Dry Stout from BCS?

[huskerbrew]

Brewed this today and had a few questions. First, what's the purpose of milling the roast barley to powder? I know it says to do so in order to get the right flavor and color, but what else does this accomplish? Also, following the recipe to the letter, I got 87% efficiency compared to my normal 70%. I was planning on an OG of 1043 and got 1054!!! The only thing different from my normal procedure is the rest at 120 for 15 minutes. Could that short rest cause a 17% increase in efficiency? I certainly wouldn't think so, but don't know for sure.

[herbaljoe]

Brewed this today and had a few questions. First, what's the purpose of milling the roast barley to powder? I know it says to do so in order to get the right flavor and color, but what else does this accomplish? Also, following the recipe to the letter, I got 87% efficiency compared to my normal 70%. I was planning on an OG of 1043 and got 1054!!! The only thing different from my normal procedure is the rest at 120 for 15 minutes. Could that short rest cause a 17% increase in efficiency? I certainly wouldn't think so, but don't know for sure.

In my experience brewing this recipe (which I've done 4 times now) the 120F rest does not affect my efficiency at all compared to a single infusion mash.

As for the roasted barley, I believe that the only reason to grind it into a powder is to increase extraction of color and flavor.

[Chris_J]

Joe is bang on. I think it might be worth explaining though that you get the increased colour and flavour because of the increased surface area of the roast barley.

[slanted & enchanted]

plus, roast barley has nothing in the way of useable sugars. the stuff is charcoal basically. i don't even think it's malted.