Fancying Something dark

[Martin G]

Wanting to make something a bit dark, not made many dark beers, here is my first stab at a recipe for one;

brew length 45l

8kg MO
800g Crystal
800g Roasted Barley
400g Chocolate Malt

Target 70g for 1hr 15min
Brambling Cross 20g 15min
EKG 16g dry

Thames Valley II yeast slant, water treated with a bit more chloride and less sulphate and mash at 67C.

Expecting something about 4.4%,

I normally add Torrie but have read that roasted barley performs a similar task on head retention?? Also I want an interesting beer with some of the roasted flavours but not looking for knock your socks off roasted flavours have I over done it on the choc and roasted barley?

[Matt12398]

I'd have thought you're into stout territory there but I may be wrong.

[seymour]

Y'know, that sounds like a delicious "something dark" to me, but yes, it will be VERY roasty. Maybe "knock your socks off", I dunno.

To put things into context: Do you find Guinness roasty? It is something like 80% pale, 10% flaked barley (pale), and 10% roasted barley (dark.) Yours is 80% pale, 20% dark (albeit with much more grainbill complexity and range of flavours.)

The only tweak I might recommend would be to flip-flop the chocolate malt and roasted barley. Make the chocolate malt 8% because dark as it is, it's still malted, and contributes more caramelly sweet flavors. Make the roasted barley 4% because it's not malted, and basically just contributes burnt grain bitterness, charred flavours, thinner body, and black tint.

I'd have thought you're into stout territory there but I may be wrong.

Definitely.

[scuppeteer]

Agreed, that will be very roasty, the choc malt will add much better flavour and will give you all the colour you need. I would go lower % than Seymour suggests, but then I really don't like roast Barley.
You may want to add an even later addition of Bramling X, to give a bit more fruitiness. As always depends on your buds really.

[Martin G]

Thanks, really helpful. Taking all that on board I'm thinking of dropping the roasted barley to 400g (maybe 300g) and keeping the black malt the same at 400, so trying to tip the balance towards black malt whilst reducing the total dark grains (I make it about 4% of each). I like a bit of head, do you think there is a case for some torrie?

Thanks for the pointer about more late brambling cross. I do want some fruity flavour and have found with other hops (like Cascade and NS) that 15min gives lots of flavour, not having used brambling cross before, should I be looking for a 5-10 min addition as well.

My plan is for the EKG to give a little spicy aroma.

Thinking about recipes is thirsty work!

[Dave S]

I recently made a porter of a similar strength and used 125 g each of black and chocolate malt in a 23 l brew. The taste is nice and malty with quite strong chocolatey notes. It is as dark as I would want it short of a stout. As the others say, you might find it a bit too roasty and dry.

[Jimmy321]

Be aware that using a lot of roasted malts results in a vigorous fermentation so you want a FV much bigger than that of a lighter beer or some sort of blow off device, you might want to drop in to a second FV after a few days if the head has overflowed and it in danger of inviting an infection.

[Martin G]

Thanks for the additional pointers, think I may drop even further then, 150g roasted barley and 250g chocolate malt (keeping Seymour's ratio in mind), perhaps with 150g of torrefied wheat. Thinking I would rather wish I had put more in, can always increase on the next brew. Really glad I asked now!

[darkonnis]

If it where me I'd definitely use less roast malts and use some dark crystal instead, or one of the darker varieties atleast. For a dark beer that is, if you're doing a stout and the like, well thats a different story.
I had a dark IPA where I only used 600g of black patent in with 12kg of maris otter and 400g of crystal 60. Came out black and with very little roast flavouring but enough to know it was there which is what i wanted.

Just a thought

[Martin G]

Well ended up with;

8kg Pale
600g Crystal
600g Rolled oats
250g Choc
150g Roasted Barley

70g Target 75min
30g Brambling X 15min
15g EKG dry

46l

Ended up with OG of 1047, bit more than intended but near enough.

The wort was almost drinkable! beautiful roasty, nutty, creamy, cannot wait to see how it develops.

[seymour]

Great job, man; that's a really nice looking recipe. Tell you the truth, it's very similar to Anchor Porter (same San Francisco brewery as Anchor Steam, except they call for Northern Brewer and Cascade hops) as well as the delicious Stone Smoked Porter (same brewery as Arrogant Bastard, but you'd need to replace the roasted barley with peat smoked malt). For future reference, it's almost identical to some Black IPA grainbills I've seen; so if you like how it comes out, you could brew it with dramatically higher quantities of hops next time.

Cheers!
-Seymour

[Martin G]

Very interesting, thanks for yours and others help. Interesting point about black IPA, may try someb hop tea experiments on some samples to compare with the main batch.

[seymour]

Great idea. Good luck!

[far9410]

Just came in on this, was gonna say what everyone else said about roast barley, too late, but the final recipe looks a cracker! let us know how itn turns out

[seymour]

Just came in on this, was gonna say what everyone else said about roast barley, too late, but the final recipe looks a cracker! let us know how itn turns out

Exactly. Who could quibble over 1.56%? Very well played.