Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Double Chocolate Oatmeal Snout

[ChshreCat]

The secondary is only for two things. Extra time to clear and time for it to sit on the vanilla bean.

Well, that and how I get sloppy when I siphon, so it lets whatever gets sucked up from the yeast cake settle out.

If you want, just split and scrape the vanilla bean and throw it in the primary after 3 weeks and leave it another 7 days.

 

[shroomzofdoom]

Well, I must say that I really enjoy this beer. It's a big hit with the non-beer drinking crowd too. My only real change was to use standard Hershey's cocoa powder from the baking aisle as I couldn't find any fat free stuff. It has .5g fat per serving, and didn't seem to affect my head retention at all. Mine pours with a nice thick head that dissipates about halfway through the beer.

Very nice concoction! I will DEFINATELY be making this again, next time as an AG.

 

[Highground]

Hi everyone. Im a new brewer and wanted to try out my first partial with this recipe. I think I might of done something wrong because my OG was only 1.029. I thought I was doing everything okay because beersmith was giving me a OG of 1.055 when I punched in all the ingredients. Heres what I used.

4.4lb dark DME
1.10lb Oat flakes
1lb Caramel malt
.75 Chocolate malt
.5 Roasted barley
2 oz Fuggles
2 grams of Irish moss
7 oz cocoa powder

Used a few cheese cloth bags to wrap the oats and barley up and put it in about 7L(1.8G) water at 150F for one hour. Sparged it in about 2L of water for 10 minutes. Added the two worts together. Then added my 2Kg of DME just before boil. Brought to a rolling boil and added the hops and boiled it for an hour. Last ten minutes of boil added the Irish moss and cocoa. Cooled and topped off the primary to 23L(5G) then added yeast from a coopers stout can I had.

If anyone can point out where I went wrong that would be great. Did I not use enough water on the steep/mash and there fore didnt get enough convertion?
Or was I to lite on the DME.

If I was a bit lite on the DME can I still add some more. I have kilogram of Amber DME I could still throw in there. Could I just boil it in 1L of water, cool it down and then toss it in the primary. I pitched the yeast last night and this morning the airlock is already bubbling away.

Thanks for any help in advance. This sounds like an awesome recipe and I was really looking forward to a thick chocolate stout.

 

[ChshreCat]

Well, to start with, you didn't mash because you left out the pale malt. You didn't have anything with the enzymes to convert starch to sugar. You steeped your grain. It's not a partial mash unless you include some base malt in there.

Just boiling 4.4lbs of DME and hitting 5 gallons of volume will give you an OG of 1.039

 

[Highground]

Thanks Chshrecat. Ill need to get some base malts for my next brew. So does that mean this brew is fubar? Would the grains that I used still give me the flavor Im looking for? And should I go ahead and still add the amber dme? Not sure If I should keep going with this or just toss it and try again.

 

[ChshreCat]

I'd let it go as it is. I'm thinking that your low OG was due to getting a thin sample after you topped up. It's hard to get the wort and top up water totally mixed and you can often get a sample that's higher or lower. If the grains were milled, you should still get some flavor from them. Not sure if the oats did anything for you though.

 

[Goingforsound]

Hey,

I'm trying this recipe tomorow, looks fantastic.

However, concerning the oatmeal, do I have to cook it like Palmer says in his ''how to brew'' or I just put it in the mash uncooked?

Thanks,

JC

 

[ChshreCat]

That depends on what kind of oats you got. If you have flaked oats from the homebrew shop, they can just go right in the mash as they are. They're pre-gelatinized.

 

[Goingforsound]

Thanks a lot for the fast answer!!!

I got them from my local shop

 

[ChshreCat]

Thanks a lot for the fast answer!!!

I got them from my local shop

No problem. Sounds like you're good to go.

 

[mixmasterob]

Bout to brew this in a week or 2. Gonna follow the recipe exactly although I am going to sub the fuggles for cascades. How much water did you mash with/sparge with?

 

[ChshreCat]

I mashed with a little over 6 quarts. Sparged enough to fill my kettle. Little under 4 gallons.

Not sure about the cascades. Don't think the flavor would be right with this, but that's just me. If they're just for bittering and you make sure to do a full 60 minutes it should be fine.

 

[mixmasterob]

Not sure about the cascades. Don't think the flavor would be right with this, but that's just me. If they're just for bittering and you make sure to do a full 60 minutes it should be fine.

Ya I just figured that for bitterness it wouldn't matter too much. I guess I could get some Fuggles...How much flavor is impacted from hops boiled for 60 min?

 

[ChshreCat]

Ya I just figured that for bitterness it wouldn't matter too much. I guess I could get some Fuggles...How much flavor is impacted from hops boiled for 60 min?

Couldn't tell you, really. But when it comes down to it, it's your batch and it could make it better for all I know. Do whatcha want That's what homebrewing is all about!

 

[mixmasterob]

Did you strain the wort into your fermenter or just dump everything in? I guess the chocolate making its way into the fermenter is necessary right?

 

[Goingforsound]

everything went in the fermenter in my batch

great recipe

 

[ChshreCat]

I poured it through a strainer to strain out the hops, but the cocoa powder is fine enough that most of it passes right through. I also tend to do what I call a "hop sparge" when I pour some of my top up water through the hops in the strainer to rinse all the worty goodness of them. I just can't bring myself to waste a drop if I can avoid it!

 

[mixmasterob]

everything went in the fermenter in my batch

great recipe

thats a huge carboy. how big is it?

 

[Goingforsound]

It's a 6.5 gallons, but there is less than 5 gallons in it... we did a newbie mistake and over half a gallon is missing.

 

[klbshack]

I bottled a batch of back in December. I cracked one tonight. Wow, I was pleasantly surprised. I will have to make this a regular! Thanks

 

[mixmasterob]

Will this stuff work?
http://www.thefreshmarket.com/online-market/detail.aspx?ID=462

 

[ChshreCat]

Probably has fat in it, but as was pointed out earlier by the guy who used a can of Hershey's, it doesn't seem to hurt the head much at all.

 

[Fyxen]

Just made this as my first partial mash. It looks so great in the fermenter, can't wait to taste it!

 

[mixmasterob]

Just pitched S04. This stuff looks awesome and I nailed the SG at 1.070. Ended up going w/ Willamette. And the waiting begins...

 

[endless889]

man this looks tasty. i'm still a noob, but i'm gonna try this with few slight modifications. like adding coffee and maybe a sprinkly of cinnamon too. why do you only boil your extract for last 15 min of boil. don't you usually steep/sparge grains for 30-45 min at 155, then add extract, bring to a boil and do the full 60?

 

[mixmasterob]

Wow, this yeast ferments fast! In two days it looks like its starting to wind down. Also, how much did you guys lose to the large amount of cocoa powder sitting on the bottom of the beer? There is a ton.

 

[ChshreCat]

man this looks tasty. i'm still a noob, but i'm gonna try this with few slight modifications. like adding coffee and maybe a sprinkly of cinnamon too. why do you only boil your extract for last 15 min of boil. don't you usually steep/sparge grains for 30-45 min at 155, then add extract, bring to a boil and do the full 60?

This a partial mash, not a steeping grains recipe. After the mash, you have pretty much full strength wort for the boil. The extract is added at the end and only has a short boil time. No need to boil it all through. The recipe is designed for a late extract addition.

Wow, this yeast ferments fast! In two days it looks like its starting to wind down. Also, how much did you guys lose to the large amount of cocoa powder sitting on the bottom of the beer? There is a ton.

Not much at all. Give it a good 3 weeks minimum in the primary and the cocoa powder settles right down with the yeast cake. It looks almost like pudding after you siphon the beer off it. Here's a shot of my yeast cake from my first batch of this:

 

[garyhood]

If the oats aren't from a homebrew store what do you recommend and how would you prepare them?
cheers

 

[ChshreCat]

From what I read you can substitute "quick oats" from the grocery store, but not instant oatmeal. I haven't done it myself, so I can't say from experience.

 

[d4rren]

New to Oats in brewing... What is the best thing to mash the Oats with? Some say 6-row brewers malt others say 2 row. Does it matter which one? And is there an oats to malt ratio standard?

Thanks