Would love feedback as I’m planning a sweet stout, have a recipe fleshed out, but would like some input. I’m probably adding cold brewed coffee at kegging and some vanilla. Thinking of swapping the roasted barley for midnight wheat.
I use blackprinz instead of roast barley in sweet stout…
I would use light DME instead of dark and use the specialty grains to get your color and flavors
recipe looks good imho. i think people have very different taste perceptions on various roasted malts’ “bitterness” and “harshness” etc. i have more of an issue with stout use roasted malts that dont have enough assertiveness. so, up to you and your tastes re: roasted malt choices.
definitely, many dark extracts have stuff like munich, crystal added to the original grist in addition to colouring/roasted malts. it just complicates things in this case.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m going to nix the dark dme for base malt and sub in midnight wheat or black malt for the roasted barley. I do want it to be less assertively roasted to allow the coffee & sweetness to shine through. I’m also dropping the ibus down since I’m putting it on a yeast combo of Nottingham and us-05.
In my region one of my favorite beers is Gotta Get Up to Get Down by Wiseacre out of Memphis. It’s my inspiration here.
I use Black Prinz instead of roasted barley or black patent. My wife used to complain that my stouts tasted like a “wet ashtray”. The Black Prinz solved the problem.
+1 I agree and do the same thing in my stouts.
I always use Roasted Barley in my Stouts and have found that the “ashtray level” imparted by this grain is a function of the maltster and percentage of use. I’ve landed on 8% Roasted Barley and ≈ 3% of Carafa II. No ashtray, just a nice touch of roast, as a Stout should be. My opinion, of course.
+1. Midnight Wheat adds a nice touch as a substitute as well
Disclaimer: Any comment I add is simply the way I brew beer. I am not paid or sponsored by anyone. There are certainly other ways that can be equally effective which other brewers may contribute. This is what I’ve found that works for me using my equipment and processes so I offer this for your consideration. YMMV
When I add coffee to a beer, I do not make a pot of coffee and add it to the beer. I “dry bean” it with whole beans and taste it until I get the flavor I want (usually 3-4 days at room temp). You will get the coffee aroma and flavor but little or no caffeine in the beer. This works well for me and I have won several medals with my coffee porter, most recently a gold at a local competition a couple weeks ago with a score of 38. It would have scored higher but I mentioned that there was a touch of rye in the beer from chocolate rye. I got the slight pepper note from it when tasting it before bottling but the judges did not. One of the judges said that if I would not have mentioned the rye it would have scored in the 40’s.
I’d give the “dry bean” method a try.
I do both dry beaning and adding coffee at packaging