Brewing Stout: Tips from the Pros
Brewer: Sean Navish, Portsmouth Brewery in Portsmouth, NH.
My favorite beer style is oatmeal stout. Adding oatmeal to a stout lends a nice, velvety mouthfeel (mainly from the oatmeal’s oils and proteins). This helps round out the aggressive roastiness and acidity of the dark grains.
Because stout is a darker beer, there is a risk of overusing the dark grains, such as roasted barley, chocolate malt and black patent malt (all the typical stout malts). When you calculate color into the recipe, it seems that you could use an infinite amount of these dark grains. But overuse of the darker grains can cause an astringent, acidic or burnt flavor in the stout. The darker grains should be less than 20 percent of the total grist.
I believe the defining character of stout comes through the use of roasted barley. If you want to add more complexity to the stout, you can use other dark grains. Caramel or crystal malt adds some sweetness. Black malt gives a “bite” to the stout. Chocolate malt adds color with a less-aggressive flavor. Caramalt or dextrin malt add sweetness and body because they are less fermentable than other malts.
The darker roasted grains are drier than pale malts, so they tend to shatter into smaller pieces in the milling process. You can get around this problem by milling the darker grains separately, with the gap on the mill set a bit looser. It also helps to evenly distribute the dark grains (and any flaked or rolled grains like oatmeal) in the mash. Mixing up the grist (or layering it) before wetting the grains is one way to achieve this.
Hops add a more floral or spicy type of bitterness, which makes the stout more complex. Any hop variety can be used to make stout, but the higher-alpha varieties seem to be detectable through the roasted grains more than the lower-alpha varieties, even when the same amount of IBUs are added. I like to use Chinook, Centennial or Galena hops (all rated around 9–15 percent alpha acids).
I prefer to use a traditional stout yeast like White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) or Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) yeast. They ferment cleanly, so the flavors of the malts don’t get dulled. But, any English ale yeast is acceptable as long as it doesn’t produce excessive amounts of diacetyl.
There are a few things to do to get a more full-bodied mouthfeel in your stout. The best way is to build the mouthfeel in the mashing process — mash at a higher temperature (155–160 °F) or use caramalt or dextrin malts at 8–10 percent of the grist.
For draft stout, definitely use a nitrogen and CO2 mix (around 75 percent N2 to 25 percent CO2). A mixed-gas blend adds a lot to the finished stout — a creamy thick head, the cascading effect during pouring and the lower amount of carbonation allows the full flavors of the stout to be displayed. Also, mixed gas lets you drink more stout without feeling bloated!
Brewer: Jim Stinson, Rockyard Brewing Company in Castle Rock, CO.
There are many kinds of stout for a homebrewer to experiment with, including sweet and dry stout. I prefer oatmeal stout for its rich flavor and full body.
Stout is such a big beer that it seems as if you can almost throw anything into the recipe and it will turn out great. But, a little black malt and roasted malt go a long way. It’s easy to overdo them in your grain bill.
Still, roasted barley and dark caramel malts are the key to a stout’s unique flavor. Shoot for malt and caramel sweetness dominated by roasted and toasted flavors that finish with coffee-like dryness. You want a balance between the sweetness of the malt and the bitterness from the roasted barley. If you use dark caramel malts, these will contribute to toasted flavors and unfermentables, which will add to the beer’s body.
A stuck mash is usually not a problem with all-malt beers, but stout brewers should be careful not to grind their dark malts into dust. If you do, the grains may end up gumming together, which could lead to lauter problems. Avoid the problem altogether by adding dark grains during the lauter (there is no need to mash them). Extract brewers can steep them while heating the boil water.
Hop flavor and aroma are not especially evident in stout. Hop bitterness ranges from balanced to high. Hops are necessary to balance the sweetness of the malt, particularly in fuller-bodied stouts that would be unbearably sweet without hops. I have used Nugget, Northern Brewer, Challenger and Amarillo with good success. I tend to avoid high-alpha hops because they sometimes leave a cloying resin taste.
I use Ringwood yeast (Wyeast 1187) for my stouts. Stouts tend to blow off a lot of foam. You can reduce this by pitching at a low temperature and then allowing the beer to warm to fermentation temperatures.
