Really good Stout Recipe

[Battleaxe]

This weekend I intend to do a Centennial SmaSh and I was hoping to do another brew on the Monday as its a bank holiday!

I feel like brewing a stout I've never got round to it and I've got most of the bits (I hope) to do one,

So if possible could someone point me in the direction of an Epic stout recipe? Possibly with American hops I have centennial and Amarillo at the moment.

Cheers

[daf]

Stout is a lightly hopped beer...mainly bittering to complement the rich roasted malt, so huge amounts of the hops above would make it something else.....an "American Black Ale"?

[Battleaxe]

Yeah I'd say so.

let's not get traditional I'm basically after a Tried and tested stout recipe with room for manipulation.

[daf]

Greg Hughes -Irish Dry Stout - and you can add prawns or cabbage to it if you want too.

[Battleaxe]

Greg Hughes -Irish Dry Stout - and you can add prawns or cabbage to it if you want too.

No need for that. I haven't asked you to drink it for me.

No one is making you respond try being constructive next time. That's if you have the ability to try something new...

[MTW]

Some stouts, such as Foreign extras and Americans, are hopped up.

I've had success with equal quantities of Choc, Roasted Barley and Special B (roughly 4% each), 5 or 6% wheat malt, and the rest Pale, aiming for 7-8% ABV. Depending on the exact roast from the maltster, with a high mash that makes a pretty full-on roasty stout that can take a high rate of hopping and IBUs. You could sub the Special B for some dark crystal if needed. If you really want the hops to come through, it will need plenty over that base though.

[Clibit]

I find Centennial works really well in a stout. Stick to a simple dry stout recipe, use Centennial in place of the recipe hops, and put some in late in the boil. Use a clean yeast, US05 works well, or WLP004, I'm not a fan of estery yeasts with highly roasted malts myself.

[SMASH3R]

I fancy a crack at the dry Irish stout mentioned in this post a few days ago in the recipe section; supposed to be a bit like Murphy's, although I'm sure if home brewed, it would be much better.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=75649

Click the link in the 1st post, and look for the Cure from Cork recipe!

[Barley Water]

I just did a dry stout which came out pretty well. I made a 1.042 O.G. beer with a couple of pounds of flaked barley (for mouthfeel) and about a pound of roast barley which I ran through a blender so it had the consistency of powder. I mashed everything else at about 150F then dropped the now powdered roast barley on top of the rest of the grist then sparged as normal (and I batch sparge by the way). I want to say the brew had about 40 IBU (calculated) with only 1 hop addition at 60 minutes (I always do 90 minute boils).

You can play all kinds of nifty games with the formulation depending on your preferences (swap some chocolate malt for some of the roast barley or maybe some Carafa debittered if you want to dumb down the atringency a little). If you want more astringency try some Black Patent malt. You could also sweeten it up by adding a little crystal (not my preference but what the hell do I know) or add some simple sugar to dry it out even more. I guess you could also cold steep the roasted grains to smooth it out if you wanted. Finally if you have the stones for it you could sour a little of the wort then add it back before packaging like the lads at St. James Gate do.

What you ultimately decide on depends in part on how you intend to serve it. If I had either a stout tap with nitrogen or a beer engine I would probably be less interested in boosting the body but I just have CO2 and I didn't want the beer to seem thin so I really pushed the flaked barley. Since most of us Yanks push our beer with CO2 the low gravity stuff tends to come off as thin unless you formulate to avoid that problem. You could also let the O.G. drift up a little but I was looking for a quaffer so I wanted to keep it lower. As with most styles, there are a lot of variations you can try to make the product your own; I would encourage you to experiment a bit and as always, have fun.

[Battleaxe]

So this is what I've come up with, it comprises parts of a dry and an American Stout and I've rounded up also trying to use equal amounts which generally matches what the recipes are reccomending ish...

5lt batch

ABV 6.67%
OG 1.071
FG 1.020
IBU 40
EBC 79

Grain Bill:

Pale Malt - 1100g
Roasted Barley - 100g
Chocolate - 100g
Crystal - 100g
Carapils - 150g

Hopping:

Centennial 9.0% - 6g @ 60mins
Centennial 9.0% - 5g @ 15mins
Centennial 9.0% - 18g @ Flameout when cooled <80c

Yeast S-05

The Carapils is in there instead of Flaked barley is it ok or am I better off without?.

[Clibit]

I think the Carapils is OK, but I would reduce the chocolate or remove it myself, and rely on roast barley, increase the RB a bit. Heavy chocolate can be too much for me. Maybe use about 30g chocolate. I would reduce the crystal a bit too, and use a dark crystal. Or crystal rye or wheat.

Pale 1100
RB 120
Choc 30
Crystal dark/rye/wheat 75
Carapils 75

[Battleaxe]

It is dark crystal sorry Clibit I didn't notice I hadn't put an EBC it's 160 so it's quite dark.

And yeah I did wonder with the chocolate some recipes suggest a large amount and others keep it small...

I have a play and see what the numbers say.

Is there any benefit to adding Brown or table sugar?

[daf]

Apologies for being glib about your version of a stout, m8.

For what it's worth, I made the Greg Hughes Dry Stout recipe and for a starter in the type, I would recommend that. People I have given bottles to have raved about it. The oats give the mouthfeel you are after in a stout too.

I won't stray far from that recipe, except next time I am going to add some soured wort in there like Guinness do, as I like the tart edge to Guinness Original. (Can't stand the Draught though)

[Battleaxe]

Apologies for being glib about your version of a stout, m8.

For what it's worth, I made the Greg Hughes Dry Stout recipe and for a starter in the type, I would recommend that. People I have given bottles to have raved about it. The oats give the mouthfeel you are after in a stout too.

I won't stray far from that recipe, except next time I am going to add some soured wort in there like Guinness do, as I like the tart edge to Guinness Original. (Can't stand the Draught though)

It's fine buddy no worries.

I've done a few porters, Brown ales, Milds and a ruby or two. And my feelings on book recipes are mixed sometimes they are cracking and others I feel like I've wasted my efforts I'm not knocking the Greg Hughes recipe I've used several of his for inspiration and haven't had a bad batch yet.

I have a wierd thing that I won't brew something I could get from the pub... Also I like a challenge I knew doing a stout with American hops would be a bigger beer and the Grist would also be complicated luckily I have water you can drive nails in with so any adjustments will be minimal.

I should have said in my Origional post that I intended to Cut up the stout recipe box and write my own on the inside.

[orlando]

Stouts are one beer that taste for is so individual, I've tasted a lot of home brew stouts and the differences are wide as is there appreciation, what I like others don't and vice versa. Your adventure is just another example of how the "style" is being stretched, for my money the hopping is not what the beer is about as it distracts from the star, Malt. Can you imagine a really malty American Pale Ale with virtually no hop aroma, see what I mean? Nevertheless you don't know unless you experiment and isn't that what makes this hobby so good, as you point out you're not asking anyone else to drink it. You hint at water treatment in your last post, suggesting hard water, that works in your favour but alkalinity over 150 starts to produce problems and if your sparge water is also high then this is going to further interfere with pH and astringency is likely to rear its ugly head. Most of the HB stouts I taste suffer from this to my palate. If this is something you want to avoid and water treatment is not on the cards I would take the advice about using debittered roast barley (Carafa 3) or not mashing the dark grains but steeping them, preferably cold. The latter would require some water treatment however as the dark grains will help to acidify your mash water. Smoothing can be achieved by using oats or flaked barley so this is an option too. My tip would be to use a proportion of Brown malt, more associated with a Porter but the differences between Stout & porter is little more than strength and as you aren't concerned with the rule book might just be right up your alley.