[Dragonflylady]

Daughter is lactose intolerant. Trying to make a fairly robust (5-8% ABV preferably) sweat chocolate stout. There is a Bell's cream stout that I have seen on some of my searches- but no clone recipe. Any ideas? Thanks

[dmtaylor]

The more malt you use / higher original gravity, the sweeter the beer will turn out.  Another trick is to use a low attenuating yeast such as Windsor or S-33, which will only attenuate to about 60% or 67%, respectively.  If I were you, and willing to end up with the ABV up to 7-8%, I might aim for OG 1.088 (approximately), which with one of those yeasts should end up with around FG 1.030 and 7% ABV or more.  A finishing gravity of 1.030 should be plenty sweet, with no lactose required.

Use any stout recipe that looks good to you, and just add extra base malt to bring you to about 1.088.  If using extract, this is pretty straight forward.  If brewing all grain, expect a low brewhouse efficiency around 55% for such a big OG.  The more malt you use, the more you need.  Might seem odd but it's true.  So to end up with 5 gallons (for example), it wouldn't be unheard of to need 15-20 pounds of malt to achieve this.  If you want to use less malt, it also helps to sparge a huge volume and plan to boil for 2-3 hours.  This will improve efficiency at the expense of boil time.  If this is all overly complicated, just add extract and be done with it.  In any case, the goal of my idea is to end up with a nice high FG close to 1.030, that will be a creamy beer for sure.

[Skeeter686]

The more malt you use / higher original gravity, the sweeter the beer will turn out.  Another trick is to use a low attenuating yeast such as Windsor or S-33, which will only attenuate to about 60% or 67%, respectively. 

I assume you'd also want to mash at a higher temperature, in order to maximize the less fermentable sugars.

[dmtaylor]

The more malt you use / higher original gravity, the sweeter the beer will turn out.  Another trick is to use a low attenuating yeast such as Windsor or S-33, which will only attenuate to about 60% or 67%, respectively. 

I assume you'd also want to mash at a higher temperature, in order to maximize the less fermentable sugars.

You can try that, but the results are much more unpredictable.

[fredthecat]

The more malt you use / higher original gravity, the sweeter the beer will turn out.  Another trick is to use a low attenuating yeast such as Windsor or S-33, which will only attenuate to about 60% or 67%, respectively.  If I were you, and willing to end up with the ABV up to 7-8%, I might aim for OG 1.088 (approximately), which with one of those yeasts should end up with around FG 1.030 and 7% ABV or more.  A finishing gravity of 1.030 should be plenty sweet, with no lactose required.

Use any stout recipe that looks good to you, and just add extra base malt to bring you to about 1.088.  If using extract, this is pretty straight forward.  If brewing all grain, expect a low brewhouse efficiency around 55% for such a big OG.  The more malt you use, the more you need.  Might seem odd but it's true.  So to end up with 5 gallons (for example), it wouldn't be unheard of to need 15-20 pounds of malt to achieve this.  If you want to use less malt, it also helps to sparge a huge volume and plan to boil for 2-3 hours.  This will improve efficiency at the expense of boil time.  If this is all overly complicated, just add extract and be done with it.  In any case, the goal of my idea is to end up with a nice high FG close to 1.030, that will be a creamy beer for sure.

exactly this, i dont drink sweet stouts or cream stouts though so im not familiar with typical OGs. but yeah, just density through high OG, lots of unfermentables like crystal malts and roasted malts. a good portion of pale chocolate malt and smaller amounts of british black malts and chocolate malts will accentuate the chocolate without harsh notes you might get in roasted barley. windsor tastes great but attenuates very poorly, so it would definitiely work for this.

im lactose intolerant, so i wish they didnt just resort to dumping lactose into pastry/sweet stouts like this as they generally seem to do