Man I've not used American roasted barley but sweet would be the last thing I'd expect from roasted Barley.It didn't turn out so well. The first batch using this recipe turned out fairly well, though a little sweet. I had reduced the American roasted barley because the recipe calculator said it was going to be too dark. So, for this second batch I restored the roasted barley to it's previous amount and hoped that would reduce the sweetness. But this second batch turned out almost cloyingly sweet. The descriptor I find on American roasted barley is "Sweet, grainy, coffee flavor and a red to deep brown color".
But, that's not the only issue. There is also a distinct diacetyl (buttery) flavor in the beer. The possible causes of diacetyl: feeble/short boil, low fermentation temp, mutated yeast, racking too soon, bacterial contamination. None of those are likely.
- I had a rolling boil for an hour, though the wind did cause the boil periodically reduce.
- I created a starter off of a fresh pack of Wyeast 1084 and fermented at 62F (17C), the bottom of the yeast's temperature range.
- I had it in primary for 24 days before bottling
- Afterwards, I removed and cleaned the ball-valve and thermometer on my boil kettle. There was something black on the thread tape that I assumed to be a burn mark and not mold, but of all the improbables, this is the most probable
- One other possibility was the hops. The bags of fuggles were about 1/3 dust and didn't have much aroma. I assumed they were abused during shipping but, maybe they were just old and couldn't balance out the malt sweetness.
Next weekend I hope to brew this again but this time I will replace the American roasted malt with British roasted malt (which does not carry the sweet descriptor) and English brown malt.
Maybe try Thomas Fawcett their pretty solid maltster on the roast front.
I'd expect the BU/GU was probably out of wack like you assumed.
