Adding oatmeal to a porter extract kit

I will be brewing tomorrow with my son in law and one of the brews on the agenda is a porter extract kit. His favorite is an oatmeal porter and I was wondering what we need to do to add the oatmeal to it. I've read to use instant oatmeal or 'one minute' oats but very little about how much to use, when to add it and for how long.
Any help from anyone who has done this would be appreciated. I'd like to do it with a stout coming up as well.

Thanks,

Rick in GA

IMO, oats and extract recipes don't go well together. Oats are a base grain and need to be mashed. However, if you must try, I would just steep a pound or two of instant oats with the specialty grains and hope for the best.

Mind you, my oatmeal stout isn't finished yet, so I can't say how it turned out, but I mashed the oats (a pound) with specialty grains (another pound or so) and mashed them in about 1.25 qts/pound of grain in a giant grain bag that lined the entire pot. I heated the water to about 160, mashed at 149-155 for 45 minutes (it cooled a little, so I added some hot water to bring it up from 149), stirring every 15 minutes. I put the pot in a towel in a box and put a pillow on top to keep it from cooling down too much.

It was kind of fun! I think I'll be bottling that tomorrow or this weekend and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

BonnieJ said:

I mashed the oats (a pound) with specialty grains (another pound or so)...

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If you didn't include a base malt there was no mashing.

If you can get a pound of 6-row you can combine a pound of instant oats and mash them. For 2-row you'll need about 1-1/2 lbs.

+1 to PT Ray. So you won't extract any sugar from the oats, but I wonder if it gives some of the same mouthfeel as mashing oats does?

Try adding a small amount of 6-row when steeping you oats, make sure you steep and try to keep the temp at a constant 150 degrees during the 30 minute or longer steep.

PT Ray said:

If you didn't include a base malt there was no mashing.

If you can get a pound of 6-row you can combine a pound of instant oats and mash them. For 2-row you'll need about 1-1/2 lbs.

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Haha...that's very disappointing. Oh, I see now that my recipe says "Steep grains for 45 minutes, rinse with 1 gallon of water at 155," etc, and I assumed that was mashing, even though they called it steeping.

Weeell, then, I will have to make an oatmeal stout the next go. I'm assuming this is just going to turn out regular stout, and not be weird because of the unmashed oats?

solbes said:

I wonder if it gives some of the same mouthfeel as mashing oats does?

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There's the argument that it does and many aren't too worried about the starches. Whatever makes people happy, just don't go crazy and things should be fine. It'll at least carry someone over until they want to do mini mashes.