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Bourbon County Coffee Stout construction help

Shawn

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Hello all - long time reader, first time poster...

Of all the clone recipes available, I have yet to find a post online that removes most of the mystery to making Goose Island's BCCS.  Most posts are very novice-somewhat-educated guesses at what the recipe might be that raise more questions than give good direction, particularly where the process is concerned.  I've done quite a bit of searching and have decided to start constructing what will hopeully be a spot on recipe, from the grain bill all the way down to the proper aging techniques.

We'll start here...

This is from the Goose website -

ABV: 14.3%  IBU: 60
Color: Midnight    Hops: Willamette
Malt: 2-Row, Munich, Chocolate, Caramel, Roast Barley, Debittered Black 
Coffee: Intelligentsia La Tortuga Beans


Most recipes I've seen have their efficiency too high, if they list it at all.  From what I understand, you'll be using first runnings only - no mash out - set mash eff. at about 55-60%.  Mashing at a higher temp is a common opinion - thinking about 158.  Most recipes also want to use something other than Willamette for a bittering hop, as it's a low alpha.  Not doing that here, gonna stay with info from GI and use about 1/2 lb of hops to achieve 60 IBU.

Here is my recipe as it stands, looking for any help from anyone who has attempted this or any other big beer... I'm gonna split into 2 separate mashes due to the amount of grain used.

22 lbs 2 row
5 lbs Munich - 10L
3 lbs Caramel 60L
3 lbs Roasted Barley
2 lbs Chocolate malt
1 lbs Debittered Black malt

Single infusion mash @ 158F for 60 minutes - no mash out.  OG: 1.111  FG: 1.033

All hop additions are Willamette:

1 oz - first wort
2 oz @ 60 min
2 oz @ 45 min
2 oz @ 20 min
1 oz @ 10 min

8 oz cocoa powder @ 10 minutes
16 oz brewed coffee @ 10 minutes

2 packs of Safale - 05  Ferment @ 65F for 5-7 days in primary / 3 mos in secondary w/ bourbon soaked oak chips.

I think this is a good start... any obvious flaws or subtle changes anyone would make?  I'd love to get this refined in order to brew this in the next month or so...

 
Seems to me like just a regular stout with bourbon added.

That seems like a lot of roasted barley and coffee. Should have a massive flavor that I don't recall.

Seemed to have a raisiny taste too. Might want some crystal 120 in there.

I'd use pale malt over 2-row. MO is a great choice for stout.

I'd consider just adding the grinds to the secondary instead of brewing them also. It's gonna be tough enough to hit 14% without adding water. Plus it should be smoother.
 
I've had great success using Millstone Velvet Chocolate Coffee, instead of using chocolate and coffee seperately.  One pot of the coffee added at the end of the boil seems to have the perfect balance of chocolate and coffee for a high gravity stout, such as a Russian Imperial.  It gives the hint of chocolate without it being overpowering or bitter.  It has a creamy chocolate flavor, without being sweet, like candy. 

I've added Hersheys Special Dark Chocolate Candy Bars and Tootsie Rolls too.  The issues with the candy bars is that they substantially up the gravity, while giving a sweet chocolate taste and creamy texture.  If that is what you're after, then they work well too.  I use both the candy and the Millstone, depending on what I want the chocolate profile to taste like.

One note on the candy though, is that you have to perform the primary in a bucket fermenter so that you can clean it afterwards.  They leave a waxy surface on the inside of the fermenter, that is really difficult to get cleaned up from the inside of a carboy.  With the bucket, you can you scalding hot water, with soap and elbow grease though, to get it cleaned off.  There is no way to really get a good scrub inside of a carboy.  Even the bottle brushes made for them take forever to get it out.  The bucket is easy though.

When it goes into the secondary, the waxy part is gone, so no concerns about the wax in the carboy if it's in the secondary.

I've also heard that cocoa nibs in the mash does a nice job.  I tasted a chocolate stout that one of my friends made using the cocoa nibs and it was outstanding.  3 cocoa nibs ground up in the mash seems to about the proper amount.
 
@ grathan - I'd like to stay true to the original recipe as possible.  My goal is to clone, not just to get a good stout.  They list 2-row right on their site, so I want to stay with that.  If you've ever had this, you know this isn't just a regular stout with bourbon added.  I'd like to re-create their process as much as possible - duplicating the aging process is going to be tough until I can afford some used bourbon barrels.  I do like your suggestion for the crystal 120 as I've tasted hints of raisin/prune.
It does seem like a lot of coffee and roast barley, while I think I'll still lean towards using more due to this using only 1st runnings, I think I'll scale them down a bit.  When to add coffee + cocoa and in what form seems to be the foggiest part, thanks for sharing your experience with that.

@ Scott Ickes - like I said to grathan, I want to stay as true to the original as I can without making substitution(s) if it can be avoided.  I have had the issue of tough clean up... so I bough one these: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/the-carboy-cleaner.html  It's always done an awesome job with a little soap/warm water.  That said, I love the cocoa nib idea. 
 
I've never had the beer you are trying to clone, but any good stout or porter has my respect.
I agree that cocoa nibs are the way to go.  They are a very common brew addition.

As for the used bourbon barrels, due to the size and cost among other things not being practical for most homebrewers, I would like to suggest getting a large jar and putting some of the oak spirals that they sell for brewing in it along with some bourbon?
You could age these in the booze, the longer the better, then put them into the beer for a long soak in a secondary.
That seems like the best way to copy the used barrel for homebrew purposes.

I know that they sell the spirals at morebeer.com  Thinking about it I may just order some and find something large to soak a bunch of them in.  The longer they soak, the better.
 
Friends have warned that those spirals are very potent at first.  It's a deceptively high amount of surface area on those things. 

But definitely an easier to wood-age than messing with barrels and keeping barrels wet when not in use. 
 
Never used the spirals but that makes sense.
Maybe the cubes soaked in booze? With cubes you could learn how many you like.
Or use less than a whole spiral.  If you cut them in half, charred them with a torch and then soaked them it might be a better method.

I just looked up the price of the cubes, it might be better to buy a piece of oak from the lumber store or home depot and cut cubes on the table saw. 
 
Using oak, whether it's chips, cubes, spirals, chunks from a store (oak used in smoking of meats), etc. is always a learning process.  It's very difficult to know how much and which type to use.  I started out using the chips and have stayed with them for the last 20+ years. because I know how much I like, having experimented with those only.

Soak your choice of oak in the bourbon for at least three weeks.  Make as much as you want in a canning jar.  Your oaked bourbon will last as long as you want.  You can then stir in a pint of bourbon into the secondary and taste it.  If it isn't enough, pour a little more in.  Keep doing this until the taste is where you want it.  Since you're not adding the oak itself, but the oak infused bourbon, it won't change too much over time.  You probably won't notice any change while it's in the secondary, but only after it's been bottled or kegged for an extended period of time.  It will mellow some though, so after a year or so of aging, it will smooth out and start to blend into the background "a little bit".  I personally would get it just how I want it to taste at the finish when you'll be drinking it (a year or two later) and then add maybe a half pint more to take care of the mellowing that will happen over the aging/conditioning time.

I now usually use 2 ounces of oak in 2 pints for most of my stouts and then pour it all into the secondary for two weeks.  But, this took multiple beers to finally end up at.  My first attempt 20+ years ago was 1 ounce in a pint and it wasn't enough.  A few years later I used 3 ounces in 1 pints of bourbon and the oak was overpowering and the bourbon was missing in action.  I cut it back to the 2 ounces of oak in 2 pints and it seems correct.  I occasionally oak Barley wines also, but only use 1 pint of bourbon and about 1 ounce of oak in those. 

I did use only the bourbon twice.  The first time I got it the way I wanted it and found that it mellowed too much and was lost in the background a year later.  I then added a little extra on a batch two years later and it mellowed nicely.

 
After some further research, I've settled on this:

22 lbs 2-row
5 lbs Munich (10L)
2 lbs Caramel 60L
2 lbs Chocolate malt
2 lbs Caramel 60
1.5 lbs roasted barley
1 lb Caramel 120
1 lb black malt

I'm going to toast 3 lbs of the 2-row and 1 lb of the Munich for 1 hour @ 350*F

Single infusion mash @ 158*F for 60 minutes.  Mash out runnings will be collected and set aside to adjust O.G. as needed.  Will use left over runnings for making a porter.  Mashing in two separate batches due to amount of grain used.

All hop additions are Willamette pellet hops (61.6 IBU):

90 min - 2 oz (first wort)
60 min - 1 oz
30 min - 1 oz
20 min - 2 oz
10 min - 1 oz

3 oz dark bittersweet chocolate @ 15 min
2 oz unsweetened chocolate @ 15 min

2 oz ground coffee @ flameout

2 packs of Safale US-05 for 4-6 days in primary @ 68*F

60-90 days in secondary w/ 6 oz cold-pressed coffee @ 65*F.  Will be soaking some French oak and American oak chips in Makers Mark and adding those to secondary, tasting every week or so after 60 days until satisfied with flavor.

Going to be using Blue Mountain coffee beans.  The 6 oz addition for the secondary should be cold pressed as described here: http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/do-it-yourself/2011/08/how-to-make-cold-brew-coffee/

I made some of this coffee by cold brewing the other day and all I can say is, holy sh*t, holy sh*t, holy sh*t.  Can't wait to taste it in a stout.  Have Thursday off, gonna give it a go.
 
Shawn said:
ABV: 14.3% 
2 packs of Safale - 05  Ferment @ 65F for 5-7 days in primary / 3 mos in secondary w/ bourbon soaked oak chips.



Mashing at 158F will create lots of poly-saccharides and dextrins that are tougher to ferment, and it's a huge beer, so I'd recommend four weeks in primary to allow full fermentation and clean-up of the by-products. 

Did you check a yeast calculator to verify that two packs is enough cell count? 
 
And in that vein of thought, my friend hurt his back badly and stopped brewing for over a year.  He has since kegged a Cal Common and now a cider, each of which were over 14 months old and had sat on primary yeast cake the entire time, at roughly 68F. 

So autolysis on our scale seems to be a non-issue, based on his experience.  A month or two on primary, or six to 12 months in secondary are probably safe bets. 
 
Ya - 3 packs is req'd, good catch.  I think I'll let it sit in primary for a month, take a reading and go from there.

Thanks for the responses.
 
Just an update...

Have been delayed by one thing after another, the weekend is looking good finally.  In between I had an idea to mash at 2 different temps since I'm limited by the size of my mash tun.  Gonna aim for mashing 1/2 at 150F and the other 1/2 at 158F.  This should help my attenuation while keeping some sweetness from the more complex sugars.
 
Now I need some help... I mashed today and the OG of my first runnings is about 1.080.  I have about 5 gallons of this and if I add 1.5 gallon of water, my post-boil OG will be in the neighborhood of 1.350 which is too high as the target is about 1.130. 
 
If you add 1.5 gallons of water and then boil off 1.5 gallons of water, your OG should still be 1.080.  Am I missing something?
 
I took it to mean that he hadn't sparged yet, as he said the OG of his first runnings...BUT still, I'm not following the math of how 5 gallons of !.080 become 1.350, even looking at boiloff.
 
If I use a weighted average of 5 gallons of wort @ 1.080 and 1.5 gallons of tap water @ 1.000 it works out to 1.060 pre-boil OG.  When I plug that in here:  http://onebeer.net/boilcalc.shtml

It says my post-boil OG for 5 gallons will be 1.378
 
Shawn said:
If I use a weighted average of 5 gallons of wort @ 1.080 and 1.5 gallons of tap water @ 1.000 it works out to 1.060 pre-boil OG.  When I plug that in here:  http://onebeer.net/boilcalc.shtml

It says my post-boil OG for 5 gallons will be 1.378

I was able to duplicate your results, if I entered 1.060 for pre boil gravity.  However, in the instructions above, it states to enter the pre boil gravity using only the numbers to the right of the decimal point.  You should have entered 60, instead of 1.060.

When entered as 60, it calculates out to 78.  This is 1.078 gravity.  The calculater is adjusted to eliminate the 1 in front of the decimal point.
 
Yeah - didn't see that at first.  Looks like about 3 lbs DME to hit my OG.
 
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