Dry Stout

Dry Stout Recipe

Stout is a fascinating beer with no less than four distinct styles of its own: classic (dry), foreign, sweet, and imperial.

As this is the first stout recipe I’ve developed for BeerCraftr, I kept it classic. The dry stout really is the standard and we should all strive to have a good one in our repertoire—one we could almost make in our sleep. I hope this does that. I’ve kept it simple with only one hop variety so you can experiment with the dosage of your choosing.  Although, to stay within the style, I’d only experiment with the amount of aroma hops (near the end of the boil), and do so in small degrees. Treat this recipe as a blank canvass to work from.

Recipe Profile

  • Method: 1 gallon BIAB (Brew-in-a-bag), single stage
  • Target OG (Original Gravity): 1.050
  • Target FG (Final Gravity): 1.014
  • Bitterness (IBUs): 37
  • Estimated ABV: 4.2%
  • Boil: 60 minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs UK Pale Malt (2 row)
  • 4 oz Roasted Barley
  • 0.15 oz (4.25 g) UK Target Hops at 60 minutes
  • 0.15 oz ( 4.25 g) UK Target Hops at 5 minutes
  • London Ale Yeast (Wyeast 1028)

The Mash

  1. Bring 9 litres of water to a temperate of 162°F. Add your grains and give everything a good stir until the whole thing looks a bit like oatmeal. Shut off the heat, cover with a lid, and let it steep at 156°F for 60 minutes.
  2. Then you need to “mash out.” You put the heat back on, and raise the temperature  to 168°F (75.6°C) and keep stirring for 7 minutes.
  3. Remove the grains and prepare for the boil. If you’re using a bag, just pull it out and let it drip near-dry above the pot. If you’re using a colander, strain to remove the grains, preserving the wort, which you’ll add back to the pot.
  4. Check that your gravity is on track and correct it, if neededYou need 65 gravity points for this recipe, and our target post-boil volume is 1.3 gallons.

The Boil

  1. Start the boil by bringing your wort up to a boil. Once boiling, start your timer. Add your bittering hops, as prescribed above.
  2. Meanwhile, prepare your sanitizer solution.
  3. Just before the boil is complete, make an ice bath in your kitchen sink. Load it up with as much ice and cold water as you can. Once the boil is over, transfer your pot to the sink to cool your wort to pitching temperature, as prescribed on the yeast pack. Remember to sanitize your thermometer every time you check the temperature.
  4. Meanwhile, thoroughly clean and sanitize your carboy, screw cap, airlock, funnel, and strainer/colander. You want everything to be ready to go once the wort is at the right temperature.
  5. Once the wort is at pitching temperature, transfer it to the carboy by passing it through a strainer overtop the funnel. Do not fill the carboy higher than the one-gallon mark.
  6. Aerate the wort.  Cover the fermenter with a screw cap and gently rock the carboy back and forth for a few minutes to mix in some air.
  7. Pitch the yeast! Use sanitized scissors to cut open the package and pour in only half of the yeast.
  8. Seal the carboy by filling the airlock with sanitizer. Fit it in the screw cap. Move the carboy to a dark spot, free of the home’s daily commotion for at least 14 days (but ideally not more than 21).

Bottling Day

  1. Move the carboy to the countertop, if it wasn’t already there. If the wort got lots of movement during transfer, let it sit so that any stirred-up yeast has a chance to re-settle.
  2. Sanitize everything that will come in contact with the beer: bottling bucket, auto-siphon, tubing, filler, bottles, and bottle caps.
  3. Dissolve 0.59 oz (17g) corn sugar in enough boiling water to dissolve it. Add the dissolved sugar solution to your sanitized bottling bucket.
  4. Fill your auto-siphon and hose with sanitizer before submerging in the carboy. Transfer the solution to a spare container until the beer has completely replaced all the sanitizer in the tubes. Now you can place the end with the bottle filler in the bottling bucket, which should also be on the floor and gently transfer the beer from the carboy to the bucket.
  5. Transfer all the liquid up and the point where it reaches the sediment. Leave the sediment in the carboy.
  6. Now, move the bottling bucket to the counter and siphon the beer quietly into each bottle. When the liquid gets to the very top of the bottle, remove the bottle filler, which will leave the perfect amount of headspace at the top of the bottle.
  7. Cover each bottle with the sanitized caps and cap them into place, or secure your sanitized swing-top caps if using those.
  8. Store the bottles upright in a quiet, dark corner at 65F (18.5C) or so.
  9. Wait 30 days, if you can. If you’re way too curious (I can’t blame you!) try and hold out for 14 days. If you absolutely can’t wait, you can try after 7 days, but the beer really needs at least 14 days to condition.

Comments

12 responses to “Dry Stout”

  1. MArk wyatt

    Hi,just wondering if the temperature you bring the water to prior to adding the grains,is the temperature that needs to be maintained throughout the mash,as adding the grains will effect the temp of the prepared water,or can this temp allow to drop slightly?

    1. Hi Mark,

      That’s a very good question. My fault for not including the steep temperature on this one (it’s in the PDF download, but I seem to have neglected it here!) You want to steep at 156 (F) for this recipe. So, to answer your questions, the you use a different temperature for strike vs steep.

      Cheers, JL

  2. Ben Manoach

    Hi Joseph,
    I would like to ask two questions on this RECIPE
    1. in the PDF you have only one pound of UK Pale Malt but i BELIEVE that 2 pounds is the right number, am i right?
    2. I do all grains WITHOUT a bag, 1.25 – 1.5q/ib mash and around 2/ib sparge (or what it takes to get enough worth), you have only one step, will two steps be SUFFICIENT? i don’t have a pot for 9 liters
    Thank you,
    Ben

    1. Hi Ben, it’s 1.75 lbs in the booklet, which is a mistake. Thanks so much for catching it. You’re right, use 2 lbs, as I listed here on the recipe page.

      Indeed, you can try with two steps. Other readers have used my recipes using two-steps successfully. (You might even get a higher gravity — BIAB grain bills have to compensate for some lost efficiencies).

  3. Ben Manoach

    thank you Joseph,
    i made the irish red in two steps and it was perfect

    sorry about the caps, i get only upper cases when i’m writing

    thank you,

    ben

  4. Kevin

    Thanks for this recipe , I’m going to try it this weekend. Cheers

  5. Brad

    Hey Joseph,
    I see the target gravity is 1.050 but the pre-boil instructions say it should be 65 points is this a typo or are points not the same as specific gravity?

    1. Hi Brad, No, that’s not a typo. My recipes yield 1.3 gallons of beer, so when you multiply 1.3 by 50 = 65 points. I hope that clarifies it! More here: https://www.beercraftr.com/correct-original-gravity/

  6. When exact am i supposed to add hops? 60 mins after my boil? And then 5miNutes after That?

  7. Dr Harish Kumar Kabilan

    Add the hops at 60 mins meaning?

  8. […] Beercrafter.com – Dry Stout (simple grain and hop bill to start from) […]

  9. Kyle

    JUST CURIOUS, WHY WAIT 30 DAYS? CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN TO A NEWBIE THE DETAILS OF WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BOTTLE THAT COULDNT HAPPEN IN THE FERMENTER?

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