Big Oatmeal Stout Help

[Slowfro]

Hey all, I've got a rather large oatmeal stout in primary right now (OG 1.074). Fermentation has been extremely active in the first week, I pitched yeast last Saturday. This is my first stout, so I'm wondering if its beneficial to move to a secondary fermentor, or if I should just let it be until fermentation is complete.

Thanks for the help, Cheers!

 

[Richardwhittaker]

Leave it in the primary. I have found that a good number of the brewers on this site Only use a secondary for Dry hopping,adding fruit or for clearing. I would leave it in the primary for at least three weeks and as it is a larger beer maybe even longer say 4-5 weeks. This gives the yeast time to do their thing
(not just the primary conversion of sugar to the good stuff but they do a lot of cleaning up after them-selfs as well)

Richard

 

[eggbeater59]

don't move it until you've reached terminal gravity, or at least close to it. when you rack to your secondary, you want to leave as much of the yeast and other junk (if applicable) behind. it's been my experience that stouts need some time to condition, so be prepared for a bit of a wait. assuming gravity is where it should be, i rack my beers from the primary after 3 weeks or so.

 

[Brew-boy]

No need for any secondary, let it finish then keg or bottle it.

 

[ChshreCat]

It's never a good idea to move any beer to secondary until primary fermentation is complete. Nothing wrong with using a secondary, but as they have said, it's for dry hopping, clearing or adding fruit. And even then, it's possible to do those in primary with the right techniques.

 

[Slowfro]

Awesome, thanks everyone. I'll be anxious to see how this turns out...it'll be hard to wait the extra time for the stout though!

 

[14thstreet]

I'd follow the advice here and follow what eggbeater said above. Let your hydrometer readings dictate what you should do. Condition the beer in bulk more so than in the bottle (if you do) to help meld those flavors. If your sanitation is good, you should be able to enjoy these for the next year. I still have a similarly sized robust porter going strong at 9 months old, and that was a 3 gallon batch that I struggled to nurse but am glad I still can drink it.

 

[Slowfro]

Sounds good 14thstreet. For your porter what was the starting gravity? What did it come down to before you bottled it? I'm not too sure what my target final gravity should be, other than just waiting to get consistent, consecutive readings.

 

[14thstreet]

I brewed Denny's bourbon vanilla porter, which is this recipe but with 1.25 lb chocolate. My efficiency was lower so I came in at OG=1.068. I went to a secondary vessel when SG=1.018/20 after 10 days with Wyeast 1056 at 64 degrees F. I then waited another 2 weeks before bottling. I didn't take hydrometer samples because my batch size was only 3 gallons and I didn't want to waste any beer. Looking back, I probably could have waited in primary for up to another week to allow the yeast to chew off a few more points and help mellow out some flavors. The porter was drinkable right away but it did mellow out for the better as it aged a few months. I got a lot of head on pours which I attribute in part to some overcarbonation, which may point to the fact my yeast wasn't completely done fermenting out. The yeast is pretty attenuative (73-77%) but I was on the low end of its stated range, perhaps because I fermented at a lower temperature and/or I have a lot of specialty malts and I mashed at 158F which can leave a lot of unfermentable sugars. (1.068-1.020)/(1.068-1.000)=71% attenuation. In the end, I didn't have to chill the beer to prevent gushers so my process seems to have been okay.

What yeast did you use? Is this an extract beer?

 

[Slowfro]

Hey 14thstreet, sorry, I didn't see you replied until just now.

I have decided to leave it in primary to see how it ends up, and maybe do another batch and use secondary just to compare (also, the primary bucket is way easier to clean than the glass carboy!).

I used Northern Brewer yeast...2 packages. Here's the rest of the recipe...

6.6# Northwestern Gold LME
3# Muntons Amber DME (added 15 minutes after LME)
1.125# chocolate malt
1/2# flaked barley
1/2# roasted barley
1/2# 40L
1/2# quaker oats

3/4oz Chinook hops (hop pellets 11.4%AA)
1/4oz Centennial hops (hop pellets 8.5%AA)

2 packages (11g each) Nottingham yeast

OG was 1.074 at 70° on 12/5/09
SG today (12/21/09) was 1.022 at 56° (closet was colder than expected).

Any recommendations? Any idea what the final gravity might be? I wouldn't think it would come down much past the 1.020 mark, but this is the first of a kind for me.

Thanks a lot!

 

[cladinshadows]

I left my oatmeal stout in primary for 6 weeks (O.G. 1.097)... It was great. I think that leaving it with the cake at best gives the yeast time to clean up and at worst does nothing. I think that in many cases transferring to secondary does little except present another chance to oxidize or mess up sanitation... YMMV.

Regarding the 1.022 gravity... see if you can get the temp up to 68-70F and give it another two weeks. You may squeeze a few more points out. Better to do it now than to let it happen in the bottle. An overcarbed oatmeal stout might not be what you're looking for...

 

[mpalmer772]

Hey, I found this forum because I was in a panic earlier this morning when my fermenter almost exploded!! Apparently the floating cap in the air lock was stuck and did not allow any C02 to exit. Scared the crap out of me!! Saw the picture from Revvy of the blow off tube setup and quickly rigged mine the same way. Emergency averted! This thread is almost exactly what I am doing so Im really glad I found it.

I was very concerned about the amount of bubbles escaping the fermentor so Im not sure if this is a legitimate concern or not. When I first fixed up the blow off tube, the fermentor had foam coming out of the hole in my lid like a volcano after only 24-30 hrs of fermentation. I 1/2 filled an empty gallon jug with sanitizer and within two hours it was almost the color of the beer. I cleaned the air lock and tube, replaced the sanitizer with clean and 8 hrs later I had to do it again. This thing is going CRAZY!!!

Here are my questions:
1) my first beer had an OG of 1.054 with 6.6 lbs of dark malt extract but this one has an OG of 1.074 (like Slowfro) with 9.9lbs of malt. Everything else being equal would this alone cause this crazy fermentation? My first beer did not do this.
2)Do I need to worry about all of the foam escaping the fermentor except the danger of the blow off device getting clogged?
3) With the additional malt do I need to expect fermentation to take longer than it did before with less malt?
4) for those of you that do not use a secondary fermentor, how do you add the priming sugar without mixing the trub back into the beer?

Last time I let the beer ferment for about 1 week in the primary then racked it into a carboy for another 2 1/2 weeks before bottling. This allowed me to use the plastic fermentor for priming and bottling but if there is a way to remove this step I am interested in how you guys do that.

Thanks in advance and I look forward to spending lots of time reading through all of the old threads and increasing my knowledge of home brewing!

Mike

 

[Slowfro]

How much yeast (and what kind) did you use? With the heavier malts, there is more starch converted to sugar during the mash process, so if you're heavy on the yeast like I was (well, am) there will be major fermentation. You should be set with the blow-off tube though.

I don't think you need to be concerned about the foam escaping, it's just a mixture of the wort and CO2. Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong though.

Yes, as you add malt, you're increasing the amount of sugars to be converted during fermentation, so it will take longer.

I'm not using a secondary fermenter on my stout, but I will be using a different bottling bucket so I will be mixing the beer and priming sugar then. However, if you're going to bottle straight from your primary, while you're boiling your sugar just sterilize a spoon (the one you used while adding the malt to the water) and stir the sugar water into the beer as you add it. As long as you agitate it you'll be fine.

Hope this helps, happy brewing!