- Recipe Type
- All Grain
- Yeast
- S-04
- Yeast Starter
- None
- Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter
- M15
- Batch Size (Gallons)
- 6
- Original Gravity
- 1.059
- Final Gravity
- 1.020
- Boiling Time (Minutes)
- 60
- IBU
- 36
- Color
- 26
- Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
- 14 days @ 64'F
- Tasting Notes
- Thick and silky. Moderate roast. A bit of nuttiness from the buckwheat. Supremely drinkable.
Grist:
- Base malt to meet OG - I use 3.2 kg when I use quality continental base malt and 3.8-4 kg when I use domestic feed-grade malt because it has lower pppg. I don't find it makes a big difference as long as I hit my gravity - Chateau Vienna and cheap Chinese-malted Australian feed barley produce pretty much the same final product. If you're worried about diastatic power with so much unmalted grain, you may want to use some 6-row but I've done fine without it.
- 1 kg Flaked Oats
- 0.5 kg Raw Buckwheat
- 0.5 kg Roasted Barley
I usually grind the base malt, roasted barley, and buckwheat.
Mash @ 69'C / 155'F for at least 60 minutes. A longer mash may be necessary if you don't stir or recirculate.
Optionally, you may boil the oats and buckwheat for 10-30 minutes and then add to your strike water before mashing in with the barley. Generally, I either grind the buckwheat or boil the buckwheat and oats together - putting whole flaked oats in the mash is fine since they're pre-gelatinized, but that doesn't work with raw buckwheat.
Hops:
~30 IBUs bittering hops @ 60 minutes
~6 IBUs finishing hops @ 5 minutes
I've bittered with EKG, Nugget, and Magnum and finished with EKG, Nugget, and Fuggles - they've all turned out well. I've also bumped up the bittering addition a bit and skipped the finishing hops without losing much.
Water:
Last time, I used baking soda, epsom, CaCL, and chalk to build my RO water to 55 ppm Ca, 9 ppm Mg, 39 ppm Na, 37 ppm SO4, 45 ppm Cl, and 144 ppm HCO3. I'm no water expert but this came out really well.
Yeast/Fermentation:
S-04 and M15 Empire Ale have worked well for me individually, and the most recent batch where I copitched both strains came out even better. Any English strain that's good for dark ales will work.
I like to ferment S-04 right around 16.5 C / 61.7 F. I measure with the old probe insulated to the wall of the fermenter trick, so the beer is probably a degree or two warmer at the height of fermentation, but I'd probably not go higher than 19 C / 66 F beer temp.
Both of these yeasts have the benefit of floccing like cement, so you don't have to worry about a careful pour or leaving a bit of beer in the bottle if you bottle carbonate.
Carbonation:
I bottle condition and typically target 1.8 volumes. The light carbonation and silky mouthfeel from the oats gives it small bubbles and just a bit more carbonic bite than a nitro beer, which is perfect for this recipe. Don't expect much head formation with this carb level, nor much retention of what little head it does develop with all of the oats.
Other:
The color calculates out to the mid-twenties, but it looks more like low thirties SRM in the glass, which I attribute to the oats. This beer has evolved from a clone recipe for Harviestoun Old Engine Oil, which (especially the Ola Dubh variants) is one of the best damn porters out there, but at this point it's distinct from that recipe.
