Guinness Black Lager Clone help

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SteBeardface

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Hi everyone! The brother-in-law has been asking quite a lot about a recipe for making a clone of the Guinness Black Lager (https://www.guinness.com/en-ie/beers-around-the-world/guinness-black-lager/).

Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start besides using lager yeast and roasted barley in the grain bill somewhere as stated on the bottle. The website also says they use Saaz and Cascade hops.

Would anyone be able to help towards a recipe for this at all?
 
Tbh, Guiness have given you most (if not all) the information you need right their in the link. It'll just take some experimenting to get it right.

First off do you have the ability to lager, i.e. have a fermentation fridge? If you dont, no worries. Just cheat and make a pseudo lager. Fortunately its winter at the moment so just find the coldest place in your house and use something like CML kolsch or califoria common yeast. Or good old notty.

I seem to remember guinness cold steep the RB for their stout. Do the same for the lager. The RB would be far to agressive and roasty for a lager if you didnt anyway

I'm deffo not an expert on hopping so hopefully a hopping expert will be along soon to help you with that but you could just experiment a bit
 
I think you will have to use your senses by tasting the original to come up with an approximation. Its probably just an ordinary lager brewed by Guinness with some roasted barley and cascade as unusual (for an ordinary lager) additions. So the first questions I would be considering is how does the roasted barley flavour compare to a stout, and then how big is the cascade hoppiness compare to a cascade driven pale ale. Answer those questions and you are on the way to coming up with a roasted barley quantity addition to a standard lager grain bill and the quantity of cascade to be added as a late hop in the boil or perhaps a dry hop. And when you do get to have a go don't brew 23 litres, brew say half that or even less in case it doesnt match your expectations.
 
SteBeardface said:
Hi everyone! The brother-in-law has been asking quite a lot about a recipe for making a clone of the Guinness Black Lager (https://www.guinness.com/en-ie/beers-around-the-world/guinness-black-lager/).

Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start besides using lager yeast and roasted barley in the grain bill somewhere as stated on the bottle. The website also says they use Saaz and Cascade hops.

Would anyone be able to help towards a recipe for this at all?
Click to expand...
I would just go with a Schwarzbier recipe and sub the chocolate malt for roast barley adding enough to pick up the roastiness, use the hops as in link and a lager yeast. Ferment as a lager and you will just about nail it.
 

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