75-100% Oat Beer?

[svenalope]

Hey guys this is kind of right in line with what I'm planning next. I've brewed a bunch of non-grape wine (hooch) this year and I'm starting to get decent at it, I think. I picked up the alaskan bootlegger's bible and read it cover to cover in one night, so I called around town looking for raw barley and finally ended up ordering 21 pounds off amazon. Then I malted it. The plan is to dive headfirst into beer, and make a barleywine as my first beer. Been reading everything I can get my hands on and picking a lot of brains, just helped a friend brew an oatmeal stout, and the topic of what I should brew next came up. I've got 5 empty carboys that I really just need to fill. He's been talking about making a maple beer, so he said maple syrup wine. That would be as expensive as hell. But! What if I made a maple syrup and oatmeal wine or beer? I coincidentally have 3/4 a bottle of amylase, left over from what I needed to clear up some carrot wine that I didn't make properly. Anyway, toasting the rolled oats sounds like an amazing idea, add amylase and maple syrup. This sounds like a perfect practice batch for a barleywine, I'll get to practice mashing and try out the mash tun I'm going to have to build, and all that. Rice hulls, right. And figure out a high gravity beer yeast and try that out. So, maple oat beer. Any thoughts on that?

 

[Xzarfna]

Just came across this thread after looking to see if anyone else had tried making oat beer.
What i essentially did was in a BIG BIG pot, throw in a good few KG of cheap oats, boiled them until they were essentially porridge, then added Amalayse and left it covered for a couple of days.
Then i added even more water so that what resulted was very watery and boiled again.

This was my recipe: (5 UK gallon/25l batch)

2kg oats
1 pound honey
1 pound Wheat Dry extract.

For the oats - boil them to oblivion - like HOURS - This will take a lot of water - 16 litres in-fact - so get a BIG pot!

Then, add amylase - couple teaspoons worth once it has cooled and leave for 2 days covered.

Boil oats again.

Add water until the mix is very runny, runnier than gruel. This will take a lot of water again, so will require you to split the mixture to several pans to complete. Take 1/3 of the oat-slop and make it back up to 16 litres with boiling water.

bring these to the boil and leave to cool.

Strain this mixture through very fine muslin or a jelly bag, squeeze to get all liquid out but avoid as many lumpy bits getting out.

Guess what - BOIL AGAIN!

This needs to be boiled right down - back to the original 16 litres, so get all your pans going on a hob, open a previous brew and wait...

Right - thats the hard part done - now you just want to let the oat mixture cool and add to your FV.

Get a pan of water boiling - just a couple litres, and add your dry wheat extract - while thats boiling throw in a hop bag of whatever you want really - personally i used 25g of Cascade and 25g of Galaxy for 25min in the boil.

Let this mix cool and add to the FV.

Add your honey to the FV, top it up to around 25l with cold water and add your yeast (I used US-04) once it reaches the room temp!

Leave for 7-10 days bubbling away, bottle and keep for 3 weeks warm and a week in the cold - DONE! XD

hope people see this and like it

 

[ArcLight]

Why boil the oats for hours?

Get some malted oats
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/oat-malt-thomas-fawcett-and-sons.html
mash them, and make a beer

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

In Colonial times they made what was called bran beer in America as getting malted barley from England was very expensive. Similar idea, taking unmalted wheat bran and boiling it for 3 hrs to gelatinize the starches, mix in some molasses, honey, or sugar, and ferment.

Malted oats are sprouted and kilned, just like malted barley. To use unmalted oats you would either have to boil them for hours to gelatinize them, or purchase flaked oats (the dried finished product after some else did the boiling for you).

 

[ArcLight]

In Colonial times they made what was called bran beer in America as getting malted barley from England was very expensive. Similar idea, taking unmalted wheat bran and boiling it for 3 hrs to gelatinize the starches, mix in some molasses, honey, or sugar, and ferment.

Malted oats are sprouted and kilned, just like malted barley. To use unmalted oats you would either have to boil them for hours to gelatinize them, or purchase flaked oats (the dried finished product after some else did the boiling for you).

So purchase them flaked.

And do unmalted oats taste noticeably different from malted ones?

Does it take *3* hours to gelatinize oats? Are there some sources I can read? I'd like to take a look at other grains too.

People sometimes did things in the past because they lacked the knowledge of materials. For example, most people don't like beer that is dried (smoked) with Peat or Coke (!). Just because it was "done that way" in the past doesn't mean it's necessary or correct.


You can try a combination of unmalted outs with a high distatic malt like 6 row, and mash low for a longer time to convert what you can..

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

And do unmalted oats taste noticeably different from malted ones?

No idea, but I would imagine the malted would be sweeter for the malting process.

Does it take *3* hours to gelatinize oats? Are there some sources I can read? I'd like to take a look at other grains too.

People did things in the past because they lacked the knowledge of materials. For example, most people don't like beer that is dried (smoked) with Peat or Coke (!). Just because it was "done that way" in the past doesn't mean it's necessary or correct.

And sometimes they DID do things because it was necessary and correct. Whole oats must be cooked completely to break up cell walls and to hydrate the starches. How long it takes depends on your cook pots, how much grain, etc.., but it is more in the range of hours than minutes. Any brewing text that discusses grain manufacturing should have a section on this. Google 'starch hydrolysis'.

 

[Xzarfna]

The original 3-6 hour boil is to hydrate starches and break cell walls. Subsequent boils are to remove excess water - as the oat mixture starts off very thick and must be diluted to filter before being concentrated again.

 

[ArcLight]

But why spend the time and fuel to boil for 3-6 hours? Just buy flaked oats and mash them.

Do 3-6 hours boiled oats taste noticeably different form flaked oats?

 

[Xzarfna]

basically, flaked oats are expensive, and in the UK i get get 10kg of porridge oats for £7.50, making this literally the cheapest beer i've ever made

 

[ArcLight]

basically, flaked oats are expensive, and in the UK i get get 10kg of porridge oats for £7.50, making this literally the cheapest beer i've ever made

Propane/Gas has a cost, as does your time, so I wonder if it really saves anything to not buy Flanked oats.

 

[Xzarfna]

well in the UK at least, flaked oats cost over 5x as much per kilo as regular - for 10kg of flaked oats i'd be paying over £40 ($60) as opposed to £7.50 ($12)