Black Dog Stout

Stouts are a style I don't drink very often, but that I still love. It is also one I've been looking forward to brewing. My beers this summer were all light colored, but as fall approaches, I've started straying more toward the darker beers, which is going to culminate in some darker German beers that I'm going to start formulating recipes for.

It's a little unnerving for a new brewer to do some of these darker beers. The malts that you use to get the colors right can easily stray into something that can be undrinkable. That was on the forefront of my mind when I was putting this one together, but I think I balanced it right.

The recipe-

Grains-
Organic Pale 2 Row- 8 pounds
Flaked Barley- 1 pound
Roasted Barley- 8 ounces
Black Patent Malt- 8 ounces
Faucett Crystal 40 L- 4 ounces

Hops-
Nugget- .75 ounces- 60 minutes
Fuggle- 1 ounce- 13 minutes (it was supposed to be 15, but whatever)

Yeast-
White Labs East Coast Ale- Yeast cake from Brown Ale

Mash-
153/170 mashout- Hot water infusion

Again, my main concern was going to be that I used too much of the darker malts where it could potentially be acrid, but I tried to sweeten it some with the Crystal. The flaked barley should add some nice smoothness and thicken it slightly in a similar way to using oatmeal, but without depleting our breakfast cereal. It had a nice thick look to it when I was draining it from the brew kettle. And dark dark dark.

Stouts have also had a history of having very strange ingredients on occasion. Like oysters. I considered cooking my traditional brewing lunch hot dog in the boiling wort, but elected not to considering that a vegetarian or two will probably drink some of these.

Obviously, this one is named for Patterson, the original super brew dog.