Recipe feedback for Russian Imperial Stout

It's not too much of anything. It's too low of an IBU I think. I bitter my RIS to around 100 IBU. They will get sweet with time. The brown sugar will do nothing extra over regular sugar anyways- so use what you have on hand. I would mash lower too. You'll need every point there.

Looks more like an imperial brown to me honestly.

 

I like to use just enough roasted grain to make the beer black, as I think it aids drinkability, so I'd probably lower the total roasted malt accordingly. JMO of course.

The key, as you probably know, to this beer is to pitch enough healthy yeast and maintain good temperature control.

 

Probably good for a regular stout, but a RIS has an ashy acrid bitter note to it. Atleast my take on the style is so. It's more than just the color.

But stellar points on the fermentation. You can jack up a big beer fast with crap temp control and not pitching enough healthy yeast.

 

I'd nix the brown sugar. A healthy pitch with 1084 should keep this beer pretty dry. I like the idea of EKG late in the boil. As Fatc1ty said, you can go heavier with the dark malts, and SHOULD go heavier with the hops. Black patent, Special B, and a few more pounds of base malt would be added if I were brewing this. It would be slower to set up and it would have some dark fruit flavor after 8-12 months.

 

Agree completely. I just tend to prefer a less acrid stout, especially when you're dropping 80-120 IBUs in there. Takes so long for those things to smooth out, in my experience.

 

This recipe looks perfectly reasonable to me.

 

He's got 3lb of roasted grain in, I'm assuming, 5gal (otherwise it wouldn't be very 'imperial'); that sounds plenty stouty to me. It doesn't necessarily need 100IBU but it might be good to kick it up to 70-80. I'd be tempted to add another 1-2lb of base malt to make it bigger too. But HB42 is right - OP's recipe will be good as written.

 

OP: Whatever you decide to do it should shape up great. Aerate your beer and keep the ferm temp low and it won't matter what you throw in there.