Request: Big Imperial Stout recipe akin to BrewDog's Paradox

Post #1 made 9 years ago
Hey,

I'm looking for advice putting a recipe together for my next brew, either from scratch or by modifying an existing BIABacus file.

I love big imperial stouts lately, in fact my favourite by far is the BrewDog's Paradox aged in Isle of Arran whisky casks. They don't have a brew sheet up for this at the moment (out of stock I guess) but here is the brew sheet for the same beer aged in a different cask:

http://www.brewdog.com/product/paradox- ... hill#tabs2

I'm not necessarily that interested in exactly matching the crazy ABV (although this would be a bonus), or even faffing around with oak chips just yet.

However the aspect of this beer I'd love to nail is a) the flavour and b) the sheer 'thickness', it has such a crazy syrupy feel in the mouth which I really love and works well. c) it's quite sweet too

Initially I'd like to do a 10L batch in a 40cm wide x 40cm high kettle, not sure whether the dimensions are ideal for a smaller batch like this?

Any help putting together a BIABacus recipe for this would be gratefully received :)

Post #2 made 9 years ago
Wow thats a big beer :argh: and a big ask going on the info we have :sad:

I think the best you could do is find an Imperial stout recipe and ramp it up. See what you can find and post back, in the mean time someone might volunteer a recipe.

:salute:

Yeasty
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Post #3 made 9 years ago
I did an imperial stout last year, that comes in near 9% ABV.
I had a Brewdog Psycho Cocoa a few weeks back and it seemed similar to that.
I used oak chips, vanilla pods, cocoa nibs and orange peel.
Needless to say all that disappears with the strong flavours and aromas of the grain bill, so may be unnecessary?

You could also have a look at Bobbrews Black Bear IPA, that could be good starting point?
G B
I spent lots of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered
I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep
I ONCE gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life
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Post #4 made 9 years ago
Yeasty wrote:Wow thats a big beer :argh: and a big ask going on the info we have :sad:

I think the best you could do is find an Imperial stout recipe and ramp it up. See what you can find and post back, in the mean time someone might volunteer a recipe.

:salute:

Yeasty
Cheers. As I mentioned the ABV isn't essential to hit but in terms of information there is a new sheet available at the link I included above.
Last edited by do_you_realise on 01 Oct 2014, 05:42, edited 1 time in total.

Post #5 made 9 years ago
mally wrote:I did an imperial stout last year, that comes in near 9% ABV.
I had a Brewdog Psycho Cocoa a few weeks back and it seemed similar to that.
I used oak chips, vanilla pods, cocoa nibs and orange peel.
Needless to say all that disappears with the strong flavours and aromas of the grain bill, so may be unnecessary?

You could also have a look at Bobbrews Black Bear IPA, that could be good starting point?
I'm not the biggest fan of black IPAs but would be interested in seeing your recipe :)
Last edited by do_you_realise on 01 Oct 2014, 05:43, edited 1 time in total.

Post #6 made 9 years ago
I will dig out the recipe report tomorow for you.
It is in an old BIABAcus file IIRC so would be better if you entered it into a new blank sheet.
G B
I spent lots of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered
I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep
I ONCE gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life
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Post #7 made 9 years ago
OK DYR, here is what I did over a year ago now.

Brewer: Mally
Style: Imperial Stout

Original Gravity (OG): 1.08
IBU's (Tinseth): 50
Bitterness to Gravity Ratio: 0.63
Colour: 119.8 EBC = 60.8 SRM, ABV%: 8.21

Efficiency into Kettle (EIK): 70 %
Efficiency into Fermentor (EIF): 69.3 %

Note: This is a Pure BIAB (Full Volume Mash)
Times and Temperatures

Mash: 90 mins at 64 C = 147.2 F
Boil: 90 min
Ferment: 7 days at 20 C = 68 F

Volumes & Gravities
Total Water Needed (TWN): 35.86 L = 9.47 G
Volume into Kettle (VIK): 30.76 L = 8.13 G @ 1.068
End of Boil Volume - Ambient (EOBV-A): 25.25 L = 6.67 G @ 1.08
Volume into Fermentor (VIF): 25 L = 6.6 G @ 1.08
Volume into Packaging (VIP): 23.15 L = 6.12 G @ 1.016 assuming apparent attenuation of 80 %

The Grain Bill (Also includes extracts, sugars and adjuncts)

60% MO (5 EBC = 2.5 SRM) 6000 grams
10% Roasted Barley (1220 EBC = 619.3 SRM) 1000 grams
10% flaked barley (1 EBC = 0.5 SRM) 1000 grams
5% OATS (1 EBC = 0.5 SRM) 500 grams
5% crystal malt (150 EBC = 76.1 SRM) 500 grams
10% cane sugar (0.1 EBC = 0.1 SRM) 1000 grams

29.8 IBU columbus Pellets (16.5%AA) 23.4 grams at 60 mins
5.9 IBU columbus Pellets (16.5%AA) 23.4 grams at 5 mins
11.4 IBU cascade Pellets (8.2%AA) 23.4 grams at 30 mins
2.9 IBU cascade Pellets (8.2%AA) 23.4 grams at 5 mins

Mash Type: Pure BIAB (Full Volume Mash) for 90 mins at 64 C = 147.2 F
Water Held Back from Mash: 5 L = 1.32 G
Water Used in a Sparge: 5 L = 1.32 G

Hopsock Used: Y (Pulled 10 mins after boil end.)
Whirlpool: 15 mins after boil end.
Chilling Method: cube (Employed 30 mins after boil end.)

Fermention: US-05 for 7 days at 20 C = 68 F

Secondary Used: y
Crash-Chilled: n
Filtered: n
Req. Volumes of CO2: 2.5
Serving Temp: 6 C = 42.8 F


I had to Maxi-BIAB this one with it being such a large grain bill (10Kg). Hence the 5L sparge. The oats were toasted in the oven until just turning brown.
Not documented above, but I transferred to secondary for the oak additions etc.
If I was to do this recipe again I would probably drop the roasted barley by half for pale, and up the bitterness from hops. The balance is OK with this but it seems to be bitter from the roast not the hops.
Last edited by mally on 01 Oct 2014, 15:38, edited 1 time in total.
G B
I spent lots of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered
I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep
I ONCE gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Great Britain

Re: Request: Big Imperial Stout recipe akin to BrewDog's Par

Post #8 made 9 years ago
http://beerandwinejournal.com/ris-ag/#more-3292
Here is a link to an Imperial Russian Stout from The Beer and wine Journal. There are a series of articles on the beer as well. I am interested in brewing something like this as well someday.
Last edited by Lumpy5oh on 01 Oct 2014, 21:18, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #9 made 9 years ago
Looks like they are going for low roast character to let as much of the oak (and hop) flavors through possible, considering their only dark malt is carafa (debittered/dehusked).

Just cranking up a traditional Imperial w/ oats might be more what you're after, considering you don't want to mess with the oak yet.
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Post #10 made 9 years ago
Which one are you looking at Rick?
The one I see has Choc, black, and roasted.
G B
I spent lots of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered
I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep
I ONCE gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Great Britain

Post #11 made 9 years ago
mally wrote:Which one are you looking at Rick?
The one I see has Choc, black, and roasted.
From post #1, I just went to brewdog's website for info.
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Last edited by Rick on 01 Oct 2014, 23:06, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #12 made 9 years ago
Ahh...

I was looking at the last one on beerandwinejournal. :salute:
G B
I spent lots of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered
I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep
I ONCE gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Great Britain

Post #13 made 9 years ago
Cheers for all the input guys, apologies for the late reply - finally coming back to this now and hoping to get an order placed over the next day or two.

Would any of the big stout recipes above be tweakable to allow me to make a 10L final volume and in doing so allow me to skip all of the maxi-biab stuff? I want to keep my brew days as simple as possible so figured that reducing the final volume might allow me to make up for the complication of a large grain bill.

Cheers.

Post #14 made 9 years ago
I need to place an order now for some ingredients as part of the order will be an extract kit (present for a friend's birthday this weekend)

With this in mind, I might just order an approximate amount of malts and hops to match the brew sheet above for Paradox. Would anyone be able to suggest a semi-educated guess as to the amounts to use? Hop schedule?

I'm happy to just go with it as an experimental batch and as mentioned above I'm not too fussed about hitting the same ABV.

Cheers.

Post #15 made 9 years ago
Do you have an unfinished BIABacus file that we can look at?

I'm all for helping, but don't have the time to start it from scratch .. research EBC/SRM information, etc ..

I had to go back to earlier posts in this thread just to find if you disclosed your kettle dimensions, and fear there might be a lot more of that.

Get something started, and I'm certain help will find you. I have about 3 hrs here at work before I have to attend a retirement party, so if you can get it in by then ... I'll be around.
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Post #16 made 9 years ago
If your kettle is really 40cm X 40cm then that is 50L.

You could easily do 20L VIF at 10% ABV in that, and even 25L at a push, and that is all full volume mashing (FVM) i.e. no Maxi stuff.

As for the ingredients, I am not sure which recipe you were going to use so that will affect what you need to order.
As Rick said; It would be a lot easier for you (& us) if you fill out the BIABacus with what you want to achieve, then once filled out correctly, it will tell you exactly what you need to order.
G B
I spent lots of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered
I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep
I ONCE gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Great Britain

Post #17 made 9 years ago
Hi Mally,

Coming back to this again now - got this week off work and itching to finally make a stout! Hopefully start tomorrow or Friday, I've got a no-chill cube on the way so if I can get something into that by the end of Friday I should be able to find a few minutes at the weekend (despite having visitors over) to dump it into the FV and pitch some yeast.

Recipe-wise I am hoping to replicate something like the brew sheet in this reply: http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php ... 020#p43780

After my last post I placed an order for the following from brewuk (ignore the single hop motueka kit) to roughly match what is mentioned above:

Safale US-05 Yeast x2
Single Hop Kit - Motueka
Maris Otter Pale Malt Crushed 4kg
Dark Wheat Malt (crushed) 500g
Crystal Malt Crushed 1kg
Flaked Malted Oats (crushed) 1kg
Carafa Special 3 (crushed) 500g
Columbus Vacuum Packed Leaf Hops 100 gms
Saaz Vacuum Packed Leaf Hops 100 gms
First Gold Vacuum Packed Leaf Hops 100 gms

I can understand you requesting a semi-completed BIABacus file from me as a starting point but I'm literally starting from a blank slate here - was hoping to pick the brains of much more experienced homebrewers than me and get some help in putting together a recipe!

To be honest I'm not going to be put out if I don't get it dead on, but if I can at least make something which on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being 'guinness' and 10 being 'really tasty imperial stout', if I can at least get somewhere in the middle I will be incredibly chuffed!

Slightly concerned about a) doing such a big beer via BIAB and b) horror stories of big stouts causing massive blowoff and exploding lids off of full fermenters and making a huge mess, so with those two points in mind I'll probably stick to 10L VIF this time just to reduce the amount of grain I'm lugging around and increase the headspace in the fermenter. Something at 9 or 10% would be brilliant.

Would be very grateful for any advice!

Cheers

Post #18 made 9 years ago
Its a shame you have already ordered the ingredients. It would have been better to sort the recipe out first... but nevermind.

I know it can be daunting looking at the BIABAcus for the first time, but if you get stuck into it, and start looking at what hapens when you make alterations, you will get the hang of it in no time.

To get you started I have attached a BIABacus that has some of the detail entered. This can be useful if others want to look and make sugestions too, but you will need to check some of the values I have entered are correct. kettle dimensions, will you be using a hopsock?, grain specs, and most importantly we would need to know the AA% of the hops you have bought. I haven't entered any details for these in your file.
I would guess columbus could be used for bittering, and first gold for flavour/aroma? I would have thought it better to save your Saaz for a lighter beer though, as noble hops like these may get drowned out in all the strong grain flavours.

As for the grains; I am by no means saying you should use what is entered (I have halfed your qty of crystal & oats though as they may have been too much).
Have a look, and see if we can get you closer to having a "safe" recipe. Once the recipe, and hop additions are sorted you can then simply change the volume into fermenter (VIF) or O.G. to suit either your requirements (read leftovers), or match what you have bought (read ingredients used up).

For reference you currently can have a VIF of 11L, and an O.G. of 1.100 (10% ABV), this can/will change depending on some of the missing info required.
BIABacus PR1.3T - Big Imperial (DYR) .xls
If I were brweing this I would be tempted to do a parti-gyle of some sort. You could end up with something similar to Guiness as well as the RIS, but don't worry about that unless you really want to jump in at the deep end! In fact I probably shouldn't have mentioned it :headhit: :lol:
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Last edited by mally on 26 Mar 2015, 05:45, edited 1 time in total.
G B
I spent lots of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered
I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep
I ONCE gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Great Britain

Post #19 made 9 years ago
That's brilliant, thanks! As I said before I've no real experience of putting together RIS recipes so I'm happy to try out your suggestions in terms of grain/hops proportions and see what happens.

It is a shame about already ordering ingredients but I couldn't resist saving on delivery (and the single hop kit was a birthday present for someone so kind of time sensitive)

Hop sock - yes I will use one of these.

Cooling method - I have got a No-Chill cube on the way but it's 25 litres, I ordered it before I decided to stick to 11L VIF for this initial run. Not sure whether I can still safely use this as there will be a lot of air in there which defeats the purpose of having boiling hot wort in contact with 100% of the interior - I guess it is fine if I sanitise the innards sufficiently beforehand?

My issue with the BIABacus spreadsheet has always been that I'm never sure which fields need a specific number (in a specific format) to affect formulae and estimates in other parts of the spreadsheet, and which fields are just purely 'notes' fields. Is there a reference somewhere stating which fields affect other fields (and the required data format), and which fields are just 'for the record' type fields? It would also be handy to know which fields are required in order to fully populate all the auto generated fields. I don't want to go blindly filling these fields in and break the spreadsheet or incorrectly read values which are wrong because the relevant inputs are missing. It doesn't help that the '?' fields (which I am guessing show up a hints/tips type popup in Excel) don't seem to do anything in LibreOffice on a Mac.

I've updated the hop AA percentages and the grain EBC values - the only anomaly being the Dark Wheat which on the packet from brewuk says EBC 15-20, which seems wildly different from what you entered. Might we be talking about different products here? The label just says "Dark Wheat 500g, BBE 8.15, EBC 15-20" (this product specifically: http://www.brewuk.co.uk/dark-malt-500g.html)

The imperial stouts I've enjoyed tend to be on the low end in terms of carbonation - I looked through some posts and websites for advice about carbonation for a RIS and came up with about 40g of priming sugar for 10L VIP. Does that sound about right? I played with the CO2 volume on the spreadsheet until it was roughly the same and 38g of priming sugar was about 2 volumes of CO2. Again not sure whether this sounds right for 'low end' carbonation.

Cheers again for the help so far.

P.S. Yes probably opened a can of worms with the parti-gyle! I might be tempted to do this if I can make it as simple as repeating the entire process again with the same grains. Same volumes, same hop additions etc. Might be interesting. Do you still need to mash for the full 90 minutes? Or are you just simply washing the spare sugars off the leftover grains? If this is the case does the temperature of the sparge water matter for this step? Sorry...
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Post #20 made 9 years ago
I am not sure of your experience level DYR, but this guide here may help with some terminologies etc.

I see you have changes the hopsock to "Y", good, so just make sure you do on the day otherwise you will make a slightly different beer.
IMHO I think 11L in a 25L cube isn't advisable. If you are pitching ASAP (next day) your risks are reduced. My concern here isn't sanitation (which you can do with the cube as you mentioned) it is the amount of oxygen exposure. Like I said, quick pitching reduces the risks, but be aware of them.

BIABacus -
Section A is for info (no effect on ingredients).

Section B is essential, as this defines your equipment, boil length, and volumes.

Section C is essential, it needs to know how "strong" you want your beer to be, and what ingredients it is using to get there. (Across the top row) O.G. is for scaling an existing recipe, "for this batch" is if you want to make a modification to the existing recipe (this takes precedent I believe even if there is an entry in the O.G.), natural priming is if you are adding sugars after fermentation for carbonation purposes. if you force carbonate with a CO2 cylinder then type "N" here, "Y" this will make a very small change to ABV% values in the finished product.
The bill design section is essential for reasons mentioned above. You can enter weights or percentages here (as an example in your file, where your pale malt says 4000g and is 66.7% of the grain bill, you could type 66.7 instead of 4000, however, the entries below will also have to follow the same convention so that it all adds up to 100. To the right of this is what you will use, self explanatory, it is the weights you need to use on your brew day.
You will only need to make entries here if there is a difference in the ingredients from original.
The EBC values will give you an indication of colour (but is not essential). There is also a little box that is easy to miss, next to the grain entries called "method" again not essential unless you are steeping or boiling ingredients.

Section D - essential, if you are copying a recipe, you will need to know their VAW. Otherwise just enter the IBU's you want to achieve in the "i'm designing my own recipe". These values will be used to determine the quantities of hops required for the brew. Similar to the grain bill, you only need to enter values on the right hand side if they are different from the original recipe, and again you will use in your brew the values in "what you will use".

Section E - required but not essential, though will advise on strike temps (so assign your own importance to that).

Section F - not essential, though useful.

Section G - not essential apart from hopsock Y/N as this will affect volumes.


These are what you will need to know for now, for this brew. There are many other functions and adjustments, but you will not need to worry about them at the moment. However..... Section K does not need any inputs, but this is one of the most important sections you need for the brew day. It tells you what volumes are required.

Your EBC values will be OK, I just used a value for crystal wheat as I have never heard of dark wheat.

2 vols of CO2 seems about right for the style I guess :scratch:

IMHO whenever I do a parti-gyle I do it thinking I have nothing to lose. If I didn't part-gyle the grain would end up in the bin anyway.
I would probably put about 10L of 78C water in another bucket/kettle leave for 10 mins, drain, and see what you get.
The only problem you have is that you either have to do 2 boils in one day, or risk storing unboiled wort for another day. Life and brewing is all about choices!

Now after that lengthy post (done in the style of PistolPatch), I think I need a beer :lol:
Last edited by mally on 27 Mar 2015, 18:05, edited 1 time in total.
G B
I spent lots of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered
I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep
I ONCE gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Great Britain

Post #21 made 9 years ago
Hey,

Just wanted to say how I got on with this.

Managed an OG of 1.097 which was not far off at all. I was having a much harder time keeping the mash at temp than previous brews - I wonder whether this was due to the much smaller amount of liquid than what I'm used to, or the higher amount of grain? Anyway, in the heat of the moment, after reading that the 60 or 90 minute mash length might not be overly necessary (http://brulosophy.com/2014/09/01/does-m ... t-results/), I think I gave up after about 50 minutes compared to the recommended 90. Maybe that accounts for the missing few SG points.

After boiling for 90 minutes I chilled in a 25L no-chill cube overnight - didn't worry about the headspace as I purged it with CO2 before filling it. Plus it was being used the next day.

Pitched 2 packs of US-05 dry yeast at 18C on 28th March. Kept the FV in a water bath with a home made temperature controller and aquarium heater arrangement, which I believe kept the temperature between 17.5 and 18.5 celsius for the duration.

I checked the gravity on 14th April and it was at about 1.026. Checked again today (we've been away quite a bit...) and it was the same, so bottled after batch priming with 38g of brewing sugar. I'm amazed I got to this point to be honest, I had serious worries about stalled fermentation and repitching what with the lack of using a massive yeast starter to pitch with. Seem to have been lucky.

The yeast and trub didn't seem to have compacted down as much as previous brews - I realised at the point of bottling that I forgot to add any whirlfloc or anything to this brew, which is annoying as I must have lost a good couple of litres as a result, leaving me with about 16x 500ml bottles. Alright for an experimental batch I guess.

I had a sneaky taste of this when hydrometering and couldn't detect any off flavours - tasted good! Can't wait to try this after a month or two of conditioning, although when I originally ordered the ingredients it was originally intended to be one for the winter just gone... not quite sure it will make a lot of sense on the warm summer afternoons :P Ah well, just going to have to do a nice blonde ale or something in the meantime :) been tempted to pick up a couple of those refillable 5L mini kegs which I can dump in people's fridges for parties etc. Much easier than lugging bottles around, having to let them stand, explain to drunk people that they shouldn't pour the last bit of the bottle in.......... etc.

I didn't bother with the parti-gyle this time. While it was a big shame to throw so much partially used grain away, I had had enough by that point and was already in trouble with the girlfriend for the amount of condensation dripping down the walls... probably couldn't have got away with another boil!

Cheers again for all the help, I'll report back about how this tastes after conditioning.
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