keepitcold

Recipes 

Hey Folks I have been looking but can't find much on mashing Oat Malt. I want to do a Oat cascade smash. Pretty much I want it to be 100% oats. Will it work or do I need to add a little 6 row for converting the oat malt?

FATC1TY

Recipes 

You will need something to convert the oats, as they have no enzymes for conversion on their own. You will be hard pressed; IE: impossible to do an all oatmeal smash. Infact, it's not going to happen period. You'll end up with a hazy, thick, gumy mess.

I'd go no more than 1.5# of oats in your 5 gallon batch for success.

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Bubba's Backyard Brewery

BigEd

Recipes 

He's using oat malt not flaked oats. Conversion isn't an issue but lack of husks may be. Rice hulls added to the mash might be a good idea.

FATC1TY

Recipes 

See.. Long days, and drinking do nothing for reading comprehension.

I do however stand on the fact that a smash with that malt sounds pretty bad.

However, it does seem pretty good if you were doing a simple porter or brown ale maybe, add a bit of chocolate malt, and some nice english hop, or something like willamette and call it a day.

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Bubba's Backyard Brewery

BigEd

Recipes 

Agree 100%. There is a reason barley is the predominant grain used in beer.

Tantalus

Recipes 

There's a good blog entry on this:
http://ryanbrews.blogspot.com/2009/12/100-oat-malt-mt-rainier-hops-smash-beer.html?m=1
And the results:
http://ryanbrews.blogspot.com/2010/07/100-oat-malt-mt-rainier-hops-smash-beer.html?m=1

Long story short, posters above are wrong.

FATC1TY

Recipes 

Glad to hear my opinion is wrong... Glad our taste buds are exactly the same. Never met anyone like that!!!

I like how one online "blog" of someone playing with the malt makes it the gospel as well. If you read it, the guy wasn't a fan of it. He said to suggest using his beer as a glaze, or blending it to make a shandy. Sounds like a real winner to sip on in the evenings for sure.


The he goes into saying what recipes it would for in, if you were looking for the grainy texture and profile in a beer.

Sounds like he wasn't a fan, the one person to documented trying it as a smash.

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Bubba's Backyard Brewery

TimT

Recipes 

I have done a 100% oat malt beer, although the oats were from a local artisan maltster not the Thomas Fawcett ones. I did not like the results very much, oats are pretty distinctive. At first I did not like it at all, the beer improved and then went down hill. I did use wy3068 as I figured oats were pretty boring. Some others did like it more than I did but nobody was asking for seconds LOL.
If you really like that oat flavour go for it but I would not recommend it. There is a reason why the poor folks drank oat beer in olden England and why we use barley today for beer.

Halbrust

Recipes 

Tim, would you compare the flavor to athol brose? (Hopefully you've had athol brose)

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jja

Recipes 

I have used TF oat malt. Contrary to above, the husk % is higher than barley so no worries lautering. IIRC it seemed like the kernel didn't fill the husk almost.

I usually did 20% in stout or ESB, but also did 80% stouts and 100% oat wine, which was quite different. Not bad but not as sweet, full, and bready as barleywine. High % stout had enough other malt character to be nice.

The TF oat malt back then was also always quite hazy unless an agressive protein rest and long aging-- thus stouts are nice to hide that with color.