[RDT2]

On 5/5/2022 at 8:37 PM, Shamus O'Sean said:

You can mill the Flaked Oats.  I have had Stout grain bills with the oats already mixed in.  So I had to mill them.  When I have done the grain bill myself, I have mixed the oats in and milled them with the grains.  As long as they are mixed in well, it will be fine.

It is best to use Quick Oats like @Tone boy says.  They are ready to use in the mash.  Rolled Oats need to be put through a Cereal Mash before adding to the main mash.  Seems like unnecessary work to me.  Beersmith has a good article on Cereal Mashing.

Your experiment with souring sounds great.  Never done it myself.  I am looking forward to the results.

As @Shamus O'Seanstated make sure you mix the oats with the grains before milling otherwise they won’t feed though the mill if bunched together!