I would like to brew Breakfast Stout next, but am having trouble finding direct info on the basics to include.
It should include: Oatmeal, coffee, maple syrup?, chocolate, etc, right?
I'd give a pass on the maple syrup, it's fairly subtle and if you're adding coffee, oatmeal and chocolate there's already a lot going on in your beer. If you want to use it, consider using it as all or part of your priming sugar. If you use it, be sure to use lower grade pure maple syrup. The lower grades have more maple character. Corn syrup flavored with maple just ends up tasting like corn syrup (i.e., cidery).
To get oatmeal into your beer, you might want to do a mini-mash using a pound or so of American pale malt and 3-4 oz. of unflavored instant oatmeal (the starches in it are more gelatinized than "old fashioned" flaked oats). When I mini-mashed, I found that a Crock Pot worked well, although you might need to fiddle with the temperature settings or take the lid off to get the temperature where you want. Alternately, you can just add flaked oats to the steeping grains, but that will pull off more unmodified starches and proteins, giving you a slightly "raw oats" character and possibly also haze problems.
For chocolate flavor, consider buying or making a chocolate liqueur and adding it in secondary. That way you can control the degree of chocolate character. Either that, or just use chocolate malt to get the character you're after. Don't boil cocoa powder! It will extract tannins.
For coffee flavor, it's generally easier to make French press coffee and add that to secondary as well. Again, you have better flavor control. Also, leaving coffee beans/grounds in contact with the beer for long periods of time can extract tannins.
Topic: Breakfast Stout Recipe Help/Ideas (Read 4289 times)
