Grain bill for stout.

[Midlife]

Hello... I've not brewed an all grain stout yet and was looking for some ideas on this grain bill I saw for a stout and what % ratios you would use?

Pale Malt
Double Roasted Crystal (need an alternative?)
Chocolate Malt
Brown Malt
Oats

I can't seem to find the Double Roasted Crystal? which I am assuming may not be for the home brewer. What would be a good substitute for this?

Cheers.

Doug

[Hanglow]

It looks like Special B would be the closest, failing that a dark british crystal

[Kyle_T]

Hello Doug,

Given the chance I shall be going for this:

80% Maris Otter
8% Roasted Barley
8% Crystal
4% Chocolate

Challenger and Fuggles for hopping.

[Matt12398]

I'd expect something more porteresque if using chocolate and brown malt.

[super_simian]

Stout or porter, tomayto tomahto. All in the perspective, but either almost definitely need a roast grain. Black malt, patent, roast barley, even roast wheat. Choc pretty much won't cut it. Then again, there are no absolutes in recipe formulation.

Well, needs OG and yeast. And I usually add flaked or torrified barley or wheat, or malted wheat; just to ensure that dense, rich head. I'm drinking one now that was 80/10/4/3/3 of Pale/RB/Dark xtal/wheat malt/roast wheat. Cluster for bitterness only, 1.046OG, 38IBU, S04. Tastes wicked 6 weeks later. Used roast wheat as my bag of RB was light.

[BigMouth]

Hi Midlife,
Kyle is right. For a stout you need roasted barley. Chocolate or black go towards Porter.
I did a lovely stout a Christmas past with 3.2kg mo, 0.4kg flaked barley, 0.3 roast barley. I did slap in 0.15kg crystal (only light, 50l) , handful of black balanced with chocolate and hopped with target to bitter and Golding at 30 and 20 minutes.
It was well received that festive time but it may have been over complicated. Friends say maris otter, roast barley and Golding gives good stout.

[jaroporter]

For a stout you need roasted barley. Chocolate or black go towards Porter.

sorry, but i gotta say i think this is misleading advice. stout is just a stronger version of porter, the ingredients are largely irrelevant. i'll concede that if this can be in both flavour aspects as well as gravity, you might come to the suggestion that a stout "needs" roasted barley, but to divide them by means of ingredients is wildly inaccurate. some of the classic stouts were/are made with black malt and not roasted barley. and nowadays the distinction seems to be completely arbitrary anyways.

as for the original recipe, with those ingredients i'd probably suggest graham wheeler's london porter recipe as the best place to start. reopen that can of worms, ey? can always up the chocolate % if needed.

[Midlife]

The grain bill was from a list that adnams are using in their Blackshore Stout, if Its correct that is. I suspect there are other ingredients as well. Probably should have stated that at the start of the thread!! Apologies for that....

The beer tasted really smooth and was quite lite for a stout, very nice! The hops are Phoenix and Golding. The double roasted crystal intrigued me though because you can't find much about it. I would agree that the special B looks the closest.

[jaroporter]

sounds delicious, top brewery. the crystal interested me so i looked on their page, but there's no mention of it. the only malts they say they use are pale malt, brown malt and roasted barley haha
presume it's a nitro keg beer from the brewers description? that would explain a lot of the smoothness and lightness

[Jocky]

What's in a name? I think it's worth thinking first of all what you want from your beer - have you any commercial examples to compare to.

For me a porter leans a bit more towards sweeter, maltier biscuit and bread crust kind of flavours. Plenty of brown malt essential, some crystal, be restrained on chocolate malt, but black/roast barley has no place here. That takes you in the direction of Fullers London Porter. Baltic porter is an entirely different beast, so ignore grain bills for that.

Stout is roaster, perhaps more towards burnt toffee, like the sweet burnt taste you get from the burnt bits in the bottom of your roasting pan. Roast barley is an essential for me, along with other roast malts - dark crystal too for deeper flavoured and sweetness.

[Clibit]

I would imagine double roasted crystal to be dark crystal, as in double the colour. 120L / 240 EBC ish.

[super_simian]

Hi Midlife,
Kyle is right. For a stout you need roasted barley. Chocolate or black go towards Porter.

You could say this. But you'd be wrong.

Not to pick on you specifically Bigmouth; but what falls into stout or porter territory is totally up to the brewery putting the label on the bottle (or pumpclip, or can, etc.) Hence my tomayto tomahto comment above. It's a bunch of BJCP nonsense to try to divide them. Just decide what attributes matter to you in your black beer and build your recipe from there.

[Clibit]

There are stouts that use black malt rather than roast barley. Sierra Nevada stout is one.

[Kyle_T]

I have seen stout recipes use just pale malt and black malt with brewers caramel for the colour, maybe not the best tasting stout but it can be done.

[Midlife]

Hello, thought I would report back on this. Im now drinking this at 12wks... its ace!

I used the GW recipe for London Porter (yes I know its a stout post! ) with some mods, mainly using Special B in place of the crystal.

20L brew Grain bill was;

3.5kg Pale Malt
500g Special B
500g Brown malt
100g Chocolate Malt
100g Oats

Hops were EKG 50/10g
Yeast was WL005 British Ale - using a 1L starter.
Water treatment for Porter
Efficiency was slightly higher target was 1051 and ended 1054, I was batch sparging.
Only finings used in the copper (protofloc)
FV was in the brew fridge at 21C for 2 weeks.
Secondary is a corny.

This is my 13th AG (lucky for me!) and certainly my best so far, I had this brew after a well known bottled Porter and it was way better. For me its really made me appreciate Home Hrewing and the quality you can get to, I've had some ups and downs through my 13 but it gets better all the time which was the advice I got right from the start!

I will be doing this again with a Pheonix UK hop and maybe a different yeast.

Cheers

Doug