Scored a 31 at a recent competition here in texas. This is for Imperial Stout Style.
Judges wrote:
Intensity of flavors and lack of balance to style impacts the overall impression of the entry. Malty impression is dominated by intensity of coffee notes and bitterness that seems out of style. Recommend reviewing recipe to dial down coffee notes and additions that add noted bitterness to rebalance to style.
Another judge wrote:
needed more complexity in the malt presence. A bitter strong coffee flavor was dominant, overpowering the balancing sweetness that could have been contributed by the malts.
Recipe is:
Malts (32 lb 6.6 oz)
24 lb 8 oz (75.6%) — Maris Otter Pale Malt, Maris Otter — Grain — 2.8 °L
I’d say you first need to decide if you’re brewing for yourself or to win awards. Those may be two different targets.
If the awards are important, that’s cool. But it sounds like you really like this beer, so by shooting for a beer that nails the style requirements, you may end up with at beer you don’t enjoy as much.
For now, Let’s say it’s to win a medal. I know this beer is great and everyone loves it. Im looking for medal help. Just like you say, They are two different goals…
I winder about the complexity of the malt bill- 8 different malts? Do they all have their purpose? For example, I had always thought that Double Roasted was just Simpsons take on Special B, Special X, Special W.
Yes. As you can see, the judges came with comments, and another submittal before on the same recipe. They want complexity in he malt notes. Some of the malts like special x were not available at my LHBS. But i dont know what more i can do to create the toastiness they are looking for…also its baffling how much coffee aroma and tatse came from the chocolate malt. Only 1 lb in this giant grist. Im stumped.
I don’t see coffee in your recipe. How much did you use?
When I research recipes, I refer to several sources. You could find an award winning recipe and add coffee or you could find an award winning coffee stout and compare/contrast your effort. That could give you a start point.
The Briess website has datasheets for each (linked above), which give their evaluations of each malt.
A quick glance at some recipes on the AHA website shows that your percentage of super-dark grains isn’t horribly out of line. Perhaps replace the Blackprinz with chocolate malt (which Briess says has a slightly less prominent coffee flavor – assuming we can do a 1:1 comparison of the flavor sheets, of course!)?
I also second BrewBama’s suggestion to check out other award-winning recipes and see what they do!
My take away from the feedback is to dial up the crystal and dial down the roasted malts. They seem to be looking for sweet maltiness and possibly body to balance the roast flavors and bitterness. Note that malt complexity here doesn’t mean more types of malts but rather sweetness and body vs roast and bitterness. Personally, in addition to adjusting crystal vs dark roast I would simplify the grain bill. There are a few malts doing the same thing.
I agree with both Dwain and Pete. There are a number of really good Imperial Stout recipes online and you can check them and see what they do differently.
Personally, I do not use Special B in my Imperial Stout. You might want to try Briess Special Roast in place of it. I also use some dark Munich about 16% in my recipe as a portion of the base malt and substitute it place of some of the Maris Otter (I also use Maris Otter in my Stout). My chocolate malt is only about 2% of the grain bill. But it’s your beer and you should brew it to your taste.
Good luck!
Here’s BYOs Old Rasputin grain bill. Note that crystal malts make up around 10% of the bill and on yours they make up less than 5%. I think that really jives with the feedback you got on roast/bitter vs sweet maltiness balance. The overall bill is also a bit simpler.
15.5 lbs. (7 kg) Maris Otter pale ale malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) British light crystal malt (35 °L)
1 lb. (0.45 kg) crystal malt (120 °L)
0.5 lbs. (0.23 g) brown malt
0.5 lbs. (0.23 g) chocolate malt
0.25 lbs. (113 g) roasted barley
Unfortunately judges use terms like “malt complexity” without giving you any idea of what they mean. My read on your judges comments is that the dark malts are dominating in flavor. Sometimes its not complexity (whatever that means) but clarity of the flavors- each flavor note is there and not covered by the others through the drinking experience. For example, you could have the bitterness from the dark malt when the beer first hits your taste buds, but that gives way to a bready malt-forward flavor and then some lingering hop flavor after swallowing the beer.
I would look at the recipe in Brewing Classic Styles as a guide. Maybe even brew a batch as a comparison to get the ingredient understanding that Denny commented on. Every recipe I’ve tried has been very good- nearly every one of my own recipes started with one from that book.
I have to agree with Denny. I think you have too many different kinds of malts. I would ditch the Aromatic and Special B. Use just Chocolate and Roasted barley. Maybe just one type of Crystal malt and dial the hops down a bit which can enhance the bitterness with the roasted malts.
