Stout Recipe

[wolfie7873]

Small Batch Stout (3 gallon boil, approx 2 gallon batch volume).

Full volume boil

Steeping Grains:
4 oz American Chocolate
4 oz Roasted Barley
4 oz Belgian Biscuit
4 oz UK Pale 2 row
6 oz Flaked Oats

Fermentables:
44 oz Light British DME

Hops
0.3 oz Nugget (11.3) at T=60
0.4 oz Fuggles (4.8) at T=30

Adjunct
1/2 Vanilla Bean split and scraped at knockout

Irish Ale Yeast Wyeast 1084 SmackPack

With all the dark roasted malts, I had very much a coffee vibe coming from the steep. The Vanilla at the end was an impulse, I hope it doesn't take over. OG was a bit higher than spec, but I've taken to "rinsing" my steeping bag (dunking it in clean water and adding that to the boil) so that might account for it.

Thoughts on this? My last two stouts didn't fare well. I overdid the coffee addition during bottling for the one, and I think the second was contaminated, so I tried to simplify things a bit. Went into the fermentor last night.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

are you steeping the grains like a extract kit or mashing at a certain temp

 

[wolfie7873]

I'll add some procedure to clear things up.

• 3 gallons of water was added to boil kettle and heated.
• Grains were tied into a muslin bag and added to second kettle on stove.
• When water reached 170, about 1.5 gallons or so was transferred to the kettle with the grain bag.
• Second kettle was occasionally given additional heat to keep it between 150 and 155 as best I could for 30 minutes - occasionally stirred.
• Additional water was transferred to a large bowl, and the grain bag was dunked in there a couple times before being tossed
• All water reincorporated into boil kettle and proceed as normal

I'm guessing this is something of a partial mash because of the use of 2 row malt in the steep, but I didn't go an hour, and I did a half-@$$ed sparge.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I think it will be fine with the lme, might not get any alcohol from the steeped grains maybe a tad so they will be for flavor mostly.

 

[UgliestLemming]

I currently have a stout in primary too, and when looking into adding vanilla I found that 1 bean can be good for 5 gallons for a light vanilla background, and 2 vanilla beans for a more aggressive flavor. Most things I found were added in secondary after being partially extracted and sanitized with vodka, so I'm interested to hear how the bean adds flavor from the get go!