Coffee Oatmeal Brown

Beer Recipes
1

I have been looking for an imperial brown ale recipe and this month’s issue of Brew Your Own has a recipe for a coffee oatmeal brown with coconut and chocolate. The recipe for 5 gallons they give is:
13 lbs Maris Otter
1.5 lbs carabrown
1.5 lbs flaked oats
0.5 lbs brown malt
0.25 lbs crystal 45L
0.25 lbs pale chocolate malt
6.5 AAU Pilgram hops 90 minutes
2.75 AAU Pilgram 5 minutes
2 lbs shaved coconut in secondary
1 lb cacao nibs in secondary

The OG is listed as 1.082 (with 65% efficiency) and a FG of 1.020 for an ABV of 8.6.  (My calculation is 8.1% ABV.) The IBUs are listed as 26. When I plug the hops and malt into BeerSmith and Brewer’s Friend, the numbers appear right. I was thinking about brewing this without the coconut and cacao nibs.

My question is about the hops. The BU:GU ratio is something like 0.3. A 26 IBU and a ratio of 0.3 seems low in a beer with 8.6% (or 8.1%) ABV. I’m thinking that something more like 35 IBU and a ratio of 0.4 would be more suited to this beer.

Is 26 IBU too low? Would anyone advise increasing the hops? Does the coconut and/or cacao nibs add bitterness or the perception of bitterness?

Any thoughts?

2

Personally, a beer that big would tend to the sweet without some balance. I’d bump up near 35 IBU, too.

3

Thanks Jon. Appreciate you opinion.

4

+1

5

Where is the coffee coming from? That would bring some bitterness too.  If you were going cold brew

6

There was no coffee listed in the recipe. Maybe its from the flavor of the chocolate malt or brown malt? With the quarter pound of chocolate malt and half pound of brown, I don’t think that would be enough to give a coffee flavor in a grain bill of 17 pounds.

Then again, as my wife reminds me, I could be wrong about a lot of things.

7

I don’t know if you would get coffee from that little amount of pale chocolate which is what maybe 200ish SRM.  A regular chocolate malt you might get coffee, but a pale chocolate would be pretty mild in flavor.  I would toss a touch of dark roasted malt or swap the pale for regular UK chocolate, but that is just me.