Mini mash stout recipe help

[sbond10]

So after wing discussed in kit brews I've decided to try my first mini mash complete mess of a beer
So ill lay the ingredients out first and then what I'm planning to do then you lot can poke holes and redirect me down the right path.

Wilkos velvet stout one can kit
1kg of dark DME
300g of brown raw cane sugar
200g cystral malt
100g of chocolate malt
30g of challenger hops

So ill start by warming 5 litres of water to 71 c then launch the malts in their hopefully dropping the temp to 66 c
Wrapping it up and mashing for 60 minutes
Then ill scoop the grain out and bring the water to the boil add 500g of DME to the mixture and start a 30 min boil at 5 mins in ill throw 15 g of the hops in and keep topping up thru the boil to keep it at 5 litres

So ill crash chill it in sink then ill open my stout kit to the Fv with the mash liquid and the remaining 500g of DME
Top up to 18 litres with Camden treated water throw the brown sugar in and yeast and ferment as normal


Right so your not going add this that and everything under the sink unless its a store cupboard ingredient these are the only brewing ingredients I have
100g of challenger hops
Little white sachet of Goldings hops
500g chocolate malt
500g of cystral malt
About 50g-100g of brewing sugar
And obvistly DME and the stout kit

So what am I after just a nice stout that's not too dry or bitter but added real freshness

[jimp2003]

One little pointer is that chocolate and crystal malts do not need to be mashed (the starches have already been converted to sugars for the most part) so all you need to do is steep them in the hot water. I would not bother for steep them for 60 mins, 30 should be enough.

[sbond10]

So 30 min steep does it need to held at between 65-70 degrees ?

[jimp2003]

When I have steeped grains for extract brews I put them in the water in a muslin bag when the water is cold and then raise the temp to about 72 degrees and leave them for max 30 mins but usually only 15 mins.

[sbond10]

Okies ill try that when do I start the 30 minute count down at the start when the waters cold or at 72 degrees

[jimp2003]

I would start the clock as soon as the grains go into the cold water. As I do 5 gallon batches it takes longer for the water to heat up but that won't be a problem if they are sat in hot water for the bulk of the 30mins if you are using a small amount of water. Just don't let the water get above say 76 degrees as it can start to extract harsh tannins....

[sbond10]

Okies not too much grains or hops either ?

[seymour]

I agree with everything jimp2003 has written. Go for it.

These partial-extract batches, or whatever you wanna call 'em, are tough to calculate out exactly, but it looks to me like your recipe will come out:

OG) 1.045
FG) 1.011
ABV) 4.4%
IBU) 30
COLOUR) 39°SRM/77°EBC

...which makes it a nice, true-to-style dry stout. Opaque black with tan head, some caramelly and chocolatey grain complexity, fruity esters, full-bodied, not too alcoholic, etc. You know me, I always recommend a little more malt (I prefer my stouts at least 5% ABV) and a handful or two of oats for improved appearance and mouthfeel, but that's purely a matter of taste. A piece of black-licorice hard-candy in the boil would be fun, too.

Cheers!

[sbond10]

Oats to me are store cupboard ingredients so can you explain ?
Also you may have noticed I said 15g at 5 minute in would it matter if I went the full 30 and is that long enough, also am I to keep topping it up with plain water to maintain 5 litres?
And the other 15g are to dry hopped when the head dies down

[seymour]

Oats to me are store cupboard ingredients so can you explain?

Oats in any format have a lot of natural protein and carbohydrate which we perceive just a bit differently than other cereal grains like barley, wheat, corn, rice, etc. Who cares how they're packaged, marketed, etc, right? "For brewers", "For breakfast", blah, blah, blah, we're talking about a form of grass which grows in the dirt and produces a pleasant, edible seed pod our ancestors selectively bred, gave various names, etc, so call it what you want but it's gonna yield certain predictable properties when soaked in warm water... And don't even get me started about yeast: it knows what to do with grain-starch-derived-sugars, it really doesn't care if it came from the silo or the store cupboard or the brewery shed...

Bring to mind the way your 100% oatmeal breakfast porridge tastes: creamy, sticky, filling, soft, chewy, well-rounded mouthfeel, etc. Oats lend the same thing to your beer, and is most noticeable in the form of thicker, long-lasting foam, stickier "Belgian lace" on the sides of the glass, creamier and more well-rounded mouthfeel, longer-lasting soft aftertaste, etc. Read some descriptions about oatmeal stout, differentiating it from regular dry or sweet stouts. That's what I'm talking about, and I honestly have no idea why oats have been eliminated from all other beer styles. It wasn't always this way historically, I assure you, even (especially?) in England. Have you ever looked at really, really old English ale recipes, I'm talking Medieval or Elizabethan times? Grainbills were 25-50% oats, or more. At those percentages you get extremely slow, sticky sparges, which is no good for a modern commercial brewery, but I usually recommend 4% or less and you won't notice much difference in mashing. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pwp/tofi/medieva ... h_ale.html It's a similar story in Nordic countries with rye, and Native Americans: corn. That's one consistent thing about us human beings: we loves us some fermented cereal grain spirits!

One of my biggest thrills in talking to homebrewers (as nerdy as this is, I know) is destroying this false dichotomy of brewing ingredients versus everything else bought at the produce store, farmer's markets, grown in your garden, etc. It's all the same thing, and the same impulses that drove you to brew at home ought to make you take a closer look at how you source your ingredients too. So many brewers will buy an expensive package of something called "Brewers Sugar" with full faith, despite knowing nothing of it's composition (beet? corn? complete chemical invention?), but would be horrified at the idea of using better, fresher, pure organic cane sugar from the store cabinet. Or go to great lengths and expense to import just the right kind of "Brewer's caramel" or "Belgian Candi Sugar" or whatever, forgetting the whole time they could boil-up their own with better, fresher ingredients with very little effort and far lower costs. Don't you think the farmhouse brewers we're trying to replicate simply used what was plentiful from their surroundings? Despite all the effects of industrial-revolution, we home-brewers still have most of those same surroundings, in a sense: cereal grains, fresh hops, local water, imported raw sugar, fresh fruit and herbs, yeast colonies blowing in the wind and stuck on fruit-skins, etc. I'm certain our great-great-great-grandbrewers would laugh at our fussiness. Sorry, I digress, but you asked...

Also you may have noticed I said 15g at 5 minute in would it matter if I went the full 30 and is that long enough, also am I to keep topping it up with plain water to maintain 5 litres? And the other 15g are to dry hopped when the head dies down

Yeah, I more-or-less took that into consideration. That's a hopped malt extract kit, so it's doing all the heavy-lifting bitterness-wise. 30 minutes with your own whole hops would add some bitterness and flavor, 15 minutes and dry-hops will add mostly aroma. Your bottom line: if you want it hoppier than an average stout, feel free to add more, but it looks true-to-style as is. Yours will already have more hops aroma, since most classic stouts don't use any late hops at all.

[sbond10]

So your rant about oats ( interesting read tho) I'm adding say 50 grams of oats to my grain bill and steeping together ?
These are the oats I regularly have
http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/sainsbur ... s_1kg.html

And yes I regularly stare at my cupboard and wonder what would happen if.... But the fact if it went belly up being a man I would refuse to admit I've made a mess of it in front of my wife and just drink it.

[seymour]

Good man. Yeah, those are perfect, just mash along with your other stuff. In a 5-6 gallon batch I usually use about 5 oz/142 g, but hell 50's a start. I'm just lookin' to make a repeat customer at this point

[sbond10]

Well I was considering going for that amount before I put 50 g so ill up it to a round 100g and give it a swirl. Soon be looking like a proper grain bill rather than a baby one. Just need to sort some voile out so I can go biab but this mini partial extract brew shall have to suffice my appetite for now.

[seymour]

Bump. I came across more oats-in-brewing historical evidence:

Quoted from Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by Richard W. Unger, p.160

TABLE 6. PROPORTIONS OF GRAINS FOR THE PRODUCTION OF BEER,
THIRTEENTH THROUGH SIXTEENTH CENTURY, IN PERCENTAGES

Town ......................Date.......Wheat.....Oats.......Barley
London.....................1286.......17..........66..........17
Nuremberg................1305.................................100
Ghent......................1300s......50.......................50
Lier (kuit).................1440.......43..........35..........22
Lier (hop)..................1440.......20..........60..........20
Brusselsn (wagebaard)...1447.......27..........46..........27
Hamburg...................1462......10........................90
Lille........................c.1500.....23..........45..........32
London.....................1502?......14..........14..........72*
Bavaria.....................1516................................100
Antwerp (kuit).............1518......73..........15..........12
Antwerp (klein)............1518......13..........47..........40
Lille.........................1546......12..........70..........18‡
Hannover...................1526......33.......................67†
Antwerp (kuit).............1536.......8...........49..........43
Antwerp (knol).............1536......18..........45...........37
Antwerp (half stuuyvers)..1536......18..........40..........42
Antwerp (cleyn bier).......1530s.....13.........47...........40
Antwerp (strong)...........1530s.....20.........40...........40
Lille..........................1546..................20...........80‡
Hamburg (Weissbier)......1500s.....10.......................90

Sources: Arnold, Chronicle (Customs of London), 247; Bing, Hamburgs Bierbrauerei, 254; Bracker, "Hopbier uit Hamburg," 29; Campbell et al., A Medieval Capital and Its Grain Supply, 205-6; DuPlessis, Lille and the Dutch Revolt, 124 n. 13; Lŏhdefink, Die Entwicklung der Brauergilde, 18; Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 440; Peeters, "Introduction," in combined facsimile edition of Lis and Buys; Soly, "De Brouwerijenonderneming van Gilbert van Schoonbeke," 340-44; Uytven, "Haarlemmer hop," 345.

*Called "malte" by Arnold and presumably barley malt
†Said to be in the Hamburg style.
‡Temporary restrictions to meet grain shortages.

[Matt12398]

Bring to mind the way your 100% oatmeal breakfast porridge tastes: creamy, sticky, filling, soft, chewy, well-rounded mouthfeel, etc. Oats lend the same thing to your beer, and is most noticeable in the form of thicker, long-lasting foam, stickier "Belgian lace" on the sides of the glass, creamier and more well-rounded mouthfeel, longer-lasting soft aftertaste, etc.

You could start up a premium rate phone line using language like that.