Home brew stout?

thereitisgone

Have many here tried to make home brew stout, am thinking on trying Ditchs Stout.
http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31569
Or has anyone better recommendations for a Stout recipe.

Carawaystick

Seems like an infection waiting to happen, adding unsanitised sugar, malt and waiting a day before pitching yeast.

Palmer reckons hard water is best with dark beers, and soft water for lighter styles. I'd also leave it ferment for 2 weeks, Stouts improve with age.
I also wouldn't bother heating it, if it's fermenting in a house where people live.

thereitisgone

Thanks for the reply Cara, bit new too this you say the sugar and malt are unsanitised, how do get sanitised sugar and malt or can you sanitise them. Ya wont bother heating room is warm enough.

poitinstill

ive often opened a bag of sugar and added some to boost a few % points abv. also regularly use no chill method prior to pitching. once things are fairly clean and kept covered you should be ok but it is an added risk.

Carawaystick

The simple way to avoid risk from the sugar is to not use it and use malt instead.

Boil up the malt in some water.
add to fermenter
add kit
stir, add cool water
pitch yeast

thereitisgone

Thanks for the replies, he uses one kilo of malt extract in that recipe and only just started adding the sugar, so will leave out the sugar. is spraymalt the same as malt extract. Thinking of using spraymalt dark ebc 57 and wyeast xl 1084 irish ale yeast as its recommended for dry stout. Does this seem about right or am i way off.

BeerNut

thereitisgone wrote: »

is spraymalt the same as malt extract

Yep.

My normal stout recipes are along these lines:

3 kg Light DME
.5 kg Roast Barley (steeped)
.3 kg Chocolate Malt (steeped)
50 g Challenger (7.0%) boiled 60 min
20 g Fuggle (5.4%) boiled 20 min
30 g Fuggle (5.4%) boiled 0.0 min
Safale S-04
23L
OG: 1.051
FG: 1.017
4.5% ABV
Carbonation: 142g of dextrose, for 2.4 volumes of CO2.

Usually turns out drinkable. I don't think I'll use S-04 again, though: too estery.

n97 mini

Sugar presents no risk as it contains no water. Bacteria that land on sugar are killed in such an environment as the sugar will actually absorb the water from the bacteria.

It's the reason why dry sugar never goes off.

thereitisgone

After checking out what estery meant ( thanks beernut) that wyeast xl 1084 irish ale yeast seems to make too much over 18 degrees and the room im doing it in is about 22 degrees so may change to wyeast london ale, it seems better suited to my situation. Thanks everybody for the great advice will start collecting everything and tell you if its a hit or a miss.

Carawaystick

n97 mini wrote: »

Sugar presents no risk as it contains no water. Bacteria that land on sugar are killed in such an environment as the sugar will actually absorb the water from the bacteria.

It's the reason why dry sugar never goes off.

You can have yeasts and molds on it, which don't mind the dry. Used to see the sugar in storage in a supermarket back in the day...