Guiness anyone?

[crookedeyeboy]

[simple one]

Guiness bland? - yes.... because they feck about with it to make it a friday saturday night drink.
Guiness clone bland? - no.... because you don't filter, pasturise and transport the kegs around the world in god knows what condition to be served by someone who has no clue.

There are better recipes and stouts out there. And I prefer the look (EDIT- and taste) of no nitrogen personally.

Spleen vented... good luck!

[floydmeddler]

I've doen a few of these with 90 minute mash and 90 minute boil. I've used S04 and WLP004(?) Irish Ale yeast....and there wasn't much difference, so you might as well go with the dried and save a fiver.

Yup, S04 has always done me proud when making stout.

[MightyMouth]

Guiness bland? - yes.... because they feck about with it to make it a friday saturday night drink.
Guiness clone bland? - no.... because you don't filter, pasturise and transport the kegs around the world in god knows what condition to be served by someone who has no clue.

There are better recipes and stouts out there. And I prefer the look (EDIT- and taste) of no nitrogen personally.

Spleen vented... good luck!

I would love to taste a Guinness clone if they are better. I don't mind a bottle of Guinness Original occasionally but Guinness draft is definitely bland to my tastes no matter where you have it.

[data790|]

The only stout I have ever made - and it went OK despite teaching myself how to all-grain brew without really knowing how to mash ha-ha oh it was a mess - was from a recipe I found off the net.

* 10.75 lb Pale Malt (2-row)
* 1 lb Crystal 40L
* 1 lb Black Barley Malt
* 3/4 lb Munich Malt
* 1oz Cascade Hops (pellets)
* 1 tsp Irish Moss (15 min before end of boil)
* Liquid Wyeast #1056

However, I substitued the Wyeast for some normal SO4 strain, cascade hope for goldings and munich for melonoidin or however you spell it. Turned out very nice despite mashing wrong so had to use all 1 kg of each specialty malt. Oh how we learn from mistakes. But this turned out just nice.

Question. I have ordered some flaked malt in the hope of head retention, how much is normally used in stout?

I'll be starting this stout next weekend along with a Belgian recipe I found from the same website.

[floydmeddler]

I use 1kg of flaked barley in my stouts. Fantastic head.

[Philipek]

Irish man speaking here and I'll say Guinness is bland and watery! I usually go for something like this for 25L:

Ingredients:
3.5 kg English 2-row Pale
1.0 kg Barley Flaked
500.0 g Roasted Barley

The 1kg of flaked barley will give you a superb creamy head.

I also collect 1L in a sanitised pan before adding the yeast. I then sit this on top of my kitchen unit to 'stale' and go 'off' for around 5 days. At times, it starts spontaneously fermenting by itself which is always interesting! Anyway, after five days I skim the top to get rid of anything unwanted then boil it for around 5 mins to kill bacteria. I crash cool and add to the fermenter for the remaining 2-3 days.

Not for everyone, but it does give that sour / stale taste that Guinness has!

I knew I should have gone through the search function here before going anywhere else. I found a Guinness recipe on an American site, and just converted all the crazy measures, only to find all that hard work done here. In nice round numbers, too.

One interesting thing the US site mentioned was to take 700 mls of Guinness and leave it out for four days. Are you suggesting doing the same but with wort? What is the purpose of this? If one does it with beer, presumably it would get hit by acetobacter. If one does it with wort, it would get hit by Kloekera (whatever it's called) and wild yeasts. I would imagine that the taste would be different.

What hops do you use? I was going to go for 83g 4% fuggles. And what OG are you aiming for? Finally, at what temperature do you mash? The US site suggested 69 degrees (if I converted the Fahrenheit correctly) I would imagine this to be too high for dry stout.

[WishboneBrewery]

http://www.hopandgrain.com/stout.aspx says...
Guinness

OG: 1039
ABV: 4.1%

70% pale malt
20% flaked barley
10% roasted barley

45IBUs Bullion - 60min

I think Target hops would be fine, though they are just for bittering so I'd think Fuggles would be fine.

[floydmeddler]

Hi,

This is my 25L stout recipe:

OG: 1048
Bitterness 45
Colour 32

Ingredients:
3.5 kg English 2-row Pale
1.0 kg Barley Flaked
500.0 g Roasted Barley
200.0 g Chocolate Malt
50.0 g Target (9.0%) - added during boil, boiled 90 min

There's a chance that Fuggles will add a floral hop flavour to the stout which you don't want. I use Target and only get hop bitterness. If you want it in the Irish dry category, shoot for around a 90 min mash at 62c.

The staling process does what it says on the tin really. It gives it that stale Guinness taste which I love. Next time I will stale 2L of the wort as I want more of it! Just ensure that you boil it up then cool it quickly before adding to the rest of the batch.

You can add around 25g ground espresso beans in there too for a superb twist. I use Santaos and Java strong and dark Brazilian and Indonesian. Wouldn't be Guinness then though!

Hope this helps.

[crookedeyeboy]

Thats a great looking recipe, thanks. Will try it sometime.

[PureGuiness]

One of the problems with Guinness served in pubs is that its served far too cold which saps any flavour that may have been retained away from the taste buds.

I've done the Guinness Extra Stout recipe from the GW book and it tastes like a flavoursome Guinness. Packed with flavour but still a worthy clone of Guinness. I'd definately do it again.

It's not actually that far away from the Dave Lines recipe either.

[Philipek]

Hi,

This is my 25L stout recipe:

OG: 1048
Bitterness 45
Colour 32

Ingredients:
3.5 kg English 2-row Pale
1.0 kg Barley Flaked
500.0 g Roasted Barley
200.0 g Chocolate Malt
50.0 g Target (9.0%) - added during boil, boiled 90 min

There's a chance that Fuggles will add a floral hop flavour to the stout which you don't want. I use Target and only get hop bitterness. If you want it in the Irish dry category, shoot for around a 90 min mash at 62c.

The staling process does what it says on the tin really. It gives it that stale Guinness taste which I love. Next time I will stale 2L of the wort as I want more of it! Just ensure that you boil it up then cool it quickly before adding to the rest of the batch.

Hope this helps.

Oh absolutely it does. The US recipe I was looking at was intended to make a Guinness of around 5.3% which is a bit high for me. Thanks a lot Floyd.

To tell you the truth, I don't really know what the stale Guinness taste is. Guinness was one of the drinks that got me into beer in the first place. After drinking Heineken and Carlsburg, Guinness is an amazing explosion of taste. It's been pointed out that Guinness is a very bland beer. I've only ever drunk the draught and I would have to agree, now, after many years beer experience, that it is fairly bland, which is possibly why I'm not picking up that taste.

I kind of guessed that it was the cold and the nitrogen that robbed Guinness of much of its taste because in my experience cask ale packs more flavour than it's kegged counterpart. I didn't think that it was deliberately made bland, though that make sense. Make it bland, make it a brand, and people drink it to to express themselves rather than because of the taste.

Also, I was going to use Fuggles because someone gave me a kilo of the stuff. Doesn't the 90 boil destroy almost all the flavour of hops? I do have some target, though, and a bit of pilgrim. So I'll use them and instead burn through the fuggles in an English style IPA where the flavour would be appreciated.

I'd already bought two cans of guinness, which has been souring for a couple of days, so I'll use that rather than the wort, not wanting to waste good sour guinness. If I'd read this earlier, I could have saved myself the cash. Next time, I'll try the wort staling and compare. I'm guessing that the whole stale taste came from the history of stout porter and the beer mixing practices of an earlier age.

[floydmeddler]

Glad this has been of use to you. It is by no means a Guinness clone though, it's just a stout the way I like it. There is chocolate malt in there which isn't part of the Guinness flavour. Add if you like; I recommend that you do as it's lovely.

As for the 90 mins boil zapping flavour out of the hops: It's b*llsh*t in my humble experience. I used to believe this too until I bunged First Gold hops into my latest stout instead of Target. I've got a slightly grapefruity stout as a result. Still very nice, but definitely not its usual self.

I swear that dry hopping in secondary adds flavour too as well as aroma. Have conducted a little experiment to test this and will post the results.

As for adding the cans of Guinness, I wouldn't. I'd rather cut my losses. I dislike the idea of adding store bought beer to my beer! You're robbing it of its own purities man! Trust me, STALE THE WORT!

Mmmmm stout...

[mysterio]

I like Guinness personally.. something very drinkable about it. I learned to love it because it's always the last refuge if theres nothing else decent in the pub. Give me a pint of Guinness over a pint of Carlsberg any day. And don't give me any of that 'extra cold' crap. Even out of the ordinary tap it's too cold! Theres bound to be some snobbishness on here because SHOCK it comes out of a keg. Newsflash, most of us here are serving pretty decent beers out of a keg.

I've made a couple of clones with the standard recipes, one thing I've tried which I didn't like much was using US-05. It's just boring. Use the Irish yeast or an English yeast and you have a great session beer.

[gratefuldave54]

Does anyone have a good extract recipe for stout ?' All of the ones in GW's book are all grain.