Partial Mash Oatmeal Stout Questions

Hi All,
This is my first attempt at a partial mash, and my first attempt at brewing anything at all. My wife won a Brew's Best Oatmeal Stout kit at our local homebrew club Christmas party (Thank you Buzz Homebrew!) and she promptly donated it to me to brew for her. I think I understand the process well enough, but I want to tweak the kit a bit so it turns out more to our liking. Here is what I am thinking about:

1) The kit includes 1 lb. of maltodextrose for a standard five gallon batch. I understand that this is nonfermentable, and is supplied to provide for 'body' for the finished brew. My concern is that this will be sweeter than what we are looking for. My wife and I both prefer our brews on the drier side, not bone dry, necessarily, but def not sweet. I want to decrease this to about 1/2 lb. Will the 1 lb. be noticeably sweet?

2) The projected starting gravity is supposed to be from 1.048 to 1.056, but the ABV is projected to be about 4.6% I would like to increase this to something up around 7%, plus or minus a couple points. The kit includes 3.3 lbs of LME and 3lbs of DME. I was thinking of adding 2 lbs of DME to boost the ABV. I am concerned about too much malt body in the brew, though. Should I use less DME and maybe some corn sugar?

I would appreciate any feedback. And thanks in advance for any advice.

if you start jacking with a recipe, you have to adjust all of it, not just a part of it. if you increase dme, you'll need to increase chocolate malt, roasted, etc.

lumpher said:

if you start jacking with a recipe, you have to adjust all of it, not just a part of it. if you increase dme, you'll need to increase chocolate malt, roasted, etc.

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Yeah, had not considered that. Is there any way to boost the ABV without totally throwing the recipe out of whack? And I would still like to know about the sweetness aspect of the maltodextrin. Thanks!

If you like your beer drier, you can probably leave the maltodextrine out completely. 1 lb seems excessive as most place talk about using 8 oz. But I've never used it. If you don't want to leave it out, then go with 1/2 lb. Seems funny that the oatmeal stout kit has no oatmeal...seems like you are just making a thickened stout.

Adding 2 lbs of DME will bring your ABV up into the 7%+ range if your yeast can work it. This does make a completely different beer and you would have to adjust the hops, or they will be lost. If you do it, I'd up the hops 50%, leave out the maltodextrine (since you will probably have a FG up around 1.020). I'd add 3 lbs of the DME in the last 10 min. of the boil.

You posted this as a Partial Mash, but I don't see any mash in this recipe. If there is, and I missed it, you could mash some quick oats (a pound of those instead of .75-1 pound of DME).

pkeeler said:

You posted this as a Partial Mash, but I don't see any mash in this recipe. If there is, and I missed it, you could mash some quick oats (a pound of those instead of .75-1 pound of DME).

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Yeah, sorry, I did not post all the kit ingredients. The kit does have a pound of flaked oats, 12 oz of two row pale malt and 12 oz total of a few specialty grains like chocolate malt and caramel malt, etc. Also a pack of dried yeast, Safale something or other. Kit directions have you steeping all of that at 170 F. A little reading around here has shown me that is BS. I will put it all in the grain bag that came with the kit and mash at about 156 F.

But thank you for your thoughts. I did plan to up the hops. The kit comes with two 1 oz packs of pellet hops, don't remember what. I will pick up another oz or two at the LHBS. Perhaps I will do a First Wort Hops addition, just to be cool. Also, I will pick up another pack of dried yeast, just to give the beasties a good start, since I've read that one doesn't make a starter with dried yeast, but simply pitches an extra pack.

Cool. If you mash that stuff, along with the 3.3 lbs of LME and 3 lbs of DME, you should be up around 1.060-1.065. Obviously, the original recipe having you steep the oats and 2-row was a waste. So, if you mash, instead of steep, you are probably where you want to be. Adding 2 lbs of DME then would be in Imperial Stout range.

Thank you, pkeeler. That is just what I wanted to know. I will probably not add any extra DME, but I do like the sound of 'Imperial.':cross: Its tempting.

pkeeler said:

Cool. If you mash that stuff, along with the 3.3 lbs of LME and 3 lbs of DME, you should be up around 1.060-1.065.

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I'm sure pkeeler didn't mean it this way, but I should point out.... you shouldn't put your LME and DME in the mash. It kind of sounds that way so I thought I'd make sure it's understood. I believe he means "along with the LME and DME, the fermentables from the mash would reach 1.060 - 1.065, not that you should mash the LME and DME along with the grains.

Ok, so I finally got around to brewing this kit last night. It is happily fermenting as I type this.

My question is what will be the effect on the the beer if I did not get complete starch conversion from the mini-mash of a pound of flaked oats, 12 oz of two row pale malt and 12 oz total of specialty grains: chocolate malt and caramel malt and a 120L malt. Obviously, this will have little effect of the amount of fermentables in the wort. The question is more geared towards understanding the effect of unconverted starch in the wort, and what happens to the starches after the beer is bottled. I did the iodine test. The iodine did not turn blue right away. It took about 10 seconds. This was after mashing for an hour. I must have screwed something up, as everything should have been converted by then. So I just went ahead with the rest of the boil. It was a full volume boil, everything went fine after that. Will the starches affect the taste of the final beer? Or will it never be noticed?