Beer Forum

http://brewery.org/library/Potato.html

(This recipe is based on information I gained from a nearly 20 year old article from the above link)

This is my "go-to" stout recipe that I really enjoy and I decided to try and add some potatoes to it. "Lefse" is a Norwegian toasted crepe-like pastry made from potatoes and flour. In my family we have lefse every Christmas and I wanted to try and make a beer to go along with it. Thus the "Lefse Stout" was born.

10 gallons - roughly 65% efficiency (I was a bit off due to the stickyness of the potato mash added to the grains)

16 lb. Maris Otter
5 lb. Shredded Potatoes (un-peeled for extra color and flavor)
3 lb. Breiss Special Roast
1 lb. Flaked Barley
2 lb. Flaked Oats
1 lb. Cara-pils Dextrine
.75 lb. Belgian Chocolate
.5 lb. De-bittered Black
.5 lb. Black Roasted Barley
US-56 Safale - American Ale yeast

Protein rest at 122F for 45min with all of the grains without the potatoes.
While the grains are resting, I boiled the shredded potatoes.

After 45min, I added the entire pot of boiling potato mash soup into the mash tun to bring the temp up to around 154f-155F to rest for another 30-45min.

The mash was very sticky and ended up getting stuck a bit, so I stirred in some rice hulls and recirculated a bit to get back the flow into the kettle.

I ended up being off by about 1 gallon because the potatoes sucked up a lot more water then I calculated. Other than that it was a smooth brew session. I was shooting for 1.065 OG but ended up with closer to 1.062 OG. No big deal.

I'll post my results once it's finished.

Okay so I finally analyzed this beer last night.

Here are my results/notes:
1) Great roasty stout taste, maybe leaning a bit toward a porter.
2) Smoother than my previous stout recipe (the same recipe without the added potatoes) even though this one had more alcohol. Also I took a preliminary sample after a week and I was surprised by how smooth it was. Even after just a week in the bottle.
3) Not as much head retention as the previous recipe.
4) Dark brownish black color with a tan head.

Overall I like the new recipe with the shedded potatoes added, two good things happened that were unexpected; More alcohol and more smoothness. However, I did have better head retention with the previous recipe.

Has anyone else had similar results by adding potatoes to a solid/tested beer recipe? Also, does anyone have any tips to getting better head retention out of this recipe?

I'd replace the carapils with 1/2 pound carapils and 1/2 pound white or torrified wheat.

Yeah, adding some wheat is something I thought about adding. I was also thinking about mashing at higher temps. What do you guys think?