Base Stout Recipe Critique

My brewing buddy and I have decided to brew a stout that will serve as a canvas for adding adjuncts and general experimentation. The plan is to brew a stout in the ~7% range that will be split into 1 gallon containers following fermentation. We are planning to keep 1 gallon as a "control" that will not be subject to any treatments, so we have a baseline for comparison and critique. This way, should any off flavors or issues crop up we'll know if they're in the base beer as a whole or only in the treated version.

The goal with this recipe is to create a stout that is relatively lowly hopped and balanced so that the treatments can compliment and accentuate aspects of the base. We do not want anything that will be overly roasty, chocolatey, caramelly, etc on it's own. Just a solid beer that when you drink you'd think is a good, albeit unremarkable stout. The following recipe is what I've come up with so far and would appreciate any feedback.

This recipe is based on 68% total efficiency (have been getting higher with my new grain mill and malt
conditioning but that's new to my process and not quite dialed in yet)

Estimated OG: 1.071
Estimated FG: 1.018
82% Briess pale ale malt
7% chocolate malt (350°L)
5.5% roasted barley (300°L)
5.5% caramel 40°L

Mash at 155°F for 60 minutes at 1.33qt/lb, mash out to 170°F, then batch sparge.

Boil for 60 minutes
-add 1 oz Magnum at 60 mins (32 IBU)
-add 1 oz EKG at 5 mins (~3 IBU)

Pitch a 64 oz starter of WLP001 and ferment at 62°F for 7 days, ramp up to 68°F over the next few days to finish fermentation strong, and then cold crash when fermentation is finished. After that the beer will be racked to 1 gallon containers, unsure of the adjuncts we'll settle on but items coffee, chai spices, oak cubes, maples cubes, and others have been discussed. Certainly open to suggestions if anyone has done this before and had something they really enjoyed. Cheers, and thanks in advance.

 

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

We're not 100% sure on what we'll be adding to all of the gallon containers but we will definitely be doing coffee and a chai spice blend. Other thoughts we're kicking around include Palo Santo, toasted maple cubes, maple syrup, cocoa nibs/PB2, and a cocoa nib/orange tincture. I'm sure there are others but these are most likely. If any of them are great we may do a whole batch in the future and if any are terrible, well there will only be 9-10 bottles of each.

 

To follow up on this post...

We brewed this recipe exactly as I posted above and hit all of our anticipated numbers dead on. The resulting base stout is very good on its own merit without any additions. It has a very nice blend of dark chocolate and coffee and has just enough residual sweetness to keep it from becoming thin on the palate. The hops are subdued but evident and not present enough to interfere with any of the additions we did in the secondary. Overall, the base is very good stout and I've filed it in my "brew again - no changes" folder in my copy of Beersmith.

The additions were all 1 gallon secondary containers for 5 days and we added:
-Chai spice blend (3g dried ginger, 4g cardamom, 2g clovess)
-Bourbon soaked oak cubes (14g) - double soaked in Woodford Reserve, only oak cubes added
-Coffee (City+ roast Sumatra beans, 28g coarsely crushed)
-Mexican hot chocolate blend (4g cinnamon, 4g chipotle pepper, 1g nutmeg, 14g cocoa nibs, 5g vanilla, 7g coffee)
-Orange peel & cocoa nibs (14g dried orange peel, 28g nibs) --- I cut the outermost peel of several clementine oranges and dried them in the over for a couples hours at 200°F to dry them out

Tasting notes:
Chai: This was not one of my favorites, the cardamom was very noticeable and came across with a bit of a black pepper note. The ginger was noticeable but subdued and overpowered by the cardamom. The cloves were not obvious at all. The base stout came through as roasty but the nice chocolate and coffee in the base were lost and did not meld well with the spices. If I were to try this one again I'd cut the amount of cardamom in half and only steep it for 48 hours.

Bourbon soaked oak cubes: The oak is not overpowering but it does lend a slight dryness to the finish of the beer. The aroma presents itself with more vanilla than anything else, but the flavor is a very nice blend of the base stout, light oakiness, vanilla, almond and just a hint of bourbon. The subtlety of oak and bourbon is what make this one nice, longer aging would have been too oaky.

Coffee: I thought this would be the can't miss addition in the bunch and I was dead wrong. Several confounding factors probably were against us with this one. I roasted the coffee darker than I should have and we steeped it too long. This resulted in an unfortunately over-roasted, ashy, and over extracted coffee. I drink this coffee traditionally brewed and it's great but a lighter a roast steeped for 2-3 days would have yielded a better result. I'm allowing it to mellow but don't anticipate significant improvements.

Mexican hot chocolate: The aroma consists of spicy pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, and maybe a hint of coffee. The flavor on this is driven by the chipotles. It has a very light smokiness that blends nicely with the heat of the pepper. The cinnamon and nutmeg are present, but the vanilla and cocoa show up much more than in the aroma. The coffee doesn't really come through at all in the flavor. The balance of the sweet spices is great, but the heat is a little bit more than I was hoping for. My wife and I both really enjoy it, but when I make this version again I'll probably cut the amount of chipotle down to 2g/gallon.

Chocolate Orange: The orange is more subtle that I anticipated in the aroma and the cocoa is a bit more distinct that I thought it would be. The orange doesn't come across as strong orange, but rather citrusy. The flavor melds well with the base, with the chocolate brought to the forefront, but the orange is present at the beginning of the sip and lingers for a moment after swallowing. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with this one. I'd actually up the orange by 7g/gallon were we to make this version again.

This was a fun experiment and I have a very nice "mix case" of beers to enjoy for awhile. Critiques and suggestions for improvement are welcome! Sláinte!

 

Thanks for the feedback. I do really like Special B and could see a small percentage being a nice addition this beer, hadn't thought of that. I have a RIS i secondary right now that uses ~4% Special B and it's one of my yearly winter brews.

 

I used dried chipotles that I removed the seeds from and then put them in a spice grinder until the pieces were about the size of red pepper flakes. A little goes a long way, with the seeds removed there's still quite a bit of heat and flavor using 4g/gallon.