Stouts

[Upnortbeer27]

Hey guys I was just wondering how hard it is to make a stout and what kind would be the best to start with? I love drinking pretty much every stout I have tried so far and would like to give making it a try.

[Matt12398]

Where do you live? Your tap water will make a big difference.

Graham Wheelers Brew Your Own British Real Ale has some good examples if I remember correctly.

[mabrungard]

Stouts are very versatile and easy to brew. As Matt mentions, the water will make a difference and could influence how you brew your stout. Most stouts benefit from using water that is somewhat alkaline. The exception is dry stout which is made with non-alkaline water and employs separate mashes for the pale grist and roast grist. The separate worts are combined after mashing. Using a program like Bru'n Water will help assess what sort of treatment you might consider for your stout brewing. Of course this requires you to know what your tap water is like.

Enjoy!

[oz11]

Are you brewing from kits, extract or all-grain? That's the first thing we need to find out.

[john_drummer]

I've had a few bottles of Saltaire Brewery Triple Chocoholic stout & I think it's fantastic. They give you the percentages of each grain on the back of the bottle, and a mention of the hops.

To that end, I came up with this AG recipe, which I do in the BIAB method:

23L batch, Colour 68.2 EBC, bitterness 31.6 IBU

3855g Pale Malt
568g Chocolate Malt
219g flaked (porridge) oats
219 Torrified Wheat
110g black roast barley
110g cocoa powder

mash 60 mins at 68deg
boil 90 mins

44g Fuggles @ 90 mins
11g Fuggles @ 10 mins
5g Irish moss @ 10 mins
11g Fuggles @ flameout

Ferment with Nottingham yeast

I made a batch for myself & shared a few bottles with the rest of the band without telling them what it was based on - could've been Youngs Double Chocolate Stout or Williams Bros March Of The Penguins - and our bass player correctly identified it blind... except he thought mine was smoother...

BTW I'm about a mile from Saltaire Brewery so there's a pretty good chance I'm using the exact same water... unless they get theirs from the river...

[Otters]

Hi, I recently brewed this stout; 'hop Back' Entire Stout and it tastes fantastic!

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=60224

Rgds

Otters

[DaveyT]

+1 Entire Stout.
I did an extract version and it's really straight forward and pretty much flawless. People who try it think I'm a genius!

[Hanglow]

I really like brewing the old type stouts with just pale, brown and black malts with ample hopping and ageing. Mainly because most modern stouts are unlike that and those that are are typical craft beers that are fairly spendy.

Brew what you want, if it's kits then look at ditches stout thread, I've done one of them and really liked it

[orlando]

I brewed this yesterday. If you want a particularly smooth stout then the parti gyle approach Martin mentions above is the way to go but if you like some of the bitter roastiness of some stouts then the usual single infusion is fine, particularly if you use some flaked barley which smooth things out nicely anyway. Hop aroma is not important in a stout so mine has a single addition of a high alpha hop at 60 minutes. I have hard water with high alkalinity so little water treatment was needed but I still targeted a slightly higher pH than usual. I only went for a 60/60 mash and boil but you might consider a 90/90 to get slightly better extraction and a little more caramelisation in the kettle.

4.200 kg Maris Otter (Crisp) (4.0 EBC) 80.8 %
0.500 kg Roasted Barley (1220.0 EBC) 9.6 %
0.200 kg Barley, Flaked (3.3 EBC) 3.8 %
20.00 g Admiral [16.56 %] - Boil 60.0 min 32.7 IBUs
0.50 tsp Protafloc (Boil 15.0 mins) F
1.0 pkg Whitbread Ale (Wyeast Labs #1099) [124.21 ml]
0.300 kg Brown Porter Malt (19c Hornbeam smoked)) (550.0 EBC) 5.8 %

This does contain a specialist malt (hornbeam smoked) but a brown malt or even some amber could be used or substituted with chocolate malt if you want to go that route. It is quite a forgiving style.

[barneey]

I would brew a Ditch stout first, see how you get on with that, then either tweak that or do the AG thing.

BTW I wouldnt mess around too much with water profiles when doing a kit.

[Barley Water]

Last year I tried to make a dry stout using the typical recipe, roast barley (about a pound), flaked barley (about a pound) and the rest Maris Otter to yield 5 gallons of about 1.042 O.G. beer. Long story short, it sucked which rather pissed me off because it really should not be that hard. I mashed the whole thing together and I have moderately hard water which of course is a bit alkaline, so I buffer it. Anyway, can somebody explain how you do two mashes as discussed by a previous poster and given that, what is the objective (inquiring minds just have to know)? Thanks in advance for the education.

[orlando]

The two mash thing is pretty simple really. You separate the dark grains from the diastatic ones as they are only for colour & flavour adding no sugar. You then mash the diastatic grains as usual but the dark grains you steep in either hot water or cold, if the latter it is best to give yourself 48 hours to get a better extraction of colour and flavour, I use a big hop bag to contain the grains and don't squeeze just let it drip till it's dry. Cold step is considered to give a slightly smoother extract as heat can extract a little more astringency & roast. When it comes to the boil I then heat this extract up on the stove to near boiling and add to the boil with about 10 mins to go. The idea is that again you don't want to boil the extract for long to avoid astringency but long enough to sterilise.