Stout recipe please

[Underground Joe]

I'm after a recipe for a tried and tested good old fashioned normal stout, not an imperial or coffee or chocolate or any other variations, just a nice stout that comes out between five and six percent please. Cheers

[seymour]

SEYMOUR BASIC STOUT

Guinness is believed to be 80% Pale, 10% Flaked Barley, 10% Roasted Barley, which is certainly basic. However, I like my stouts with the silky/creamy mouthfeel and improved head retention from oats, and using some Chocolate Malt or Black Malt tends to lend a little more complexity than plain ol' Roasted Barley. Optionally: if you want to jack it up even more, as well as add tasty caramelly/fruity notes, drain some of the first-runnings into a pot, add some brown cane sugar, boil-down to caramel syrup, then add to main boil.

all-grain recipe
6 US Gallons = 5 Imperial Gallons = 22.7 Litres

FERMENTABLES:
80% = 10.2 lb = 4.63 kg, Two-row pale malt
10% = 1.28 lb = 578 g, Black Malt or Roasted Barley
5% = .64 lb = 290 g, Flaked Barley
5% = .64 lb = 290 g, Steel-Cut Oats (breakfast oats from your kitchen)

MASH at 152°F/66.7°C 60 minutes or until converted

HOPS:
1.2 oz = 34 g, Challenger or Northern Brewer, 90 minutes
1 oz = 28 g, Goldings, 15 minutes

BOIL 90 minutes

OPTIONAL: pinch of calcium carbonate (chalk) in mash to simulate hard limestone well-water and improve uptake of dark grains, pinch of gypsum in boil kettle to make the hops pop, and Irish Moss near the end of the boil if you care about clarity in stouts (I don't.)

YEAST: Your choice of English ale yeast, consider warming your fermentor for more esters

STATS assume 77% mash efficiency and 75% yeast attenuation:
OG: 1.060
FG: 1.015
ABV: 5.8%
IBU: 31
COLOUR: 41° SRM/81° EBC

[weiht]

Oatmeal Stout

OG-1056 30IBU
75% Pale Malt
10% Black Barley (500L) if u can get it or Roasted Barley (300L) with small Black patent malt for colour. U could also go with 7% Roasted Barley and 3% Chocolate malt
4% Crystal 80
4% Crystal 120
7% Rolled Oats
*Optional - U could replace 10-15% of pale malt for Munich malt
Mash 67c

Add Fuggles or Norther Brewer or Perle at 60mins to a tune of 25ibu
1/2-3/4 oz per 5 gallon of Willamette or Fuggles at 15mins

Yeast - WLP023 (Makes a nice stout that is fairly dry but leaves nice body). Pitch 17c and ferment at 18c for 2-3 days, let it free rise and clean up at 21c till it hits terminal gravity.

Take note that u may not get a stout that is black with 10% roasted barley (300L), so compensate with some black malt to darken it. I would encourage you to add some sodium bicarbonate to the mash if u're confident with water chemistry, so that you wont end up with a harsh acrid burnt beer.

[masterosouffle]

Are you planning on all grain? If not I hear Ditch has a stout recipe...

[Underground Joe]

Are you planning on all grain? If not I hear Ditch has a stout recipe...

It didn't appeal to me back when I was making kits and it's not really a recipe as such is it. Isn't it just making a Cooper's stout kit with DME, which is pretty standard, and then bulking it out with a cup of sugar? Kind of like me adding an Oxo cube to a pot noodle and calling it Underground Joe's noodles.

[seymour]

Weiht, that looks really good, too. I can never decide about the crystal/caramel in my own stout recipe. Mine is just very pale + very dark. Yours fills in the middle-ground, creating more well-rounded flavors, I'm sure. Any thoughts on this?

[Underground Joe]

I've played about with grain quantities slightly to make it easier to order without leaving grain that might not get used for ages. I don't have any oats in my kitchen cupboards so I don't know whose house you have been snooping round Seymour. I've adjusted the hop quantities slightly as I prefer a slightly bitterer drink.

Basic Stout
Recipe specifics:

Style: Irish Stout
Batch size: 42.0 l
Boil volume: 52.9 l
OG: 1.056
FG: 1.014
Bitterness (IBU): 36.5
Color (SRM): 33.9
ABV: 5.5%
70% efficiency
Grain/Sugars:

9.00 kg Pale Ale Malt, 81.8%
1.00 kg Roasted Barley, 9.1%
0.50 kg Barley, Flaked, 4.5%
0.50 kg Flaked Oats, 4.5%

Hops:

70.00 g Challenger (AA 7.5%, Whole) 60 min, 27.3 IBU
70.00 g Kent Golding (AA 5.1%, Whole) 15 min, 9.2 IBU

I live in a very hard water area so I won't be adding any calcium carbonate.

[seymour]

...I don't have any oats in my kitchen cupboards so I don't know whose house you have been snooping round Seymour...

Shame on you, don't you know they are part of a balanced breakfast and proven to lower your cholesterol?

Your recipe looks great to me. Obviously, there are a million ways you could go, but this should serve as a baseline from which you can experiment in the future.

[weiht]

Seymour, its just a personal preference for me. I don't get much variety of dry stouts here other than Guinness draft, and the problem is I dislike most nitrogen served beers. The roast is nice, but I prefer more carbonation bite to it and some complexity rather than sometime too creamy and flat. I do like flaked barley as well, but its harder to come by than rolled oats.

I have stopped using crystal 60 or lower as it doesnt seem to add any noticeable flavour to my stout. I use 8-10% crystals malts if the yeast attenuates high and finishes dry, but cap it at 8% if i'm using something like wlp002/Wy1968. I'm not the type who makes big 7ish% stouts that finishes 1020 and above, and comes across like the beer hasnt attenuate fully. I also struggle to understand how people brew stouts that manage to finish 1010-1012 even with high amounts of unfermentables like roasted and caramel malts and Wy1968. I find it funny when people say their oatmeal stout/porter has stuck fermentation at 1016-1018.

What is ur reservations about adding crystal malts? I find it does add some body and sweetness that makes the beer more interesting and complexed rather than drinking something that's burnt and acrid. I also find british crystal and roasted malts are alot more pronounced than the US ones, and some amounts of cara-aroma does wonders.

My fav yeast for porters and stouts is the pacman strain. It has a nice minerally quality, attenuates well and finishes dry and clean and leaves a nice body with a small amount of residual sweetness, high alcohol tolerance as well!! Wlp023 is excellent as well, dry finish without thinning out the beer too much.

[seymour]

Great commentary, Weiht, I agree on all points.

...What is ur reservations about adding crystal malts? I find it does add some body and sweetness that makes the beer more interesting and complexed rather than drinking something that's burnt and acrid. I also find british crystal and roasted malts are alot more pronounced than the US ones, and some amounts of cara-aroma does wonders...

No reservations, really. I use tons of caramel/crystal malts in lots of Big Brown Beers, my favorite catch-all kinda brew. I realize Guinness isn't the most historically-accurate paradigm for stout, and it's not nearly as complex as other classic examples of style, but I must confess I'm still influenced by its one-dimensional roastiness. My palate keeps improving, but I can't stop liking Guinness. Also, since so many people know this exact beer, I use it as a starting point with questions like this one, that's all. Some would say I'm perpetuating the problem.

[Underground Joe]

You've got me thinking about adding some crystal now ....

[masterosouffle]

Are you planning on all grain? If not I hear Ditch has a stout recipe...

It didn't appeal to me back when I was making kits and it's not really a recipe as such is it. Isn't it just making a Cooper's stout kit with DME, which is pretty standard, and then bulking it out with a cup of sugar? Kind of like me adding an Oxo cube to a pot noodle and calling it Underground Joe's noodles.

Sorry Joe, hadn't ever actually seen the recipe, the way everyone bangs on about it I thought it was something special! Haha never mind. You never know, Underground Joe's noodles could make you famous! Well on here anyway. (Not that you'd deserve it!)

[DaveyT]

I'm enjoying the Hop Back Entire Stout I brewed using the recipe from Hop and Grain. I ought to provide a link but I'm crap and things like that.
It's bascially pale malt with about 6% each crystal malt, chocolate malt and raost barley. It's great.

David

[Underground Joe]

I'm enjoying the Hop Back Entire Stout I brewed using the recipe from Hop and Grain. I ought to provide a link but I'm crap and things like that.
It's bascially pale malt with about 6% each crystal malt, chocolate malt and raost barley. It's great.

David

What hops did you use ?

[seymour]

You've got me thinking about adding some crystal now ....

If you like caramel/toffee notes in your stout, or want a more historically accurate recipe, you definitely should. Brewmaster's Choice.

Are you planning on all grain? If not I hear Ditch has a stout recipe...

It didn't appeal to me back when I was making kits and it's not really a recipe as such is it. Isn't it just making a Cooper's stout kit with DME, which is pretty standard, and then bulking it out with a cup of sugar? Kind of like me adding an Oxo cube to a pot noodle and calling it Underground Joe's noodles.

Sorry Joe, hadn't ever actually seen the recipe, the way everyone bangs on about it I thought it was something special! Haha never mind. You never know, Underground Joe's noodles could make you famous! Well on here anyway. (Not that you'd deserve it!)

Call it what you want, but that is another legitimate route to good stout. You're both right. Ditch Stout definitely IS something special, as it's a super-streamlined-sanitary method of making cheap, delicious stout which you can "get amongst" in only a few days. But it's more of a technique, or a philosophy for life, than a recipe per se. Ditch freely admits he doesn't know the grainbill and hop components of his Coopers kit, much less any statistical analysis of the recipe, and he doesn't care. It's not like he's selling it as something all new.

Besides, if your method of making Underground Joe's Noodles is this much transformatively better than the original package, feel free to start a thread!