We feel like doing a brewday on Sunday, but as we don’t have time to visit our local homebrew-shop, we want to use what we have in stock. The plan is to make 20 liters of stout.

What we’ve planned for fermentables:

4 kg pilsner malt @ 3.7 EBC (=48.3%)
2 kg Munich malt @ 13 EBC (=24.1%)
800 g Carared @ 48 EBC (=9,7%)
500 g Chocolate B @ 900 EBC (=6%)
500 g Amber @ 70 EBC (=6%)

With a mash profile of

45 minutes @ 62C / 143F
30 minutes @ 72C / 161F
5 minutes @ 80C / 176F

During the boil of 60 - 90 minutes

115 g Saaz for the entire time
500 g sugar for the last 30 minutes

with a Lallemand Windsor yeast, fermenting at 20C / 68F.

According to Brewfather, this should end in a beer with around 8% ABV, around 70EBC and 49 IBU.

My 2 questions:

Do you guys think this results in a beer you'd drink?
Any tips for modifications to the recipe?
  • plactagonic@sopuli.xyzM
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    1 year ago

    It is maybe only my taste - I really don’t like beers that feels like chewing charcoal.

    So the chocolate is little bit high for the quantity of beer I would go for half of that (you have more similar malts).

    When I am doing decoction I add high EBC malts at the end (72C step), and try to go for 76-78C not for 80. To get only the colour not the coffee/charcoal taste. But for infusion it is ok to add them from start.

    • alnilam@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Thank you for your reply! We’ll be doing infusion mashing, not decoction. Do you think the boil time will influence the charcoal taste as well?

      • plactagonic@sopuli.xyzM
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        1 year ago

        The boil time doesn’t have effect on this - you already don’t have malt in wort. Only in decoction you don’t want to boil the malt.

        I am weird I can taste this in lots of beers so I am making lighter beers not stouts. When I make darker beers I am using caramel or different darker malt for flavours and adding high EBC malts for colour carefully - about 250 g per 35l batch. It usually comes out at about 40 EBC, and you have 20l. But I probably use slightly different malt.

        I look up some chocolate malt from my brew shop and the description says max 5% I usually try to go for half of that.