Stout recipe help

Beer Recipe Design
1

I plan on brewing a chocolate raspberry stout based on a recipe from The Complete Home Brewer. I modified the recipe to lower to OG and use hops I have on hand, my question is now that the recipe has been changed will the ingredients work well together or will one over power the other? Any help / advice is greatly appreciated:

10 lbs 2 Row
.8 lbs Chocolate Malt
.75 lbs Cara/Crystal Malt 60L
.5 lbs Black Patent Malt
Mash @ 152 degrees for 60 minutes
Mash out @ 170 degrees for 10 minutes
1.25 oz Warrior @ 60
2 oz Cascade @ flameout
11 lbs Raspberries @ flameout
Steep flameout additions for 30 minutes and dump entire contents in bucket once cool
American ale yeast
OG 1.062

2

Is the flameout hop addition in the original recipe? What hop varrieties do they use in the original?

Most of that seems OK but I’d like to know what the original #s were for everything to see how yours will change it.

3

I would:

  1. Reduce black patent malt to 0.25 lb. Don’t worry, it will still be black enough.

  2. Mash at about 154 F. This will improve body and sweetness to offset the tartness from the raspberries.

  3. Eliminate the Cascade hops. Otherwise they will compete too much with the raspberries.

  4. Add the raspberries at the end of the primary fermentation, not the beginning. This will ensure you don’t lose too much flavor and aroma.

4

Also, 11lbs of raspberries will probably displace quite a bit of liquid, make sure you have enough room in your fermenter.

5

Matt is right. Not a real big deal – you could always just split the batch between 2 fermenters if necessary.

6

I’ll share the experience I have with a blackberry wheat beer in hopes that some of it translates. The blackberries tend to dry out the beer and add a lot of tartness, so I’d second the suggestion to up the mash temp. The 8# of berries I put in my wheat recipe are enough to dominate the flavor. Perhaps the roasted malts in a stout will be able to compete with 11# of rasberries though.

Use a nylon paint strainer bag to hold the berries.

7

Thanks all for the input.
Brew Meister, here is the original recipe:
6 lbs light dme
8 lbs Irish stout malt extract syrup
1.25 lbs crystal/caramel malt
.5 lbs black roasted malt
.75 lbs roasted barley
.5 lbs chocolate roasted malt
3 oz eroica hops @ 60
2 oz cascade (aroma)
11 lbs raspberries - add to kettle at end of boil at 165 to 145 degrees for 30 minutes
Ale yeast
Per the book the OG IS 1076 to 1086

8

I actually think you have done a pretty good job adjusting the original recipe to your needs and they should be fairly similar.

But I do agree with dmtaylo2 in most of what he wrote. My original thought was that you have more roasted grains than you need and that I would reduce the black.

The original recipe calls for the Cascade as aroma, so maybe it works. My original thought was that it would be in conflict with the raspberries as well. But if you think this recipe comes from a reliable source maybe it does work and is worth a try. Could be interesting. Hard call to make there.

The suggestions about temp and timing of the rasp. addition also seem valid to me.

9

Thank you all for the help, when I changed the recipe using your suggestions I now fall dead center in the style guidelines for an American Stout in BeerSmith.
I will post updates as this moves along.

10

If you ate wooed about the beer being too dry and tart, you can always add some lactose.

11

I was also going to suggest the idea of adding a little cocoa (actually you would add quite a bit). Especially if Chocolate is what you are going for.

Depending on when you add it, it does not have add a ton of chocolate flavor, but I found it adds very nice texture that would be perceived as chocolatey.

12

What about juicing and straining the raspberrys then pasteurize and add juice to secondary