BYO Oatmeal Stout

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Cheesefood

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Here's what's brewing tomorrow:

(from BYO)

Oatmeal Stout
5 gallons, extract with grains
OG = 1.054 IBU = 34

The grains are mashed prior to the addition of the dry malt extract. The oats have a negligible enzyme content. Hence the American six-row barley with its high enzyme content is used to saccharify the oats.

Ingredients:

6 lbs. amber, dry malt extract
1 lb. crystal malt, 60¡ Lovibond
1.5 lb. American six-row pale ale malt
18 oz. oatmeal (quick)
0.5 lb. chocolate malt
0.5 lb. roasted barley
[EDIT] .25~ lb of Rice Hulls (because there are so many grains in the bag)
1/2 tsp. Irish moss, for 15 min.
2 oz. Fuggles hop pellets (4.2% alpha acid), for 45 min.
Wyeast 1084, Irish ale yeast

Step by Step:

Prepare a yeast starter a day or two before brew day. Crush the specialty grains and malt, and mix them with the oats in a coarse, nylon bag. Tie up the nylon bag to seal it. Heat 3 gals. of water to 155¡ F in a pot with a lid and add the bag of grains. Keep this pot covered, maintaining a temperature between 150¡ and 158¡ F for one hour to convert the starch. This can be done, for example, by placing the entire pot in an oven preheated to 150¡ F. Remove the grain bag, and pour 1 qt. of rinse water over it and into the pot. This rinses some of the residual sugars from the grains. In a separate pot bring 3 gals. of water to a boil for at least 15 min. Add 2 of these gallons to a clean, sanitized fermenter. Keep the other gallon of water covered, in reserve. Bring the wort to a boil, and slowly but vigorously mix in the dry malt extract. Boil the wort vigorously for 15 min. and add the hops. Boil for 30 more min. Add Irish moss and boil 15 more minutes. Total boil is 60 min. Cool the wort to room temperature within 30 min. of the end of the boil. Siphon the wort off of the trub, into the fermenter, adding the reserved water as necessary to bring the final wort volume to 5.5 gals. Aerate the wort for 15 minutes. Mix the yeast starter into the wort. Seal the fermenter with an air lock, and ferment until completion.
 
Mistake #1:

I put the pot in the oven for an hour like the article recommended. When I pulled it out and took a temp reading, I hadn't even hit 100º yet. Grrr....

Now I'm on the stove at a steady 150º and mashing away like a champ.

I had some instant Blueberry oatmeal for breakfast this morning. It was so good that it made me wonder how it would taste in a stout. Anyone ever used the flavored microwave oatmeals?
 
Haven't tried it, I'd be worried about the amount of salt in instants and how that would impact the yeast.
 
yea, the sodium would whack it a bit. just try steeping 4 lbs of frozen blueberries in your brew kettle at the end of the boil for about 15-20 minutes.
 
Oatmeal Stout #1 is in the primary.

Some notes and thoughts:

1. The Good: The wort smelled good. I boiled my hops in a fine-meshed nylon bag that held nothing but the hops and this made a HUGE difference in the reduction of Trub. I don't think I got any hops trub, just some grains that snuck through the coarse mesh grain bag. Also, there was no foam-up when the hops boiled.

2. The Bad: Huge mess. The grain bill ended up being too heavy to try to hold in a collander and it dropped back in, making a huge splash. The "Cook it in the oven" method was a bad idea, but only because I put the pot in there while cold. Three gallons of water soaking into 3.75 pounds of grains is going to make it hard to heat up quickly at that low of a temperature. Plus, my oven bottoms out at 170º so I kept the door propped open. Bad idea in general, but I'm hoping the additional hour of soak time will improve the flavor rather than hurt it.

3. The Ugly: HUGE mess, and it's all darker than a normal beer so it's going to require more scrub time. Because there was more water in the trub than usual, I wanted to rack instead of pour and I ended up bending my racking cane from the heat. I ended up pouring anyways because I couldn't get a good flow (probably do to the bent cane). Burnt my thumb trying to stop the hot wort from going through the tube.

I used Iodophor for the first time today. Is 1/2 oz enough for a 5 gallon bucket? I actually went a little over 1/2 oz since I filled it to the top. Everything is now that iodine color, which I'm hoping means it's all disinfected. Well, it's too late if 1/2 oz isn't enough because the beer is already in there.

Anyone have any thoughts, predictions or improvements? Like I mentioned, it's my first stout so anyone that can give me some guidance on fermentation times and priming would be a pretty appreciated.
 
good name! stick with it.....

i tend do go a little extra on the Iodaphor solution. but that should be okay.
 
Finally drank this! Smooth, tasty, delicious. I can't chug stout, but this is an enjoyable drink. I think that the 5 weeks in the secondary made a big difference. To start, I don't have the "wind" problems that I typically get from homebrew. Next, I drank it after one week in the bottle and it was tasty - doesn't NEED more time to age, but it can't hurt!

I'd give this a thumbs up to anyone looking for a Oatmeal Stout recipe. I put a couple drops of vanilla extract in a glass and it was very good, so this could easily be made to a vanilla stout (I love vanilla).
 
Hey, Cheesefood. How has parenting affected your homebrewing? It has forced me to do it after the kids are asleep. I can keep the four year old from causing a problem, he's actually pretty interested and a little bit of help. I can't say the same for the sixteen month old. She loves to pick up bottles, which tends to make bottling difficult. And it seems like she always starts to have a meltdown while I'm standing there waiting on hot break.

You probably don't have those problems yet. You can set your boy there in his bouncy chair and talk to him a bit and he probably loves it. You're like "yeah, honey I was able to watch the boy and make a homebrew, no problem." All I can say is enjoy it. Pretty soon he'll be crawling and walking all over the place with about 8 hands grabbing stuff. You wait ten months for your kid to start walking and when they do you just wish they'd chill out.

Or you wait two years for them to start talking, then you just wish they'd shut up for a minute. All that and they're still the best thing in the world!:)
 
hey Cheesefood-

What did you use to prime this? I was looking your recipe over, and it looks tasty. I have a stout that I put down a couple weeks ago that I think is not going to age out-it is too harsh, and won't carb properly, so I am going to make another.
 
Cheesefood said:
...I'd give this a thumbs up ...

Would that be your good thumb or your Poor Thumb?;) Ooh, I just thought of this... how about My Pour Thumb Brewery?:cross:
 
Hmmm, I'm way late on this, but I thought the "oven method of mash" was to heat the pot initially on the range and then stick it in a pre-heated oven when it hit temp. Or perhaps I just made that up right now...seem to do that often lately.

Oh yeah, glad it's good!
 
BeeGee said:
Hmmm, I'm way late on this, but I thought the "oven method of mash" was to heat the pot initially on the range and then stick it in a pre-heated oven when it hit temp. Or perhaps I just made that up right now...seem to do that often lately.

Oh yeah, glad it's good!

that is how I have been doing it. Works like a charm, and my new oven has a nice digital read and input thermostat that is really accurate.
 
To answer the question, I went Ex-Lite DME for priming. I'm a DME Priming convert, but I always go heavy - about 1.75 cups because I like a bubbly beer. I think I might try an amber or a heavier DME next time for priming because the head isn't as dark as I'd like it to be. Alternatively, a nitrous method would be good to get that nice Guiness head.

Brewery name is no longer My Poor Thumb. I think it's going to be "22 Miles Brewery" in honor of Assistant Brewmaster Miles Barrett.

"22 Miles Boom-Boom Vanilla" is the first official creation. It's on week 2 in the primary, and will probably sit in secondary for about 3-4 weeks. After letting the Oatmeal settle for 5 weeks in the secondary, I'm quite pleased with how longer aging has treated the beer. Frankly, I don't fart as much when drinking the oatmeal. Must be better fermentation.
 
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