Roosevelt Franklin Rye Stout

I am not a big fan of stouts.  While I think the style is good, for the most part, I don’t really care for that burnt or roasted flavor in my beer, or at the level the stouts I encountered earlier in my life.  I always felt challenged in a way that I did not want to be challenged from beverages I drank.  Having said that, I would have to say that I’ve had many stouts in recent years that are not as roasty, but more balanced, or even have a nice chocolate overtone to them.

About a year ago, one of my friends brought me a Bell’s Rye Stout.  It sounded interesting enough.  I was completely blown away when I smelled the beer.  It smelled like toasted dark bread.  It was only the second beer in my life that I wanted to walk around smelling all day, rather than lose that aroma by drinking the beer.  The beer had a nice, dry finish, and more of a chocolate flavor rather than a roasted flavor.

I decided that I wanted to brew something like this.  I contacted Bell’s, but only asked if they actually toasted any of the malts in the beer.  They replied, saying that they did not toast any of the malts, only the combination of the malts resulted in the toastiness of the beer.

I went to the Northern Brewer forum to inquire if anyone had any ideas on how to modify a recipe that I had fashioned.  I was given a nice recipe to try, that was similar to what I had, and rolled with it. 

The beer has turned out well.  It is a good stout, balanced with roastiness and chocolate flavors.  It doesn’t have quite the toasted aroma I want though.

As luck would have it, I was listening to an old Jamil Show podcast about California Common.  Jamil uses a small amount of pale chocolate malt in his California Common recipe to give it a “toastiness”.  He was asked by his co-host on the show if there were any other malts he knew of that would impart a similar flavor.  He stated that for the style of toastiness he was going for, that pale chocolate malt was the only one he was aware of.  Therefore, I have modified my recipe to cut back half the amount of chocolate rye, and in it’s place, use a quarter pound of pale chocolate malt.

Roosevelt Franklin

Batch Size (Gal): 5.50

Anticipated OG:1.069

Anticipated SRM: 30.0

Anticipated IBU: 51.0

Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %

Wort Boil Time: 60    Minutes

10.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row)       

2.00 lbs. Rye Malt             

1.00 lbs. Flaked Rye                  

0.50 lbs. Roasted Barley

0.25 lbs. Chocolate Rye

0.25 lbs. Pale Chocolate Malt

0.50 oz.    Magnum @ 60 min.

0.50 oz.    Nugget @ 60 min.

WYeast 1028 London Ale