Working on making my first Stout recipe, kind of sticking to a dry Irish Stout guidline. How’s it look?
Marris Otter 73%
Roasted Barley 10%
Carapils 7%
Chocolate malt 5%
Flaked Barley 5%
Challenger 41 IBU’s @ 60 min
Wyeast 1084
Shooting for 1.050 SG
Both CaraPils and flaked barley? I assume you have them both for head retention and a creamy body and I think you can achieve that with just the flaked barley. I would drop the CaraPils and go 10% flaked barley and then the other 2% just more MO. Flaked barley is the way to go in a Dry Irish Stout. Other than that I think you have a very tasty recipe. Some might say that you have to much roasted malts at 15% closer to 10% being the norm, but I think you will be fine. If you are worried about astringent flavors from the roasted grains you can add them towards the end of your mash and you will still get their flavor and color. Overall looks like you have a good start.
The carpils is an odditiy but I don’t think it will hurt your recipe. Traditional Irish stout recipe is something like 70% Pale Ale malt, 20% Flaked barley and 10% roast barley @ around 1.045 SG. That is a good guideline to start with. For mine I prefer to sup in a little German dark Munich malt for the Pale Ale malt and hot around 1.050.
It sounds like a good recipe. Agree that carapils could be replaced with more flaked barley but wouldn’t sweat it. Personal preference is to go lighter on the roast barley and add a small amount of black patent. I would like it as is I think too.
I use the 70/20/10 and bump up the OG for Irish to around 1.050, too. But I need to try some Munich in mine sometime. I love Munich in other stouts.
Best Dark Munich is the key for me!
Foreign Extra stout is my fav. IDK what you like, but that is my idea of a dry stout. BYO has the clone with pale 2 (I would sub for M.O. for sure) Flaked Barley and Roasted Barley
Which says to brew up a pale base and a stout, mash/boil/ferm separate then blend at bottle/keg. Which I have never done… I am not sure why I would, but I am still learning.
This is what I sat in on a learning-brew a while back with a friend a year ago.
Eff 61% OG 1.067 FG 1.018 IBU 39.6 ABV 6.5%
19.0L Batch AG 1.3:1 QT:LBS
Mash pH 5.3
71.6% M.O
17.9% Flaked Barley
5.21% Chocolate - UK 425L
5.21% Roasted Barley - American 300L
Challenger 1.25oz 60min
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale
His brief Notes on it was:
Finished a little dry, maybe underpitched?, but not dry enough. Bitterness and roasted character is balanced, chocolate is a nuanced, and fermentation temp @66F
Thanks for the help everybody, I will be brewing this tomorrow.
But I do have another question. When I went to the homebrew store they didn’t have 1084 and suggested using 1098 instead. Do you think that is a good sub for this style?
It’ll work fine. It’s pretty clean @ 62-63F but has fruity British esters fermented warmer.
A couple other random thoughts:
If you can get UK Roasted Barley, it’s a lot darker (Munton’s is ~500l while Breiss is at 300l) and has a nice flavor.
I would agree about 10% Flaked Barley & 10% Roasted doing the trick and move the Carapil/Chocolate as base (or boost up the FB if going for the Guinness 70/20/10 grist) but it will probably turn out solid as is. If your goal from the chocolate malt is chocolate flavor I’d consider debittered black malt (seems to do a better job of p roving smooth chocolaty flavor).
I found that mashing at like 5.4 or so without the dark grains, then adding them late in the mash provided the level of acidity in the final beer that really felt like Guinness (fairly low final pH of 3.85). From the 3 batches I just did back to back I didn’t see the whole ‘adding the roasted grains late provides a smoother flavor’ thing but it definitely impacts the pH. Going forward I like adding everything at the beginning and mashing high (5.5-5.6)