Imperial Stout

[IshInTexas]

Ok, so I am brewing an extract recipe for an Imperial Stout and the last time I brewed this recipe it finished a little higher than I wanted, about 1030. I was thinking about adding some brown sugar to have it finish a little lower. I was wondering if there are any reasons why I should not do this? Fusel alcohol tastes? I was also thinking about throwing in .5lb lactose i had lying around. Is that going a little overboard or not?

13lbs dark malt extract (liquid)
1lb domestic 2-row
.5lb roasted unmalted barley
.5lb flaked barley
.5lb chocolate malt
.5lb British crystal malt 50 lovibond
.25 black patent
1oz Target 60min
1oz N. Brewer 10min
1oz N. Brewer 0min
Nottingham dry yeast + brew vigor

[Mylo]

Ok, a couple of issues I noticed... You didn't say what size of batch - but I am guessing that you are doing a 5 gallon batch. I am also assuming that you are doing an "extract with grain" recipe - and not a mini-mash. OK, that being said....

13 pounds is a heck of a lot of malt extract for a 5 gallon batch (but might be applicable to the style - I don't have BeerSmith here at work to run the numbers). To say that you want to try to "bring [the FG] down lower" by adding brown sugar is incorrect. To say that you want to replace some of the 13 pounds of extract with some amount of brown sugar is more accurate. You will be replacing some of the maltose with sucrose - and you FG will be lower than if you just used the 13 pounds. If you add the brown sugar to the 13 - it will be higher, naturally. That should work fine as long as your simple sugars do not add up to more that 15-20% of your total fermentables - otherwise you will get a "cidery" taste.

Secondly... The Pope says that if you are going to do an "extract with grains" brew - then you should always use the palest malt extract you can find. Get your flavor and color from the steeping grains. Leave the darker colored extracts to the "extract only brewers", like Bub, so he can make his table sugar brew and film himself chugging bottles of corona on YouTube.

Thirdly, nix the 2-row - unless you are doing mini-mash. That grain needs to be mashed at a lower water/grist ratio at a specific temp in order to convert and is not applicable for "extract with grains".

And finally (and probably most importantly) - in order to dry it out a little more - get yourself a fresh, well attenuating yeast, make a starter, and aerate before you pitch. You will need a decent amount of healthy yeast to make it through all the sugars in that big beer. Go to www.mrmalty.com for the yeast pitch rate calculator.

Good luck my brotha! Brew Strong!


Mylo

[Bugeater]

Your problem with the high finishing gravity is most likely with the extract used. Various brands of extract will ferment out at differing levels. For example, Laaglander extract will only ferment out to about 65% while United Canadian extract is over 90% fermentable. John Bull, a common extract sold in cans is towards the lower end of the fermentability scale. If you are using one of the less fermentable extracts, you may already have your gravity as low as it will go.

I did an extract with grain imperial stout myself about a year and a half ago. The kit did contain John Bull extract. I ran the recipe through ProMash before brewing the kit and found that the projected original gravity was going to be way too low so I used a couple pounds of table sugar to bring the gravity up to the desired level. In the case of your recipe, I would drop 3 or 4 pounds of extract and then use sugar to bring the gravity back up to the original projected OG. This will lessen the total amount of unfermentable sugars in the finished beer. If you just add sugar to your existing recipe, you will raise the OG, but you won't change the final gravity any.

One other thought is that quite often folks will rack a beer to secondary long before they should. If you secondary, you need to let it sit in primary until you have reached (or nearly reached) your projected final gravity. Determine this with a hydrometer, NOT by just watching bubbles in your airlock. Don't be afraid of getting autolysis (rotting dead yeast). You would need to let the beer sit in primary for a couple of months for that to happen, if then. On a big beer like this, I would let it sit for a full month before transferring anywhere.

Mylo, sugar causing cidery flavors is one of those homebrewing myths that won't go away. It just doesn't happen. The cidery flavor most commonly comes from outdated LME, not the sugar. Many kits will use those less fermentable extracts like I mentioned above along with sugar to be provided by the homebrewer. This greatly lowers the cost of production of the kit and the beer ends up at a proper final gravity. If the kit is old, the cidery flavor appears but folks blame it on the sugar instead of the extract.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

[IshInTexas]

thank you for the responses. I have purchased two recipes, the aforementioned and a pale I brew for non-homebrew drinkers- 6lb light malt extract, 2lb corn syrup, and 1lb cara-vienne. What do you think if I were to swap grains in each recipe?

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

One other thought is that quite often folks will rack a beer to secondary long before they should. If you secondary, you need to let it sit in primary until you have reached (or nearly reached) your projected final gravity. Determine this with a hydrometer, NOT by just watching bubbles in your airlock. Don't be afraid of getting autolysis (rotting dead yeast). You would need to let the beer sit in primary for a couple of months for that to happen, if then. On a big beer like this, I would let it sit for a full month before transferring anywhere.

Bug, I thought I heard JZ mention autolysis would start affecting the beer in 21 days. This is why home brewing can be so confusing. I am fermenting a 1.080 wheat beer. It has been in the fermenter approaching two weeks, and the airlock stopped kicking every ten seconds a day or so ago. You're saying I should go two more weeks before transferring, right?

I'm beginning to think I am too impatient. I wanna drink it!

[Bugeater]

Autolysis is one of many issues brewers disagree about. The best thing to do is check your gravity now. Check it again in two or three days and see if it changes. If it doesn't, rack it. If it does, check it again in a couple days until you see no further changes.

The big thing to avoid is to rack the beer after the first 4 or 5 days. Two weeks is about the minimum to wait. I do most of mine at about 3 weeks.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company