Creating Imperial Stout - What do you think?

[BarryNL]

I'm thinking of creating a Russian Imperial Stout using PieOPah's famous stout recipe (which I'm currently drinking a 7 month old bottle of ) as a starting point. What do you guys think of this as a recipe (for 19 litres)?

Pale-Malt: 2.00 kg
Munich-Malt: 1.00 kg
Crystal: 0.50 kg
Special-B: 0.50 kg
Roast Barley: 0.41 kg
Cara-Pils: 0.30 kg
Flaked Barley: 0.30 kg
Chocolate: 0.25 kg
Black: 0.15 kg

Light DME: 2.20 kg

Magnum 14% 46 g - 75 mins
EK Goldings: 50 g - 15 mins

Wyeast #1084 (Cake)

Est. OG: 1.106
Est. IBU: 90

Grain bill is similar to PoP's - slightly less crystal and black - but an addition of Special-B and some Munich malt, plus bigging up the OG with some extract. Also, there is a big addition of flavour hops and a slightly higher IBU to malt ratio to fit the Imperial Stout profile.

So, would you make this, or change it somehow?

[Aleman]

A Little complex to my taste. You won't get any flavour contribution form the Carapils so I would drop that. Especially when you consider that the flaked Barley will more than compensate, and you can always up that to compensate anyway . Will you notice the Raisny notes from the Special B? unlikely in such a big beer, so again another one to leave out, possibly replacing it with some more Crystal. I might also increase the Chocolate malt as I find it comes through wonderfully in this style.

Magnums a good clean bittering hop, so shouldn't mask the flavour contribution of the golding. You might want to consider 1/10oz Golding to dry hop with, before bottling, although it could be considered out of place in a stout.

Nice yeast choice, I hope its from a lower gravity brew that your current big brew, as it is not considered wise to repitch a yeast cake from a beer of more than 1.060

[BarryNL]

A Little complex to my taste. You won't get any flavour contribution form the Carapils so I would drop that. Especially when you consider that the flaked Barley will more than compensate, and you can always up that to compensate anyway . Will you notice the Raisny notes from the Special B? unlikely in such a big beer, so again another one to leave out, possibly replacing it with some more Crystal. I might also increase the Chocolate malt as I find it comes through wonderfully in this style.

I hadn't really thought of Special-B until I heard Jamil Zainasheff's show on Russian Imperial Stout where he suggested it - it would be nice to get a raisin flavour in there but I don't know how much Special-B would do that, if at all. I do find PoP's stout recipe slightly dominated by the crystal, which is why I've reduced its contribution here a bit - maybe some Cara-Munich instead?

Magnums a good clean bittering hop, so shouldn't mask the flavour contribution of the golding. You might want to consider 1/10oz Golding to dry hop with, before bottling, although it could be considered out of place in a stout.

Probably not out of place in a Russian Imperial Stout, but I find dry hops always tend to completely dominate the aroma, which is great in an American IPA but in a well aged Russian Imperial Stout I'd like the full complex malt and phenols to come through, though 0.1 oz would probably not dominate; would it even be detectable after 6 months aging?

Nice yeast choice, I hope its from a lower gravity brew that your current big brew, as it is not considered wise to repitch a yeast cake from a beer of more than 1.060

Yep - I'm planning maybe an Irish Red around 1.040 - 1.045 as the breeding ground for this one.

[onlooker]

I think dry hopping would be a waste, if you age your imperial properly the dry hop character will age out anyway.

I get raisny character in my imperial stout from mid and dark crystal.