Brew Day - Stout and a Decoction Mash

I've decided for today's brew, I'll be making an Oatmeal Stout.  The focus of today's post will be on a specific type of mash called the "Decoction" mash. This post is about becoming familiar with the mash processes other than an infusion mash for knowledge sake, not necessarily for the utility (I assume I'll end up with a lower mash efficiency than normal, as my system is best made for infusion and batch sparging).

Usually home brewers will utilize the basic single step infusion mash.  The infusion mash is only really possible today because of two things: fully modified grains and accurate temperature control and measurement.  Prior to the availability of fully modified grains and accurate temperature monitoring, a decoction mash was used to reach acid and protein rests. Then a saccharification/mash out step, an infusion step and sparge was possible without actually needing a proper thermometer.

If using a lot of adjunct grains (wheat, rye, oats, etc) it's a good call to use a protein rest. A protein rest has been used for under-modified grains to break down proteins into amino acids that are usable by yeast. My recipe for this brew does not need a decoction mash or protein rest, but since it's the old school way of mashing, we're going to give it a try.

The other reason for using a decoction mash is temperature control.  Through a bit of trial and error, the brewer can determine how much boiling of a decoction is needed to get a mash up to the correct temperature .  This means with close attention to detail, the brewer can consistently brew without the need of a thermometer (although I will be using one - it would take a few tries to get this right without one).  As long as the brewer uses the same ratio of volumes of liquid in mash and decoction boil, with the same amounts of grain and same equipment, the final product should always be the same. [EDIT: I should be more clear here, working without a thermometer would require a multi-step decoction, and we'd need to figure out boil volumes to get our grains to each step]


I'll be doing the simplest decoction mash today - a single step decoction. We'll be doing a protein rest, a single decoction with a saccharification and boil, 30 minute mash and a fly sparge.  In the future, I'll be doing a heavily adjuncted (possibly a gluten-free) beer, that will utilize multiple decoctions.

Terms:
Adjunct: Sources of fermentable sugars other than barley. Usually grains that are not fully modified.  Common commercial adjuncts are wheat, rice and corn, others are millet, quinoa, buckwheat, oats and rye.   Usually require mashing with barley for proper saccharification.
Decoction: Running's from the MLT that will be heated and added back to the mash
Rest: Period of time keeping the grains and/or decoction at a specified temperature
Saccharification: The process of breaking complex carbohydrates into monosaccarides (fermentable sugars)
Protein Rest:  Holding grains at about 122F to break down proteins into usable amino acids.

All Grain Oatmeal Stout
9.5# Organic Crisps Pale Ale Malt
1# Organic Great Western Wheat Malt*
1# Organic Rolled Oats
.5# Organic Briess Caramel 120 Malt
.5# Organic Briess Chocolate Malt
.5# Organic Weyermann Carafa II Malt
.5 oz. Organic Belgian Admiral Pellet Hops @ 60min
.5 oz Organic Belgian Cascade Pellet Hops @ 20 min
.5 oz Organic Kent Golding Pellet Hops @ 5 min

*Wheat isn't really common in stouts (maybe in a Russian Imperial Stout).  I added this because I had a pound sitting around, and it kind of goes with the decoction mash.

Project Values:
Volume: 5 Gal
OG: 1.070
FG: 1.018
ABV%: 6.8
IBU: 27.4

The Single Step Decoction Mash:
The quick and dirty steps of a single step decoction mash for the grain bill:

1. Heat 6.75 Gallons of water to 127F
• We calculate this number off of our grain bill and take into account our mash tun.  This number will be higher than an infusion mash. We have a total of 13.00# of grain and 6.75 gallons of mash water.  This equals about 1.93 Gallons per pound (you could estimate to 2 Gal per #) 
2. Mix grains and all water in MLT
3. Allow for temperature to adjust
4. Temperature should be around 122F
5. Allow to rest for 20 minutes
6. Drain 3 Gallons of MLT liquid (called decoction)
• This number will change with your system and the amount of grains/mash water used.  Normally you want to drain 30%-40% of the MLT liquid.  Essentially we need to pull the correct amount of water, that when boiled and added back into our MLT (which should still be around 120F from the protein rest) will adjust to our mash strike temperature (defined by style, here I'm looking for the mid 150's).  This might take some trial and error over a few batches to get your volumes perfect.  For our first brew, we'll just have to pay attention, take notes, and adjust our end mash temperature by adding either hot or cold water.
7. Slowly bring decoction to 158F
8. Rest for 15 minutes (Saccharification)
9. Bring decoction to a boil for 15 minutes, stirring.  Add water if decoction becomes too thick
10.  Re-introduce some decoction to the MLT
11. Temperature should adjust to standard mash temperature
12. Repeat until you hit your strike temperature 
• If you run out of decoction prior to hitting your strike temp, then we need to add more hot water.  Remember how much you need to add to get to the strike temperature so that we can adjust for next time.  We'd rather not add water if possible, as the thicker the actual mash is, the better extraction we will get.  
13. Allow to mash for 30 minutes  (Saccharification)
14. Begin heating water for sparge 
15. We'll be using much less sparge water as we're essentially using our decoction as a a first batch sparge. 
16. Fly sparge  with 2 Gallons water at 168+F.  
17. Collect 6 gallons total of sparge running's (including any leftover decoction)
18. Everything after that is standard - Boil/Hop, Cool, Aerate, Pitch, Seal, Ferment and Bottle.

Final Values:
Calculated -
Volume: 6 Gal
OG: 1.060
IBU: 25.3
Color: 30.3

Estimated -
FG: 1.015
ABV: 5.6%


Results:
So, using the volumes above, things are looking pretty good.  I knew my original gravity would be low.  But, using the boiled decoction volume of 3 gallons, I hit a strike temperature of 155F and it held for 30 minutes.  Pretty good.  I believe the low efficiency was due mostly to my equipment; I did a fly sparge and my equipment is really made for a double batch.  If I was using a round cooler, the fly sparge would have worked out better.  If I could have lowered my overall decoction volumes and saved more volume for a batch sparge, things would probably have ended up closer to my projected values. Or, I could have ran a batch sparge and attempt to boil off more water (this is probably what I should have done to reach my desired numbers).  Each of those methods would add some aspect to the flavor/body of the final product. The main thing here is that the end product will still end up as a good tasty beer.  All in all I ended up with about an extra gallon, but was off by about 1% on my ABV.

Brew Day -All Grain Belgian Dubbel

Last week I wrote a post on a Belgian Dubbel recipe.  Due to some time constraints, I was not able to brew it when I wanted to, nor blog the brew day.  Today's post is a quick re-cap on the brew day.

If you look at the recipe in the post linked above, it's different than what I ended up with, mostly because I miss-spoke when ordering the grains.  No fear, by upping my batch to 5.5 Gallons and adding extra grains I had lying around, we end up with a good looking recipe for the style.  So without further ado


Jameson's Belgian Dubbel
12.5# Organic Gammbrinus Pale Ale Malt (3.0 SRM)
1# Organic Gambrinus Munich (10.0 SRM)
.5# Organic Briess 60L (60 SRM)
.5# Organic Breiss 120 L (120 SRM)
.25# Organic CaraMunich (56 SRM)
1# Organic Belgian Amber Candi Syrup (45 SRM)
.5 oz Organic Belgian Admiral Pellet Hops (13.48% AAU)   20.3 IBU @ 60 min boil
.5 oz Organic Belgian Cascade Pellet Hops (3.2% AAU) 2.9 IBU  @ 20 min boil
.5 oz Organic Kent Golding (7% AAU) 0 IBU @ 5 min
White Labs Belgian Strong Ale Liquid Yeast (WPL550)

Projected Values
OG: 1.073
IBUs: 23.2
Color: 17.4 SRM
ABV%: 8.1

Target Strike Temp: 155°F

Terms:
HLT: Hot liquid tun.  Also known as a "Brew Pot".  Used to heat water and boil wort.

Procedure:

1. Heated 9 Gallons of water to 172°F
2. Mixed heated water and crushed mixed grains in my MLT using about 6 Gallons of water
1. Mix Grains and water about 1/3 at a time.  
2. Stir to ensure no pockets of dry grain exist
3. Adjust water amount so that your grains are fully covered by a small amount of water
3. Allow temperature to adjust to strike temperature
1. After 10 minutes, mash temperature was 154°
4. Allow mash to sit for 50 minutes
5. During mash period, begin heating remaining water, plus 2 extra gallons for sparge.  Heat to 175°f
6. After mash is completed, begin batch sparge
1. Begin draining liquid from the mash tun
2. Return the first 1/2 to 1 gallon of liquid carefully back to MLT
3. Repeat until runnings are clear of particles.
4. Fully drain all liquid from the MLT
5. Add heated sparge water from HLT, enough to cover grains and stir
6. Repeat steps 1-4
7. Repeat step 5-6 with remaining water
8. Drain until about 6 Gallons of liquid collected
7. Take collected sparge runnings (6 gallons), and bring to a boil
8. Add .5 oz Organic Belgian Amarillo Pellet Hops
9. After 40 min, add .5 oz Organic Belgian Cascade Pellet hops
10. 15 minutes later add 1 oz Organic Kent Golding Pellet Hops
11. Boil 5 minutes more
12. Begin cooling
1. Keeping everything sterile, filter out hops if possible
13. Transfer into fermenter
14. Aerate 
15. Pitch yeast
16. Seal fermenter and wait!

Final Projections and Mesurments:

OG: 1.070

IBUs: 23.2
Color: 17.4 SRM

ABV%: 7.8%

Small Scale Kitchen Brewing - Pale Ale

One of the main issues I hear from people looking to jump into brewing is that it requires a lot of space, time, money and equipment.  While this can be true, it doesn't have to be.  Most people who brew start on very basic setups, and many of those never move on to more complex systems.  More often than not, great beer is the result.

I want to make something clear here.  There are two main reasons for the outcome of one's homebrew;  the brewer and the quality of ingredients.  I will not name any names, but there is a very popular plastic system one can purchase at many retail locations, but I'd steer clear of this "guy".  I've seen it both first hand and heard it from others, a lot of ingredient kits out there have old, poor ingredients.  Don't assume anything that is a "kit" is bad though.  Just beware pre-hopped extracts, and buy from actual homebrew shops.  If there isn't one in your town (stay local, if for nothing else than freshness), go to a reputable online supply company (see side bar).

So, I have decided I am going to make a 3 gallon extract brew.   You can do a 1 gallon, less than that I don't know if you'd actually end up with much.  This brew is going to be the most basic I can think of, so it may not turn out the most tasty.  It shouldn't be bad, and it may be great, I just haven't tried such a 'simple' beer before [Edit After Brewing: I actually think this brew will be great. I underestimated the process.  This will be a good batch]

Size comparison, a 7 Gallon carboy on the left, a 3 on the right

Terms That Need Explaining:
Normally I'd jot down some terms here, but since this is the most basic, we're going to not worry about  most of them. All you need to know:

Wort - Pre-fermented beer.  Made up of fermentable sugars,  Today, it'll be a combo of extract and water
Pitch\Pitching: The act of pouring yeast cultures into cool wort.

Jameson's All Extract California Pale Ale

Estimated Total Brew Time: 2 Hours
Final OG: 1.050

Total Brew Time:
I started at 10:45 am, and was 100% done and cleaned up by 12:30.  So 1:45 minutes total.  Much of which was just waiting during the cooling period.

Mandatory Equipment:
Stock pot ( I'll be using 1.5 Gallon stock pot)
Extra pots for side boiling (If using a stock pot smaller than your batch size)
Spoon
Stove
3 Gallon fermenter** (they exist! or you could use 1 Gallon jug for a 1 Gallon batch)
Blow Off Tubing/Airlock and Stopper (#7 for a standard 3 Gallon Glass Carboy)
Strainer
Siphon cane and hose (cane for bottling)
Sanitizer (Iodophor, San Star)
Funnel (you could siphon)

On the left: Liquid Extract, Hops and Grain
Center: Strainer, Liquid Yeast Culture, Fermenter with Airlock
Right: 1.5 Gallon Stock Pot 

Bottling equipment***

Optional Equipment:
Hydrometer
Flask
Small Grain Bag or Strainer (If using optional grains)

*We need to be able to boil our wort.  If we have 3 Gallons to boil, it's tough in 3 Gallon pot.  But!  We could theoretically boil 2 Gallons of wort, and add 1 Gallon of sanitized water prior to pitching!  Downside here is we might get a lower hop utilization. This could be offset by adding more hops.
**So the real kicker here is the fermenter.  You can use a bucket if it is food grade, you have an airtight lid, and you can somehow attach an airlock or blow off tube (whole drilled in the lid).  But a 3 Gallon glass fermenter runs about $25 online, plus shipping.  They are a bit heavy to ship ($10 at least) so check your local homebrew store.  They may be willing to get you one if they don't have it in stock.
***Will be covered later.  You could theoretically re-use old plast soda bottles with screw on caps(I wouldn't recommend it).

Ingredients for a 3 Gallon Batch:

Ingredients, top down, Malt (grain), Yeast
Hops, and Extract (bag)

4.4# Briess Organic Maltoferm Liquid Malt Extract
1/2 oz Organic California Pellet Ivanhoe @ 20 minute boil
1/2 oz Organic American Pilgrim Pellet Hops @ 20 minute boil
1 oz Kent Golding Whole Hops @ 5 minute boil
White Labs California Ale (I find liquid to be the easiest, activate 1+ hrs prior to brew).

Optional Grains
1/4# CaraMunich Malt


Scaled for a 1 Gallon Batch
1 1/3# Briess Organic Maltoferm Liquid Malt Extract
.2 oz Organic California Ivanhoe Pellet Hops @ 20 minute boil
.4 oz Kent Golding Whole Hops @ 5 minute boil
White Labs California Ale Ale - This will be total overkill for this size batch.  You could pitch dry yeast, preferably re-hydrated, and even better with a starter.

Here's where it is better to design a brew for a volume vs. scale it down, we may end up with some not so easy to measure amounts.


Projected Values from BeerSmith
Original Gravity: 1.055
IBU: 39.8
Color: 5.0 SRM
ABV: 5.6

If Using Grain (Optional):

Original Gravity: 1.056
IBU: 39.8
Color: 7.5 SRM
ABV: 5.6

Procedure:
1. Begin heating a total of 3 Gallons of water, If using grains, move to step 1a.

Left I'm boiling water to sanitize it.  
This will be added to the main wort (right) once both are cooler 

• I'll be using a 1.5 Gallon stock pot.  I'll start with 1.5 Gallon for wort, and boil two more Gallons on the side in other, smaller pots (3 total).  These will only have water in them, no wort.   
• Use less if you only have a 3 Gallon or smaller pot.  Give yourself enough room for a rolling boil.  And be aware that while boiling, wort has the tenancy to foam up, so give yourself a little extra room.  BeerSmith claims 2.82 Gallons is the perfect amount for a 3 Gallon brew pot, assuming we are going to add about 1/2 gallon after boil.

1a. If Using Grains (Optional)

• Put your grains in your small grain bag (Note, I did not have a gran bag, I used a small strainer to soak the grains, careful if using this method.  Don't let those grains escape.  See picture)
• Place your bag of grains in your water 
• Begin heating your water, keep your grain bag off the bottom of the pot as much as possible. Use medium-low heat or else your'll burn the bag and the grains on the bottom..
• Heat the water to about 160°F
• Remove grain bag
• Continue heating to boil

Optional: I'm steeping my grains in a strainer.
 Try to get as much grain soaked without it escaping

2. Once boil begins, add 4.4# Briess Organic Maltoferm Liquid Malt Extract (or whatever extract you have) and stir

Adding the MaltoFerm Extract

• Add it slowly!  And stir constantly.  You probably want to turn off your stove, as the extract will easily burn on the bottom of the pan.  In the future we could use this caramelizing action to our f[l]avor..

3. Once extract is dissolved, return the wort  to a full rolling boil (we now have wort!).
4.  Add our fist addition of hops, 1/2 oz of California Ivanhoe Pellet Hops and Pilgrim Pellet Hops
5. After 15 minutes of boiling add 1 oz Kent Goldings Whole Hops.
6. Boil 5 more minutes.

Fermenter after adding iodine (sanitizer)

• From here out, 100% of everything must be sterilized. Hands, tubing, spoons, fermenters, anything!!!!  Make yourself a batch of sanitizing solution. Start by santizing your fermenter, then you can dump that solution into something else to use for remaining equipment.

7.  Begin to chill and use a sanitized strainer to remove hops and any particles.  Add the additional boiled volume.  If it does not fit, cool on the side, we can always mix everything together in the fermenter (this is how I am doing it, using a 1.5 Gallon pot).

• There's a lot of ways to do this.  The key is the faster, the better.  I've know people to just throw a lid on and walk away until morning, just asking for problems.  The easiest way to chill in this situation is to just get a bunch of ice, and place you stock pot (covered!) in an ice bath in your sink.  Plug your sink, add a some water and a good amount of ice.  Place your stock pot w/ cover in the bath.  Make sure no water makes it into your beer (see pic below).  If you need to add water, it needs to be sterilized by boiling first.

After iodine has settled.  

8. Once the wort is chilled to the mid 70's, we aerate the wort by stirring vigorously with a sterilized spoon.
9. Siphon or pour using a funnel into your sanitized fermenter
10. Pitch your activated yeast
11. Pop on your air-lock and store in a dark place.
12. Allow fermentation
13. Bottle****
14. Enjoy****

****Post coming soon

Swirl, nature is beautiful .. Sanitize your carboys

Fermetner and funnel

And the wort boils!

Ice Bath - Once we've finished boiling,
we need to cool ASAP, 

Stove utilization, added pots to lower the chance of boil over

Final Product and a Hydrometer taking a
Gravity Reading

Happy Carboy, Happy Yeast, Happy Me

Recipe Design - BJCP and a Belgian Dubbel

I have decided for my next brew day, I will be making a Belgian Dubbel style ale.  For those not familiar with the style, some common characteristics are:

• Malty, sweet beer
• Good head retention
• Deep amber color
• ABV% of 6.0%-7.5%
• Lower IBU
• Hop flavors are usually low bitter, slight aroma.
• Fruity flavors, including raisin
• Sometimes Belgian sugar is added to spike ABV, color and add flavor

So how do we set out to make such a beer?  We could just go copy someone else's recipe.  What happens when we can't get all the ingredients?  Can we trust that the recipe is accurate? Do we even care?

The answer to that last question is important.  We can create great beer without following style guidelines.  It  may change from brew day to brew day.  It can be fun to make up a style on the fly (although it's likely to exist or be a hybrid of styles).  But being able to re-create the beer styles of the world is a fun challenge for the homebrewer.  It also helps the brewer gain a better understanding of where their flavors are coming from, and how different ingredients are used with each other to create flavor and body profiles.  It also can help the brewer hone in their brewing procedure to produce consistently great beer time and time again.  It makes us better tasters of beer, and helps us find other beers to compare our own to.

Designing a Beer Recipe? Start with BJCP
If you've decided to create your own recipe for a style of beer, chances are you've tried that style before.  You might think that's sufficient to accurately create the style, but chances are you have missed some of the over tones of flavor that actually contribute to the overall complexity of a brew.  Or you just plain don't pay attention to color, head retention or aroma.

To accurately create a style of beer, the place to start is the Beer Judge Certification Program, or BJCP.  Now, I'm not saying you need to go out and get a BJCP certification to accurately taste or create accurate beer styles. The key is what you find here: BJCP Style Guiedlines.  Read them for the beer style you wish to make.  Note the ingredients section.  This is key because when we jump over to BeerSmith (or however we are calculating our grain and hop bill), we'll be using numbers such Original Gravity (OG), Color (SRM), Bitterness (IBU), Final Gravity (FG) and Alcohol by Volume (ABV) to calculate amounts.  These say nothing about flavors.  We need to know the correct type of grains, hops and and spices to get the correct flavor profile.

BJCP states for a Belgian Dubbel, a base malt of Belgian Pils or  Pale Ale malt will work well.  From the ingredients I have available to me, I've decided on Gambrinus Organic Pale Ale Malt.  I usually use a Special Malt, usually the Organic Breiss Special Malt, 130 SRM, but my supplier can no longer get this (my supplier is all organic).  This will be an issue as the special malt imparts a common raisin flavor to this beer style.  I'll have to do without.  I may look to lower my total base malt amount and add some carmalized Belgian sugar/syrup to help with the flavor.  Color wise I'm substituting Caramel 60 (Briess).  I'll be adding CaraMunich (Briess) which will add small amounts of color and some fruity flavors.

Hop wise, Goldings seem to be the main hop used in these beers.  

Finally, and crucially, is the yeast we choose.  Yeast has a very big effect on the final flavor, clarity, and body.  BJCP gives good descriptions of flavors and yeast strain manufactures normally give a good description of how a yeast will behave, and what flavors they tend to produce.  Fermentation temperature is a HUGE part of the final product, make sure you are brewing at the correct temperature for your style.  This will ensure the correct flavors make it into the final product.  Luckily, most yeast manufactures will have some sort of matrix to help the brewer decide on the proper strain.  Also, most strains are named after the style they are meant to brew.

Building the Recipe in BeerSmith
I've slightly touched on this, but I have started to use a program called BeerSmith 2.  It's a great program that keeps track of your entire brewhouse.  It's fairly inexpensive, under $30, and worth every penny.  There are other good alternatives, such as and not limited to, BeerTools Pro and ProMash. There are also freeware opensource programs as well as web based calculators that can do much of this as well.  All this can also be accomplished with a simple spreadsheet.   A spreadsheet is the most complex but is good for beginners to actually understand the calculations taking place.  In a future post, I'll be designing and using a homemade spreadsheet to show how many of these calculations are made.

I've tried all three (BeerSmith, ProMash and Beer ToolsPro) and ended on BeerSmith, partially as it seems to still be in development. They all work great, and have trial periods to play with.  Chose the one that you prefer.  Anyway, I'll be doing a more in depth post on BeerSmith, but here I'm just going to talk about how I designed my beer using this software, the BJCP guidelines and a list of available ingredients at my local homebrew shop.

Using the guidelines from BJCP, and local available ingredients, I decided to use the following to make my beer:

Gambrinus Organic Pale  Ale Malt
Breiss Organic CaraMunich Malt
Briess Organic Caramel 60
Belgian Candi Sugar, Amber
Kent Goldings Hops
Belgian Amarillo Hops
Belgian Cascade Hops
Belgian Strong Ale Yeast

Now, we can work out of BeerSmith.  Once open, we can go to our recipes and create a new one.  From here we need to setup our batch profile. The equipment profile and mash efficiency items we'll need to setup in the future, but if we are just designing out grain and hops, we can use the defaults.  Just make sure we are choosing a 5 gallon all grain batch.

The next step is to start adding ingredients. Add your grains and hops, using amounts you think are correct.  This is a high ABV beer, so I'm going to start with 12.5# of base malt.  Add in the specialty malts, ensuring you are keeping these numbers low.  For a 5 gallon batch no more than a few lbs total.  Do the same with hops.  Here you may want to adjust the AAU and BAU if these numbers are known.  Adjust the boil times to your plan.

Double clicking on our added hops we can change
AAU, BAU, hop type, boil length and other variables

If you have an equipment, mash, fermentation and carbonation profile setup, use them. If not, you'll have to use the built in ones, look at them and find the one that fits your system best.  Choose the style of beer you wish to make from the "Style Guideline Comparison" drop down menu.

Now we can look at the little sliders below our recipe.  It shows us on the left hand side our projected OG, IBU, Color and ABV of our final product.  On the right hand side of the sliders are the accepted range for the style selected under "Style Guideline Comparison" drop down menu.

"Sliders" showing my recipe compared to BJCP

We can now adjust our recipe so that the black arrows for the sliders end up in the green portion.  We can either do this by manually changing our amounts or ingredients, or use the automatic "Adjust" buttons in BeerSmith.  This will automatically change your grain or hop amounts by small increments until it hits your profile.

Use the buttons on the "Home" tab to automatically scale batch size, convert from grain to extract  or adjust color, gravity and bitterness.

For my Belgian, I ended up with:
12.5 # Gambriuns Organic Pale Ale Malt
.5# Briess Organic CaraMunich
.25# Briess Organic Caramel 120
1# Organic Belgian Amber Candi Sugar
.5 oz. Organic Belgian Amirillo hops @ 60 min
.5 oz. Organic Kent Goldings @ 20 min
.5 oz Organic Belgian Cascade @ 5 min
1 Wyest Belgian Strong Ale Yeast

Using my own equipment profile, and a two step temperature mash (which will be covered on brew day)

My Projected Values are:

OG: 1.073
FG: 1.015
IBU: 17.8
ABV: 7.6%
Color: 15.8

For this style, BJCP states:
OG: 1.062-1.075
FG: 1.008-1.018
IBU: 15-25
ABV:6-7.6%
Color: 10-17

All within their respective ranges! UPDATE/EDIT: Although most numbers are on the high side, my IBU's are low.  This could result in an unbalanced brew.  Maybe by brew day I'll increase my hops.  I've noted that this style is generally malty and less bitter, so that might be OK. But, remember those sliders are based on the style, which already has a low IBU\Malt ratio.  By being on the extremes of Gravity and IBU's for the style, it may throw off the overall balance of the beer.