Help with a big stout

[Kiichi]

Good day gentlemen,
I require your help.
I wanne get a big stout started very soon and I am unsure about how I should do some specifics as I am not very experienced (third brew now, second one was a own recipie extract boil IPA which came out great).

This will be my first time working with specialty malts and steeping, as I now finally have a HBS which has a lot of nice stuff.

The idea is to make a Stout that comes out around 8%, is on the sweeter side; full, smooth and creamy mouthfeel; little bit of chocolat flavour rounded off with a bit of vanilla.
A beer that makes you smile as you slowly sink into that welcoming, homely goodnes.
Looks like I´ll work with S-04 again.

Now in my current apartment I can not perform a proper boil due to stove size, so I have to work off of prehopped kits and add some things.

My plan so far is:
1 Coopers Stout Kit
1 Coopers Dark Ale Kit
???g of Pale Chocolat Malt, steeped
???g of Crystal / Caramel Malt, steeped

Questions are:
-How much of the Chocolat malt?
-Which Crystal / Caramel malt?
-How much Crystal / Caramel malt?
-Can I add oatmeal for the feel and if so, would you happen to know a good resource where I can read up on it?

Really appreciate the help guys!

Cheers
Kiichi

 

[DaNewf]

If you are doing a 23 litre batch you are not going to get anywhere near 8% with just the two kits as fermentables. I did a toucan last December it had:

Cooper's OS Stout
Cooper's Dark Ale
1kg Dextrose

Made up to 23 litres this did note quite reach 8%. (Real nice beer by the way but needs to age a while to mellow out, I still have some left.)

Cooper's has a recipe on their website called the ChocLiqueur Stout. I've made a slightly modified version of it that I enjoyed. The recipe includes 300gr of chocolate malt for steeping. I've never used cystal with one of these kits unless I was doing a partial mash.

Speaking of mashing, it is my understanding that oatmeal needs to be mashed with base malt if it going to used to make beer. I may be confused on this. If I'm wrong hopefully someone will chime in.

 

[flatlanderHQ]

I would check BYO.com for a stout recipe. Soundslike you want an imperial stout with that ABV. There are a lot of choices to make with steeping grain combos, but with oatmeal you need to do a mash to get the proteins into solution. Check out the following link:

http://byo.com/stories/item/1191-oatmeal-stout-imperial-stout-style-of-the-month

Cheers!