That is quite the busy grain bill right there! With all the very dark malt, you could eliminate the acid piece of the puzzle… I think you can not find extract for all the different specialties, but as you ask for a partial mash will suffice… I suspect a high gravity 10 gallon batch? You should find a page that can get you the points per pound and figure this for yourself. You’ll better understand how you develop a recipe… Wow that a big grain bill. Sneezles61
Damm lot of grains. I would worry about the candi sugar. Adding dme or lme. To change the grain bill. The lme has lots of sugar i do think. I could be wrong. Maybe replace. The 8 lbs golden promise. With. Lme light. And the 2 lbs aromatic malt. With. Bries light dme. Before i went to all grain at home. I was playing around with grains and lme dme. By using brewers friend recipy creator. You get all the points. You need to create a recipy. Had good results.
It’s probably going to be around 1.124 OG 5 gallon recipe. I’m probably going to have to do a step-up 2000 ML starter on a stirplate (that is my assumption) to get the proper yeast count to ferment this monster. . Time shall also be a factor as well for conditioning purposes.
This friend is a recipe for Surly Darkness RIS (not saying it is an EXACT clone, but it think it’s pretty damn close to it). I’m very very anxious to brew this one. I cannot stop thinking about it…
They certainly know their beer but that grain bill is BUSY… I’m surprised all those specialty malts aren’t getting muddled.
Your crystal and roasted grains can be steeped but your golden promise, flaked oats, and naked oats need to be mashed. Luckily Golden Promise as enough diastatic power to convert the oats.
I won’t talk about the conversion, but I am questioning the 7 day oak/bourbon step. With a big bad RIS, I’d give it a ton of time in secondary on bourbon soaked oak… you’ll want to age this for a while. My oaked barleywine sat on oak spirals for two months, then bottled and I’m just starting to drink the occasional one now 8 months later.
One of the easiest ways to learn about the flavor that a base malt provides is to stop by your LHBS and chew on a couple of kernels of the base malt. Better yet, find the most experienced person at the LHBS and ask for help when you this.
After doing this, we should have a pretty good understanding of the flavor that pale malt, golden promise, and aromatic malt provides.
But how do we get a feel for what light DME / LME tastes like? If we knew what the various DME / LMEs were made of - that would help. So we could go to the malters web site or we could find someone who has done the work for us:
I will assume that there is soooo much going on, one will not be able to reliably distinguish which malt is which! Then some oak, and some bourbon, in a 5-er? I received a Surly Darkness a few years ago for Christma… winter holiday, wasn’t in my palate range. I didn’t say it wasn’t good, just not my flavor. I could see in about 10 years cracking one open, just to see if its ready for sipping! Sorry, I’m not wanting to be offensive. Sneezles61
Pilsen DME/LME and light DME/LME will provide different flavors since the base malt
(Pilsner malt / Two row malt) is different. Will this matter to you? See my previous post and visit your LHBS.
Amber LME (link, link) appears to have some munich malt in it - which is not in the original recipe. Will this matter to you? See my previous post and visit your LHBS.
I like things to be simple, I would elaborate a bit to you… What do you want as your final ABV? Do you want a thick, very dark, maybe middle of the road, or, something drier? You can’t have them all… Sorry… . From there you could choose, and maybe find that the base malt, which in most cases, will bring the ABV and background flavor. From there you start to layer what it is you do desire… smokey, maybe just some roasted( kinda like a well crusted piece of meat without the salt), lotsa chocolate then chocolate malt… Those will impart very dark, and some sweetness to them. Tame it down, do use the dark malts sparingly, then use the crystal/caramel malts and up the sweetness and a some dark smokey flavor. Bail out on most of those, then you get a thick dark golden colored, very malty, sweet elixir. Add some sugar and dry it out to almost so dry your tongue will stick to your mouth. Hops, well, they will help to balance the sweetness, but you won’t find much cutting through… Thats my perception on a the extremely high ABV brews… Sneezles61
Many interesting interpretations on the secondary malts that may be used.
edit (a couple of hours later):
If you want to get some insights into the brewery and see someone else’s opinion on how to “clone” (or ‘verify’ Surly clone recipes), consider starting here:
. Time shall also be a factor as well for conditioning purposes.
