RIS recipe critique please

[Deebee]

Hi all.

i have decided i am going to brew a RIS in not too long so have adapted a normal stout recipe i have.

i would therefore like some critique from those that have made more of these than I.

so here we go.

brewlength 16l

Fermentables.

6000g pale
940 g flaked barley
400g extra dark crystal
350 carapils
350 g amber malt
325 g carafa III
300g wheat
250 g roasted barley
100g chocolate malt
100g black patent

Hops

target 77 ibu @60 mins
Fuggles 8,5 ibu @ 15

am thinking nottingham yeast but have Safeale 04 as well.

This gives an OG og 10102 and FG of 1025 equalling around 10%%. I have based the recipe on an efficiency of only 60 % but may get more. I have some black sirup available on demand too if needed.
It also gives me 89.7 IBU

i am a little concerned that maybe the IBU should be higher.

based on the amount of special malt is 60% efficiency realistic? Would 1 or 2 packs of noty be adequate?

look forwards to hearing your thoughts

[Lugsy]

Recipe looks fine to me but I'm no expert - I've only brewed two and neither of those were a great success but I can tell you where I went wrong

My first one was a decent enough recipe but I oversparged it to get a good efficiency and spent hours boiling off the excess water to get to target gravity and volume - condensation streaming down the walls, towels on the window sills, you get the picture. I finally pitched it onto the yeast cake (S04, I think) from an earlier brew and the fermentation went mental, the temperature shot up to the low 30's and ruined the whole thing!

My second one I went over the top with the dark grains, I used about a kilo of roasted malts and a jar of blackstrap molasses giving me 500+ EBC. I set the OG too high (1.112) and although the yeast (2 packs of US05) seemed to ferment it out to the predicted FG it died in its own excrement and the beer failed to carbonate. At all. It's like drinking sweetened sump oil. Oh, and don't even think that 500g of peat smoked malt is ever a good idea in anything. It isn't. That beer is nearly 2 years old now and I'm still waiting for the peaty taste to die down!

So, your recipe looks good, 60% is probably a good estimate for efficiency, your IBUs are fine, use two packs of yeast (I'd probably go with Nottingham but I'm not sure how alcohol tolerant it is), keep your eye on the fermentation temperature and when you bottle it add some fresh yeast to give it a fighting chance. I would definitely recommend adding some sugars to the boil to thin down the beer, black syrup would be fine or just some brown sugar.

Have fun with it and let us know how it turns out

[Rookie]

My RIS comes out great with S-04.

[Underground Joe]

I'd the up IBUs on that a bit. Remember calculated IBUs can differ hugely from actual IBUs, particularly in high gravity high IBU beers. It might be worth putting in a sugar addition to add a bit of dryness which will help with bitterness and also make the beer less 'chewy'.

[Deebee]

Thanks guys.
If i am adding sugar i should likely drop som of the malt then else the abv will be really high right?
Another question is this.
After i ave sparged the grain there will be loads of goodies left. I can make a smaller beer by sparging say 15-20 litres out of tis.

How can i calculate and approx og for this soni can work out how much hop to use in the small beer?

[Underground Joe]

Thanks guys.
If i am adding sugar i should likely drop som of the malt then else the abv will be really high right?

Yes that's right and if you do decide on a sugar addition you should put it in near the end of the boil too prevent too much caramelization.

Alternatively you can add a sugar solution to the fermenter to 'feed' the yeast as it is starting to slow down. It's a technique I heard about on The Brewing Network and one that I'm definitely going to look into further next time I brew a really strong beer.

[Deebee]

I tend to do that with belgians, just to stop the yeast getting lazy:)

in regard to the other point though.

how do i go about working out how much water to sparge for the small beer and how do i work out the hops?

thanks

[richc]

When I've done RIS style beers I tend to make something smaller first as a giant starter then pitch all the yeast into the RIS.

[Deebee]

: Yeah, so would i. But in this case i have nearly 9 kilos ogf grain.

Based on a pre boil of around 22-23 l i am going to have a lot of goodies left in the grain, so thought about sparging out the rest and making a smaller beer.

I don't know however how to work out the amount to sparge og hops... think i will open a new thread in another section:)