Begin Brewing!

My first attempt at brewing a Dragon Stout clone resulted in a beer that initially tasted pretty good, but began to dry out and lose some of its subtle flavors and nearly all of its sweetness. When entered into competition, it scored extremely low. I might be upset about that if it wasn't for the fact that it was a published recipe, not something I'd come up with on my own.  This version is no different. It's a recipe that did not originate from me, but looked like a closer match to the real beer than the previous one. Ingredients 5 pounds 6-row Malt 1 pound, 2 ounces Flaked Corn 8 ounces Crystal 120L 4 ounces Chocolate Malt 3 ounces Blackprinz Malt (the recipe called for Black Patent, but it wasn't available) 1 ounce Roasted Barley 4 ounces Turbinado Sugar (the recipe called for brown sugar, but I used this instead) 4 ounces Corn Sugar 0.31 ounces Magnum hops @ 12.2% AA (60 min.) 3.2 gallons of starting water, mixed with the two sugars above 1 pac...

When I visited Jamaica several years ago, a bartender at our resort introduced me to Dragon Stout, their local beer.  I loved it.  I ended up going shopping and buying a lot of the local beers, but nothing appealed to me as much as Dragon Stout and its higher-alcohol cousin, Dragon Stout Spitfire. Truth be told, I liked Spitfire just a little more. I brought some back with me. Having re-read a BYO Magazine article about Debittered Black Malt  (note: a subscription is required to access the article), I was reminded that they had published a recipe for a Dragon Stout Clone there. As documented below, it's slightly modified from their version and is scaled for use in the Picobrew Zymatic.  I also switched out the corn sugar in their recipe for some Turbinado sugar, which I thought might lend a more brown-sugar flavor to it. Recipe 7.25 pounds 6-row Pale Malt 0.50 pounds Crystal 80L Malt 0.50 pounds Debittered Belgian Black Malt 1.00 pounds Turbinado Sugar 0...