Oat malt and/or Quick oats?

[scottthorn]

I'm going to brew an oatmeal stout tomorrow. The recipe I have used in the past calls for a pound of quick oats. I have the quick oats on hand, but I also have five pounds of oat malt I picked up a couple months ago. Should oat malt be considered more of a base grain than an adjunct? If I use both will it be too much? Should I use one or the other? I've never worked with oat malt before, so any suggestions are appreciated.

Here's the basic recipe:

10lbs 2-row or Maris Otter
1lb. quick oats
1lb. Crystal
.75 lb Chocolate Malt
.5 lb Roasted Barley

Mash on the high side for 60min.
1oz of high AA hops (or 2oz low AA hops) @ start of boil.

I'm considering replacing half the 2-row with the oat malt and keeping the quick oats, but I'd hate to ruin a batch. Comments?

 

[Poindexter]

Where did you find oat malt?

You can make a fine oat stout using quick oats in the mash tun with whatever grains you are mashing or steeping.

In the 1500s English sailors rebelled over being served beer made with oats only because there is some kind of bitterness I have never experienced from using "too much" oats in the grain bill.

Most of what I found when scouring the internet (unsuccessfully) for malted oats says ~10% of grain bill top end as oat. I recall one reference saying you could go as high as 20%, the other extreme was someone who didn't want to go over 5%.

 

[jtvinny]

Sorry, no input, just interested in the reply.

 

[david_42]

I'd say replace the Quick Oats with Oat Malt, but swapping 5 lbs would be WAY too much.

 

[Brewmando]

My local brew pub makes an oatmeal stout. 25% of the grain bill is oats according to the brewer. Not one of my favs but others really like it.

 

[scottthorn]

Thanks for the responses so far!

I just grabbed the Oat Malt out of the grain locker and here's what the label says:

Thomas Fawcett & Sons LTD.
Castleford, England
Oat Malt
1.9-2.3°L

TF&S's website says: "Enhances body and flavour of Stouts, Porters and Winter Warmers"

I purchased it in January as part of a bulk buy - IIRC, from North Country. When I picked it up, the comment I remember being made was that the husks do a great job of setting up the grain bed - more so than regular barley.

I just sampled it, and that oat taste is definitely there in spades. I think I'll use 2.5 pounds of the oat malt with a little less 2-row, and maybe make some cookies with the quick oats

Feel free to keep any comments/suggestions coming. I've still got close to 24 hours before I mash in.

 

[scottthorn]

Here's the recipe I ended up with:

9lbs 2-row
2.5lbs oat malt
1lb. Crystal
.75 lb Chocolate Malt
.5 lb Roasted Barley

My mash settled in at 152°. I had wanted it a few degrees higher, but just let it ride there for about 50 minutes before pulling first runnings. I ended up doing a modified fly sparge instead of batch.

For the only hop addition I used 1.5oz of Hallertau that had been in the freezer for some time. I threw in a quarter ounce of Galena with it to be sure I had enough IBUs.

I pitched onto a yeast cake of US-05 and I wish I had done it a bit differently. I'm fermenting in an 8 gallon bucket. There was a thick layer of yeast from the two previous fermentations (Pliny clone and Pale Ale) - plus I ended up with quite a bit more than 6 gallons of stout. Normally I don't have to worry about a blow-off with the extra capacity in the bucket, but it was shooting foam a few hours after pitching and was still blowing hard this morning. I hope I don't come home to a huge mess tonight! Next time: get rid of some of the yeast cake, leave an appropriate amount of headspace, invest in some foam control drops.

O.G. was 1.053. I've been suffering from crappy efficiency for a while now, but I think I'm getting back on track. My O.G. would have been really close to expectations if I had kept boiling down to 5 gallons but it was getting kind of late so I bailed on that idea...

The hydrometer sample tasted wonderful. I'll be sure to update the thread to let you know what I think of the oat malt.

 

[Ecnerwal]

Having just ordered some oat malt (and other stuff) in the spirit of experimentation (going to move from steeping to at least PM) I'd be curious about results, if results have now been obtained.

 

[Vuarra]

I find this thread interesting... I want to do some converting of oats myself, and ran across it... I hope the OP will post pix and let us know how it's going.