Homebrew Recipe: Plague of Darkness Stout

One of the first beers I brewed in my career was an Irish Stout that turned out anything but “stout”. When I set out to brew this beer I kept repeating over and over in my head that I wanted it to be STOUT! I wanted my taste buds to be hammered by roasty, toffee, coffee flavors and be overwhelmed by stoutiness. I may have gone a bit overboard with the darker malts… but learned a valuable lesson along the way.

Recipe

Grain Bill

6.6 lbs Muntons Light LME

1 lbs crystal 60L

1 lb Flaked oats

1.5 lbs Chocolate Malt

¾ lb Black Patent

Hop Schedule

(60) 1 oz Galena

(40) ½ oz Willamette

(20) ½ oz WIllamette

Yeast

1 packet SafeAle US-05

Boil Volume

2.5 Gallons

Fermentor Volume

5 Gallons

OG – 1.062

FG – 1.017
ABV – 5.9%

Procedure: This was a pretty standard extract brew done on the stovetop. Heated up 2.5 gallons of water and tried to partially mash the steeping grains. In order to do this the brewpot was wrapped with some towels to help maintain temperature. Once the partial mash was done the LME was added and hop schedule was followed as normal.

Fermentation/ Packaging – Fermented for 2 weeks in primary and 2 weeks in secondary before kegging. Rapid carb was the plan but ended up overcarbing a tad and had to deal with lots of foamy beer.

Tasting Notes – Pitch black and extremely thick this beer hit all the stout features I thought I wanted. It was overly astringent due to the massive amount of black patent and chocolate malt. Although it settled some over time this intensely flavored stout recipe would certainly be modified if brewed again. This stout shows that there is certainly a limit to how far you should push certain styles.

Improvement/Tweak Ideas –  Back off on the chocolate malt by half a pound and the black malt by at least a quarter of a pound. The ABV could stand to be higher as well so add a pound of DME or some base malt if brewing all grain. The added base malt would help to balance things out and lighten the body some.

-- Ben