Recipe: clueless on how to convert all grain to extract (or partial mash)

Beer Recipe Design
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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…

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Convert the pale ale malt to light dme; partial mash the other grains.

There is no ‘good’ substitute for golden promise.

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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.

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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.

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Understood, would I still use the same amount?

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Yea, I have a feeling this bad boy is going to definitely need an extended conditioning time to get all those flavors to properly blend together.

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In Mastering Homebrew, Randy Mosher talks about flavor blocks as a way think about a long ingredient list.

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Thank you, i’ll get my stuff ready and give it a shot when the time comes…

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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:

Decide what the base malt for the DME / LME is, chew on a couple of kernels and let our taste buds decide if this is a good conversion (or not).

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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

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What if I were to do 6.6 of amber lme and 6.6 of Pilsen lme, then treat the rest of the grains as a partial mash?

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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.

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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

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Homebrew talk has a thread starting around 2011 that talks about Surly Darkness. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=273322

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:

tl;dr? Canada Malting Pale Ale Malt; European based secondary malts

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Short, sweet, and to the point.

+1,000,000,… :slight_smile:

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What I would like to achieve here is not an extract clone, but something that would be close to the flavor, texture and hoppyness/bitterness. The abv isn’t something hing I would really care about. Not sure if that helps.

Edit:

Something along the lines of this:

“Dark and thick with rich flavors of roasted coffee, dark fruit, chocolate, and toffee. Some earthy hop notes and moderately high bitterness in the finish.”

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Thats a very good resource for planning your very own brew! Sneezles61

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Thanks. Those were the “top” links that google had yesterday. I was a little disappointed with the search results as google has offered better 1st choices in the past. Yes, sadly, google search results are time and location sensitive.

Mastering Homebrew covers those two links (and so much more). At $9.99, the ebook is worth many times the price. When it’s $2.99 in ebook format is, IMO, a must buy.

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