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Russian Imperial PB Milk Stout Recipe

jterry16

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I'm planning on making my first milk stout.  This is a rough draft of a recipe I'm playing with.  I realize I need to tinker some more, but would love some input.  Thanks in advance!


 

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I have no direct experience with stouts this big, but these points come to mind:

2.5 pounds of dark-roasted grains over 300 Lovibond is a lot.  Enough to be bone dry / roasty astringent?

Recipe has the oats of an oatmeal stout and lactose of milk stout.  And peanut butter.  If the core recipe is already known to you, then at least you know the baseline, but you did say you wanted a milk stout.  The oats and PB and ABV% will take this away from milk stout area. 

The IBU range for RIS is 50 to 90, and the gravity here is on the high end, so you'd typically want IBUs on the high end, and Tinseth is generally considered more accurate, so IBUs may be low for the recipe.  Especially with the added creamy and sweetener ingredients. 

Interestingly, Tinseth says 41 IBU and Rager says 58 IBU.  Most magazines cite Rager in recipes, so this is a good example of how copying a printed recipe can end up very different in BeerSmith, since BS2 defaults to Tinseth. 



 
Perhaps a little insight into my goals so the semantics of judging classifications aren't getting in the way.  At the end of the day, call it what you may, but I'd like a higher ABV stout that has the texture and creaminess of a milk stout (hence the lactose) and the flavor of a peanut butter stout.  With that said, I chose to call it this, but I could be wrong in doing so.  However those are the three things I was trying to attain in this recipe.

Personally, I was thinking the IBU might be low given the high ABV.  Would adding some coffee help with the IBU and be reflected in BS2?  Or would you just increase some hops?

Thanks for your input, it's greatly appreciated.
 
If it's just for you, then ignore "styles" but if it's great, there's always Specialty categories if you enter comps. 

Looking at the Tinseth IBUs, I would expect this to end up tasting sweetish, if only for the other ingredients helping to beat down the hops. 

Approx. 2.5 oz of those Centennial hops would reach 76 IBU and get the BU:GU ratio up to 75%, which looks better than the current 40%. 

If you have a higher AA% hop for some clean bittering that may reduce the boiling of so much vegetal matter for that long. 

The coffee would add more roasted flavors and perhaps more dryness, but may leave it sweet and dry, rather than balanced or even bitter/hoppy, which most expect in stouts.  Again, it's for you, first and foremost, so it's up to you.  I know a sweet mead guy locally that can't stand IBU's over 15 or so.  Face scrunches up like a lemon. 
 
Thanks for the input.  Balanced and smooth is how I would characterize my goal in terms of flavor.  If anything, I'd want it to lean toward the bitter side of things.  I don't want to have any one flavor over power any others though.  I think you're right about the IBU's for sure and I will tone down the dark malts to 1.5lbs total.  1/2 lb of each.  As for the hops, I'll bring up the Centennial hops to 2oz on the 60 min boil.

On the topic of hops, do you think there's a better choice in terms of a higher AA bittering hop for stouts?  Just when I see the description of centennial and I see citrusy and floral, just doesn't bring to mind stout, let alone a peanut butter stout!  Thanks again.
 
Boiled for >60 mins, you're going to burn off most/all those flavors, and be left with the bitterness.  I am personally starting to think that when you need a lot of IBUs, like here, you're better off using a clean, high-alpha hop solely for the bittering.  Much less vegetal hops to be boiling for that long. 

Magnum or Horizon are good options that are usually in most stores.

http://www.homebrewstuff.com/hop-profiles
 
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