First AG Recipe - Thoughts?

I'm going to be brewing my first all grain batch tomorrow, and this will also be the first recipe i created myself. I'd like to see what some more experienced brewers think:

Toasted Oatmeal Stout - 5 gallon Batch
9.5 lbs pale malt
1 lb flaked oats
.5 lbs Black Roasted Barley
.5 lbs Crystal 90

1 oz northern brewer @ 60 min
1 oz northern brewer @ 15 min

I plan on toasting the oats to a golden brown in the oven first, just for something a little different. I plugged this into beersmith and it's within all the style guidelines for an oatmeal stout. Thoughts?

i think that looks great. What's your mash temp, yeast, and ferm temp?

Mash temp i wasn't sure of. I was thinking 154-155ish?

i was planning on using Nottingham (i also have Windsor and s-04 on hand, if one of those would work better) and the ferm temp should be around 64 degrees.

I used toasted oats in a batch a few months ago. I may have over-toasted, but the toasting oats started turning golden brown, and the smell was somewhat unexpected. I think I did 45 minutes turning every 10 or 15. I heard it described as "oatmeal cookie" but I thought it smelled more like an electrical fire. I put the oats in a brown paper bag overnight to let the volatile compounds offgas, as I read somewhere to do, but the smell made its way into the finished beer. If you are going to toast the oats, make sure they are very lightly toasted. If you start getting the harsh chemical smell, do not use them.

In any case, I think you should toast them now and put them in a paper bag overnight. This was recommended in one of the recipes here by a more experienced brewer.

Just trying to save you some loooooong aging time. Mine is starting to mellow, but the taste is still apparent.

that's good to know. Thanks.

Did you notice any change in flavor by toasting them? Or just smell?

jjp36 said:

Mash temp i wasn't sure of. I was thinking 154-155ish?

i was planning on using Nottingham (i also have Windsor and s-04 on hand, if one of those would work better) and the ferm temp should be around 64 degrees.

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I think mashing that temperature is too high. You've got oats and Crystal in there, both of which lend body to the finished beer. (Matter of fact, I'd cut the crystal entirely, to let the silky-smooth body of the oats shine through instead of the sweet body of the crystal.) I think 150-152 is a better bet. The mouthfeel from oats is unique because it's not dextrin sugars; it's fats and oils. Mash temperature hasn't anything to do with those. So if you mash too hot, you end up with too much body. Combine oats, crystal malt and too-hot mash, you get way too much body. You dig?

Choose your yeast with the whole package in mind. If you mash low, you can use one of the low-attenuating yeasts (Windsor, S-04). If you mash midrange to high, use Nottingham. I'd choose S-04 in this case, for a bit of subtle fruitiness.

The best oatmeal stout I ever brewed was basically dry stout with oats instead of flaked barley, in the classic ratio: 70% pale, 20% oats, 10% roasted barley, fermented with Ringwood, hopped to about 40 IBU. People loved it, especially my wife; I called it "Knickerdropper Oatmeal Stout". :rockin:

Have fun!

Bob

jjp36 said:

that's good to know. Thanks.

Did you notice any change in flavor by toasting them? Or just smell?

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Oh, there is a taste.

Toast lightly. Maybe 20 mins. If it does not smell good, use untoasted oats because the smell comes through in the finished product.

The sweet spot for toasting the oats seemed to be about a 30 minutes at 300 degrees, turning them every 5 to 10 minutes. I toasted them on a cookie sheet with a peice of parchment paper on it. They were just starting to turn golden brown, and started to smell nice and nutty.

I'll mash around 153. My mash tun loses about 1.5 degrees over an hour so i'll end up at 151.5.

I'm preheating the tun now. Wish me luck!