Oatmeal stout with two variants

OK so as per a lot of other folks on here my significant other is gluten free and I love beer. More than that I love stew. Beef stew, with Guinness, red wine, whiskey and potatoes, and when I can find it fresh, lamb. Since she has realized her allergies we don't make stew much anymore so I decided to combine my passion for brewing with my love of stew and make a stout to replace Guinness in said beef stew. This is my first gluten free brew and I am still a bit of a noob overall so I am happy to receive criticism on my recipe. I am brewing this weekend hopefully.

Here is the plan
~7 lbs of sorghum syrup
2lbs of d-180 candi
3 lbs of gluten free oats
10 oz of maltodextrine (edit for clarity, my mistake)
s-04 yeast
1 oz of fuggles (.6 oz at 90min and .3 at 60min)

The plan is to get my boil up to 7 gallons, and then pull off 5 gal into the carboy. Then i will have 2 gallons left in the pot, i will add a vanilla bean or maybe two, give that 10-15 minutes to steep and pull off another gallon into a 1gal carboy. Lastly i will add about 1/8th cup of brown sugar, a cinnamon stick, and possibly 1/8th cup of raisins. Give that another 15 minutes to steep and pull it off to one last carboy.
Finally when i go into secondary i will be adding 1 oz of french oak to the vanilla only gallon and possibly some more cinnamon to what i am affectionately calling the oatmeal crisp gallon.

Now the last 2 gallons are just experiments. I ideally want to make a future batch with a lot more oak to get a really strong scotch color, but that's for another brew.



I would love any ideas or recommendations because this is my most ambitious brew by a lot (everything else so far was kits of one kind or another while this is a recipe I put together from a few others I have found online)

I will be posting results of my brew day hopefully Saturday evening should everything go according to plan.

p.s.
Thanks for everybody on this forum, I have been lurking for about two weeks straight and learned a huge amount without having to ruin any beer! You guys and gals are great.

Just so you guys know, i started out this recipe with Columbus in mind but i thought it might be a bit too strong. I was thinking more of a dark as night thick stout, with very little bitterness and fuggles (which i have yet to use) seems to have a more traditional stout flavour.

I have not attempted a stout, but my first impression is you need more ferementables. My experience with GF pale ale and GF amber ale is that you have to get up in the OG=1.060 range for the beer to not be thin. By my calcs you are in the OG=1.048 range which I would expect is way too low for a stout. I don't think the steeped oats adds much at all to fermentables.

One example I would use as comparison is:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f164/no-nonsense-stout-323755/


At first glance, your hop additions are low. If your Fuggles are about 5% AA then you are using 5 AAU on a 7 gallon batch and Igliashon is using about 8 AAU on a 3 gallon batch. By this comparison you would need 2 to 3 times the amount of Fuggles hops you are planning now.

What is the "10 oz of malt"? Is that what you are calling the spices and raisins you are adding to the small carboys?

For gluten free beer we combat three main things, sorghum twang, thin mouth feel, no head retention. Many of us end up using some combination of candy syrup, maltodextrin, higher gravity, and hops to help with those. My advice (if you are going to drink the beer and not just cook with it) would be to consider using more fermentables (get up at least in the 1.060 range), more hops and add some maltodextrin (~1.6 oz/gallon).

Let us know what you end up with and how it turns out!

sorry thats what i meant by 10oz of malt, maltodextrin, not malted.

Sounds like i am a little low on that however. What would you suggest to up the amount of fermentable sugars? I have 4 lbs of oats right now but i have a feeling adding an extra pound of the oats even wont really give me much in the way of sugars.

I will be going by the local brew shop saturday morning to pick up the sorghum so i could always pick up a couple more ounces of fuggles as well. I looked at my hops just now and they are 4.9% alpha (Sorry I'm new to some of the beer terms so i figured you mean acidity by AA). If you are saying at 5% I need to at least double if not triple the hops and I am even lower than that I guess I should grab another 2 oz. Keep in mind I am using whole leaf hops, not pellets, for the first time, although I was fairly certain 1 oz still imparts the same amount in pellet or whole forms.

And yes i am planning on drinking the majority of this beer rather than just cooking with it. The stew is really just an excuse to make more beer, as if we need one.

I also just learned today that the sorghum I ordered is on back order from the supplier so they only have the 3.3lbs cans rather than the 7lbs jug I wanted. So now I have to decide if 6.6lbs will be enough if i augment the recipe in some way.

See if they have some rice solids. Lots of people use that to offset some of the sorghum. I have used it to boost gravity and it works just fine IMHO as long as there is some sorghum syrup as the base fermentable. My LHBS has it in a powder.

I don't have a good feel for what the oats will bring to the table. I have read a lot about it but just have not gotten around to trying a batch. I suspect you are already at the limit of how much oats should be used. When i use steeped cyrstal, I get a gravity contribution of about 8 ppg. Not sure if the oats will give you more or less than that.

I am sure you have seen this in your research, but in case not, here is another recipe from a guy that seems to have a lot of experience with oats and other adjuncts:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f240/gluten-free-double-chocolate-oatmeal-stout-165489/
You can see he uses brown rice syrup and comments on the oats later in the thread (reply #10). I calculate that he is in the 1.070 gravity range.

I read somewhere the difference in what should be expected from leaf hops versus pellet. When I have used leaf hops I just weigh them as if they were pellets. My LHBS only has pellets so I use them 99% of the time.

The 3.3 lb cans of sorghum syrup is almost certainly Briessweet. You can get a 3rd can of that or use the brown rice powder to fill in.

Is brown rice powder interchangeable with brown rice syrup? and should i just replace the missing quantity of sorghum with brown rice syrup? I was thinking i would add like an extra lbs of brown rice syrup so i would have 6.6lbs of sorghum and then 1lbs of brown rice. I am new to working with my gravity but what do i want my og at?

I did you that recipe to start out with and also referenced this one here
http://beyondbarley.blogspot.com/2012/07/no-nonsense-oatmeal-stout.html

I try not to use more than about 3 lbs of sorghum syrup into a 5 gal recipe...because I find the sorghum twang very objectionable at any rate higher than that. In this case you might try one 3.3lb can of sorghum and make up the rest with brown rice syrup.
My best gf beer to date was based entirely on brown rice syrup.

Well i am making 7 gallons so i think i would have room for a bit more sorghum but more like 4 lbs then huh? And then i could do like 3 lbs of brown rice. Does that sound like enough fermentables now?


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Replace one of your 3.3 lbs of sorghum with a can of brown rice syrup. Trader joes or Kroger/Ralph's will have it in the health foods section. Any more than 8 oz of maltodextrin is unnecessary, I haven't found that it makes a difference. Steep your oats at 150 for 30 minutes. I like the gravity where you have it. The more you increase the sweeter it will be on the back end bc your fermentables are fairly low attenuating. Use s04 for yeast and add a second fuggle addition at 15 or so. Sorghum with 5 remaining to sterilize. Whirlfloc and yeast energizer at 10-15. If it were me I wouldn't mess with the raisins and cinnamon stuff. That d180 is going to give you more dark fruits than you'll want. Have fun more than anything.


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Ps. Rebel brewer has your sorghum and hops in stock. Good guys too.


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Well i brewed yesterday. Got up to a gravity of 1.08 if i read my specific gravity correctly. I got it all into my 3 fermenters but this morning there wasnt any action yet. Im hoping thats just the sorghum being slow. When i get home from work i will give it a shake and see whats up. I have more yeast on the way incase i need to pitch again.


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Nope, I got home from work and its bubbling away! now we play the waiting game

Well i finally got my first taste of the beer today. Here are some notes

It sucks.

So I must have mis-calculated my sugar when bottling because its almost completely flat, just a tiny bit if bubbles, but not foam, no head, nothing. And I am am finding it far too sweet for my tastes.

I am going to try it again sometime soon and make a few changes I think. Add less Sorghum, more oats, more hops, brown rice syrup instead of white rice solids.

Sort of a matalic flavor. I couldn't find the word before but its not just that its too sweet, its that its matalic. I am pretty sure that came from the amount of sorghum used. I think i went too far with that possible. Maybe pull back on the sorghum, replace white rice solids with brown rice syrup.

It may take a beer this big a long time to carb. 1.080 is fairly big. What was the FG?

Also, yeah, the metallic twang is sorghum.

I dont have my notes handy but i think it was 1. 06 og and 1.02 fg


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Oh, that's not bad. It should only take 2-3 weeks @ 68F to carb. Wait a little longer and see. How much sugar did you use? Normal use is 3-5 oz per 5 gallons.

Again i dont have my notes handy since i am at work. But I believe I used about 3 OZ of corn sugar for the 4 gallons. Been in the bottle for 3 weeks as of yesterday.


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The metallic might be the inevitable 'sorghum twang" everyone talks about. I did my first GF batch back in march and its been in the keg for about 2 weeks and the twang, originally there when I racked to keg, and even there after a week and fully carbed, is quite diminished now. I consider the beer still a little green but 2+ weeks in my keg has made a grapefruit hop bomb with a big twang into a mellower citrousy IPA with only a hint of twang. I figure that in 2 more weeks my batch is going to be a pretty tasty IPA that might fool people about its GF roots.

My point: maybe give your batch 2-4 weeks to condition and see what happens, before you consider dumping it.

Yeah. Its been three weeks in the bottle so far. I will give it another week or two before i try it again


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Hey just for my own edification, with a bigger beer and slower gluten free beers do i need to up the amount of priming sugar? or maybe use something other than table sugar?

Thanks

I will tell you this; gluten free beers tend to be lighter bodied and the extra carbonation helps mask it a bit. The extra carb helps to "scrub" the finish of the beer and reduce the sorghum twang from sticking around.

When working with sorghum I tended to aim slightly above the recommended high side for that style. IPAs are 2.3, so I would aim for 2.4-2.5. Now I go on the low side with millet. Wierd how that works.

People always underestimate the usefulness of type and volume of carbonation in flavor perception.

Figured i should do a final follow up here. I liked the recipe in the end but I am going to tweak it for the next round (brewing again once my white house honey porter is out of primary)

fist off the bat cut the Sorghum in half, gives too much of a tangy flavor
double the amount of oatmeal and use a mash tun rather than trying to do a brew in the bag style because i could barely fit the 3 lbs into my 7.5 gal kettle.
needs to be darker and I am losing a lot of gravity by removing all that Sorghum so i am adding a few things
4oz of cocoa powder
1 lb of brown rice syrup (i used 1 lb of white rice solids last time)
1 lb of avocado honey

also going to double the fuggles up to 2 oz, i know most stout's have very little hop flavor but im a bit of a hop head and would like a little more.

I really liked the oak in secondary so the whole batch will get that oak again (french oak) because it helped mellow out the tang of the sorghum.

I'm at work right now and don't have my notes but i will post the new recipe when i get home in case anybody wants to give it a try.

All in all it was a slow fermentation (didn't use any starter with my yeast so it took a solid couple of days to get started) and slow to bottle age.
I did 1 week primary, 2 weeks secondary and 3 weeks bottle. (by 6 weeks in the bottle it was properly carbonated)
so this time i will do 2 weeks primary, 2-3 weeks secondary and at least 4-6 weeks in the bottle i think.