I would like to brew Breakfast Stout next, but am having trouble finding direct info on the basics to include.
It should include: Oatmeal, coffee, maple syrup?, chocolate, etc, right?
I’ve seen the BYO Founder’s Breakfast Stout Recipe, has anyone had success with it?
I can do partial mash and I’d like to have it be similar to Founder’s if at all possible. I plan to condition this one as long as it needs to if it’s around 8 or 9% ABV. It seems there isn’t a “best” consensus on adding coffee, but I think I’ve decided to rack to a secondary on whole beans and see how that goes.
I really enjoy big roasty stouts like Ten Fidy and Old Rasputin so the more roast the better!
Ok…now I’m just rambling. Any help is much appreciated!
Wow 8 or 9 % doesn’t seem very breakfasty to me! As I understand it if using coffee it is best to make a strong coffee and add it to secondary rather than use whole or crushed beans. with long contact time comes some bitter flavours. but give it a try, cold extract coffee is supposed to be very smooth and low acid so it might work.
When using coffee, I dry bean the secondary with about 5 oz. coarsely cracked for 4-7 days. That adds mainly aroma. Then for flavor I add coffee to taste at packaging.
I’d give a pass on the maple syrup, it’s fairly subtle and if you’re adding coffee, oatmeal and chocolate there’s already a lot going on in your beer. If you want to use it, consider using it as all or part of your priming sugar. If you use it, be sure to use lower grade pure maple syrup. The lower grades have more maple character. Corn syrup flavored with maple just ends up tasting like corn syrup (i.e., cidery).
To get oatmeal into your beer, you might want to do a mini-mash using a pound or so of American pale malt and 3-4 oz. of unflavored instant oatmeal (the starches in it are more gelatinized than “old fashioned” flaked oats). When I mini-mashed, I found that a Crock Pot worked well, although you might need to fiddle with the temperature settings or take the lid off to get the temperature where you want. Alternately, you can just add flaked oats to the steeping grains, but that will pull off more unmodified starches and proteins, giving you a slightly “raw oats” character and possibly also haze problems.
For chocolate flavor, consider buying or making a chocolate liqueur and adding it in secondary. That way you can control the degree of chocolate character. Either that, or just use chocolate malt to get the character you’re after. Don’t boil cocoa powder! It will extract tannins.
For coffee flavor, it’s generally easier to make French press coffee and add that to secondary as well. Again, you have better flavor control. Also, leaving coffee beans/grounds in contact with the beer for long periods of time can extract tannins.
I believe this month’s BYO (Brew like a Viking) had a recipe of a Mikkeller beer geek breakfast clone. That’s one hell of a breakfast stout, if you don’t get the magazine DM theoman, he has my copy and as such inherits all copy/pasting duties