I recently set out to brew a pale stout with traditional stout ingredients. I failed a couple of times in accomplishing the “pale” portion of the stout but finally seem to have made progress using nitrogen infusion and iced gelatin filtration (sounds so nerdy).
I used JZ’s Dry Stout recipe from BCS but treated the black roasted barley in the following way (I brew 1 gallon BIAB):
Add 2 oz milled black roasted barley into ISI whip (whip cream machine) and fill with room temp water to .5 liter. Charge with one nitrogen canister and empty after 1 minute into Chemex coffee maker with paper coffee filter. Heat liquid in microwave until hot then mix into prepped gelatin (.5% by weight of liquid).
The results were very interesting and the resulting liquid could be described as: Dry astringency and roast both present. More chocolaty than astringent. Much lighter than normal steeped grains.
After tasting the mixture I began phase II which was the iced gelatin filtration process. The liquid was frozen solid then thawed on a cheesecloth lined sieve over a bowl in the refrigerator. The whole process took about 4.5 days from infusion to thaw. It was so much fun that I did it twice to get a nice light colored liquid!
After completing a 2nd round of gelatin filtration the liquid looked like the photo below:
Now that I had a nice looking black roasted barley extract it was time to brew. The brew was a normal BIAB with a cereal mash and 60 minute rest at 150F. The black roasted barley was added with 1 minute left in the boil to minimize added color. Once cooled the resulting beer’s appearance blew my mind. Almost pale ale in color and nothing like a stout. I didn’t get a good taste so I’m flying blind but hopefully it will have some roast character and will provide a starting point for further exploration. I’m pretty excited! Here’s a pic of the fermentation vessel with the pale stout inside:
I believe that using the quick infusion with the ISI whip allowed me to get the flavor from the grains without extracting color. I probably should have used unmilled grain (I’m going to try it soon) to see if the roast character could come out without milling. For more info on my process check out my signature. For more info on quick infusions check out Dave Arnold’s post and for more info on my inspiration for iced gelatin filtration check out the jimseven blog post from 2007.
This is awesome stuff! I’ve been kicking around an idea of brewing a pair of coffee stouts - one using light roasted barley, pale chocolate malt and whole blonde roast coffee beans; and the other with dark roast barley and chocolate malt, and ground espresso beans. But this takes it to a whole new level. Please keep us posted with updates.
I agree it’s totally useless but sort of fun. If it’s roasty enough the sensation of drinking something so light and roasty will be entertaining for abit.
Besides, maybe it will help people who are concerned with dark beers staining their teeth.
It’s a tasty beer but I don’t believe they are making it with a traditional stout recipe. I heard they use a little bit of roasted grain and try to get roasted flavors from the coffee. A few other breweries have done it as well.
Are there any commercial examples of this in bottled form yet? I’m curious but skeptical. If it’s a good beer I’m game to try it. But being a huge stout fan, gotta say the name sounds sounds like BS.
To be honest I have no clue if there are any bottled versions available. I know that Naughty Sauce is draft only (last I checked) but again they are not stout recipes from what my research has shown.
This recipe for this was 63% MO, 25% Flaked Barley and 12% Black Roasted Barley. If anyone is around LA when it’s done I’m willing to try and get them a taste if it resembles a stout in flavor.
The name, I wasn’t sure what to call mine. Didn’t want to say “white” because that usually means wheat so pale seemed to fit.
I can’t imagine a commercial brewery trying this because of the labor and time involved but commercial kitchens sometimes use this method for consommes. You could do a five gallon batch with a bit more work on the first part but the gelatin filtration would be easy in big pans with holes in the bottom.
I’m all for trying it, to see if it’s possible to get that kind of flavor in a paler beer (though I’m skeptical) . I remember a couple years ago the idea of Black IPA was considered heresy or a joke too !
JP’s brewing in Stevens point, WI has a blonde stout. It is rather sweet with the flavor of white chocolate. Not quite what I would think of as a stout but interesting none the less.
Thanks for the information. I looked it up and it sounds similar to what others have tried. I found this quote from beerpulse.com. Nonetheless it still sounds tasty!:
"JP’s Casper White Stout is not actually white in color, but it’s not the deep brown, almost black hue characteristic of stouts either: it is an inviting amber color. “Our challenge was to make it as pale as possible,” Hopkins said. “That means we cannot use black roasted malts in the brew, so instead we age it for two weeks with coffee beans and cocoa nibs to create the classic stout roasted character.”
I thought about this and never tried it a while back. One of the ideas I had was to try activated charcoal filtration. That would certainly remove color but I wasn’t sure if it would selectively remove more or less color than all of the non-color stuff I wanted to keep.
Reading about the attempts to make clear coffee and stock I would assume this has been tried and must not be effective if people are using relatively more complicated techniques.
The second idea I had, which might still be worth trying, is to infuse ethanol rather than water. This would obviously not work for making stock or coffee so it isn’t worth excluding based on the logic above. I still sort of suspect this might be effective at selectively infusing aromatic compounds rather than color but I haven’t tried it.
I have steeped colored stuff in ethanol and the color is extracted as well. Perhaps if you evaporated the ethanol and passed it through your roasted grains in vapor form but that raises legality issues I think (perhaps not if you start with high percentage ethanol and don’t concentrate it but that’s above my pay grade)
