Sound like a middle of the road porter/stout?

[Stormcrow]

4 gallon batch.
Looking at doing

7lbs. Marris Otter (84.8%)
8 oz. Roasted barley (6.1%)
6 oz. Fawcett pale chocolate (4.5%)
6 oz. Flaked Barley (4.5%)

Hopped to around 30 IBU with something English or Northern Brewer.

Trying to keep it simple. I loved the pale chocolate in brown ale I did a few months ago. Any advice?
Thanks

 

[rhys333]

Yeah, you're probably on the money if you want a porter bordering on a stout. The pale chocolate might get lost against the roasted barley, but it depends what you're going for. My favorite easy drinking stout uses 6% each UK black patent and chocolate malt.

 

[Stormcrow]

Yeah, you're probably on the money if you want a porter bordering on a stout. The pale chocolate might get lost against the roasted barley, but it depends what you're going for. My favorite easy drinking stout uses 6% each UK black patent and chocolate malt.

Awesome. Thanks. Any recommendations on a yeast? I try to stick with dry.

 

[rhys333]

Awesome. Thanks. Any recommendations on a yeast? I try to stick with dry.

For dry yeast, good old US-05 should do the trick as long as you mash low.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

With that much roast barley and no brown malt or crystal malt, I'd lean more towards it being a stout. Either way, it looks quite reasonable and should be good. I'm with you on really liking pale chocolate - it's a great malt. What's the expected OG? 1.050ish? For yeast, it depends whether you're aiming for clean (us05) or a bit fruitier. My personal favourite at the moment for all dark beers is WY1318.

 

[Stormcrow]

With that much roast barley and no brown malt or crystal malt, I'd lean more towards it being a stout. Either way, it looks quite reasonable and should be good. I'm with you on really liking pale chocolate - it's a great malt. What's the expected OG? 1.050ish? For yeast, it depends whether you're aiming for clean (us05) or a bit fruitier. My personal favourite at the moment for all dark beers is WY1318.

The app I use is predicting 1.053. That said, I had to enter the pale chocolate as regular chocolate malt in the software because that's the only one it has. I doubt it will affect gravity much though, maybe the color. Since I was planning on getting this beer ready for Christmas, I thought about pulling a gallon into a secondary with some kind of dark fruit or spruce tips or something. Not sure what I'm getting into there though. I know there are some hops that might add some pine or minty notes. I'm still brainstorming. If you know of a cool post boil experiment I could do with a gallon, please let me know. Maybe something Christmas themed.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

If I was putting a gallon away for that long, I'd go with something big and spicy. Maybe a half pound each of DME and honey and some steeped crystal malt, simmered with some spices (orange zest, cinnamon, vanilla, cloves, nutmeg) added to the gallon to make a boozey spiced christmas stout?

 

[BrewMan13]

I like it. No frills grist, with enough roasted malts to say "yup, I'm a stout". I hop mine with northern brewer usually. Yeast you can go almost anywhere; I stick to English strains typically, but US05 would be fine.

 

[Steveruch]

I'm happily drinking this now.
2 gallons (1.050-1.012)
1.5 lbs golden light dme
1 lb wheat dme
6 ozs pale chocolate malt
4 ozs victory
2 ozs black patent
.2 oz palisades
.66 oz EKGs
S-04