Oatmeal Stout Samuel Smiths Oatmeal Stout

[JDFlow]

I just brewed this today as my first batch ever. I used extract and steeped the specialty grains for 30 minutes at 160. I grabbed the wrong yeast pack at the store by accident so I pitched London Ale 1318. After reading a bit online the yeast is supposed to work well with the style. Hope it turns out well, but it is my first so I don't expect the world of craft beer to be handed to me in a hand basket. Cheers!

 

[auto4life]

I just finished brewing an extract / specialty grain version of this recipe. excellent roasty flavor i intend to brew again but not quite the SS oatmeal stout i was looking for.

 

[Frikkieman]

I'm wanting to do this recipe in a double batch. Its beet about 7 months since the last comment, I see. I just wanna check if there are any new thoughts or ideas on this recipe. Any modifications or suggestions to get it closer to the original for those who have tasted the original and gotten really close to an exact clone.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Chuck179577]

Gonna brew this tomorrow, went and got supplies today.
Of course, the local shop didn't have everything exactly as in the recipe so here are my substitutions:

7.5lbs Marris Otter L 3.0
0.5lbs Breiss Crystal L 40
0.5lbs Chocolate L 450-500
0.5lbs flaked oats
0.18 lbs Breiss Roasted Barley, unmalted L 300
2.0 oz Kent Goldings (alpha 5.8, beta 3.2)
1 packet S-04 yeast.

Thoughts on any adjustments?
I'm a little worried about 2oz of goldings at 60 in a 90 minute boil, that it is going to be too bitter for an oatmeal stout, particularly as the recipe calls for 4.25 and mine is 5.8. Should this be a concern?
Think one packet of S-04 will be enough or need 2?

Thanks for your input!
Chuck

 

[mgortel]

Just want to confirm the 150F mash temp?

 

[davebstock]

I am brewing this beer saturday. I have the same issue with the higher alpha acids with the hops. I'm thinking we want to adjust how much to use. Clone brews says 8.5 hbu's for extract and 6.5 hbu's for all grain brewing. There should be a calculator to figure out the proper weight for your particular alpha acid %. I may look it up tonight.

 

[davebstock]

Here's how to adjust your hops when the alpha acids are different: hbu (homebrew bittering units)= % alpha acid x ounces of hops.
In your case it calls for 2oz 4.25% aa. 2 x 4.25= 8.5hbu's . With 5.8%... Xoz x 5.8=8.5 . Divide both sides by 5.8 and you get 1.4655. So 1.4655oz of 5.8%= 8.5hbu's . Does that make sense?

This recipe for SS Oatmeal Stout is from the clone brews book. It says if you do the all grain version you should drop the hops by 24% to 6.5hbu's. Xoz x 5.8= 6.5hbu ... 1.12oz of 5.8%= 6.5hbu's.

I'm going to mash mine at 156 degrees for the thicker mouth feel as recommend earlier in this post.

 

[davebstock]

Just want to confirm the 150F mash temp?

The book says 150 mash temp. I have heard others going with 154 or 156 as I am going to do.

 

[davebstock]

Now I have a question:
What do you think the importance of aging the bottles at 50 degrees for 28 days is? I dont have a way of keeping them that cool.

 

[SKooT1027]

I attempted brewing this a few weeks ago and think I may have had an issue. This is only my third brew attempt, all of them have been all-grain BIAB style. I followed the recipe (using the ~154F mash temp suggested in later posts) but noticed my OG was somewhere around 1.036, which is strangely low. I did overshoot the initial amount of water slightly, but only by maybe 1/4 gallon. I didn't realize this was so low until last night, when I went to bottle (mixed up the 36 with a 46). I took a hydrometer reading last night, and it gave 1.020. As a side note, I brew 2.5g batches.

I had originally tried the liquid yeast recommended, but it didn't take. It was one of those activator packs, and given the 2.5g brew size I figured I could just pitch it as is. After about 4 days of no activity I decided to use some S-05 dry yeast. I noticed fermentation within about a day. This was 2 weeks ago.

I'm not really sure where I went wrong. I decided against bottling last night (despite all the time I spent cleaning before taking the hydrometer reading), added another 1/2 packet of yeast, stirred it up and left it to go for a few more days, but I'm not sure what to expect.

Any advice on what may have caused the low OG, high FG and best steps to try to save this?

 

[ryangibson77]

My first thought regarding your low yield issue is that your grain may not have been crushed. Do you crush your own grain, or buy it crushed? Also, it is possible your strike water denatured a bunch of the enzymes if your strike water was too hot.

Regarding the yeast issue, do you know how old it was? Did you oxygenate? It's possible that if the grain wasn't crushed, a side effect of the low yield may be a lack of nutrients in the wort that the yeast count on for propagation. Someone else with a greater knowledge of yeast metabolism would have to chime in on this one though.

As far as saving the batch, I would buy some yeast energizer from your local HBS and see if that helps. Have you tasted it yet? As long as it tastes decent, I'd just plan on drinking it fast, since it'll basically be a "session" beer, and then just try it again.

 

[SKooT1027]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I had the grain crushed at my LHBS about one month prior to use. I'm wondering if maybe it wasn't crushed enough. Strike water was 160, expecting it'd drop to 154. It only went to around 157, so I left it uncovered and stirred for around 10 minutes until temp dropped to 154. Then I covered and left it. Overall, I thought this brew process went better than my first two, so I was surprised by the low OG.

I didn't do anything to the yeast other than 'smack' the activator, give it a few hours to puff up and pour it in. Yeast was around 6 weeks old. I figured the loss to age would be offset by using the full pack in a 2.5g batch.

Beer tasted pretty decent. It'll obviously be very low abv (2.5%?). I didn't want to risk bottle bombs by carbing at that high of a FG, so that's why I decided to try more yeast.

 

[ryangibson77]

Based on what you've said, I'd bet the crush was poor...either the grain mill wasn't adjusted correctly, or there was uncrushed grain mixed in with the crushed grain or something... even at 160° strike temp, you should still have quite a bit of Alpha Amylase, so your wort may have a high FG, but the OG should still be where you'd expect it...oh, how long did you mash for, and did you do an iodine test to see if all of the starch was converted? I suppose if you did a 20-30 minute mash you might see that too...I mash a minimum of 45 minutes, plus a 15 minute vorlauf before sparging. I've never done a BIAB though...how about mash thickness? I think thicker mashes can tend to be less efficient... I typically do 1.1:1 water to grain or higher. Makes it easier to stir and gives the enzymes plenty of room to work. Anyway, just throwing out some ideas.

About the yeast...if the smack pack swelled up prior to pitching, I'd say the yeast were viable...but if the wort were under oxygenated, and/or lacking in DAP, the yeast would have a hard time propagating to sufficient quantities to start the fermentation stage and just got stuck. Adding some DAP and re-oxygenating may have done the trick. Also if the yeast you used is highly flocculent, you'd probably need to stir up the yeast cake after a stuck ferment. Sometimes the yeast just settle out if they never get started and pack so tightly that even after a DAP and O2 infusion, they just stay dormant.

Anyway, I think what I'd do is bottle in plastic soda bottles. They are much more forgiving, and you can "feel" the pressure in them, so you don't have to worry about bottle bombs.

 

[SKooT1027]

Thanks for the input. I mashed for 60 minutes, then just pulled the bag and squeezed the grains, extracting about 1-2 cups of liquid from it. There's no sparge in BIAB. Same with mash thickness, to get a final volume of 2.5g I estimated somewhere around 4.25g initially with the grains, which ultimately boils down to the final volume - although I overshot and ended up with more like 2.75g at the end.

I'm thinking it may have been an issue with the grains. I got my other grains from the same shop in the past, but maybe in the future I'll ask them to run it through twice.

 

[ryangibson77]

Without sparging, I would expect a fairly low efficiency, like maybe 50%...but if you've brewed using BIAB before and got significantly higher efficiency, then it would seem to point to the grain crush being the issue. I average about 72% efficiency in my all-grain system, which is fairly low, but it hasn't been a real priority for me to improve it until recently.

My next batch I plan on running the grain through my mill a second time to see if it makes a difference. Then I may try adjusting the roller gap. Also, I think I'm doing a Dunkelweizen for one of my next batches as well, which I plan on doing my first decoction mash, which should improve efficiency as well...but I digress...

Running the grain through the mill twice may improve an already good extract efficiency, but if the rollers are out of adjustment and insufficiently crushing the grain in the first place, running it through a second time wouldn't help much. Next time, just be sure to look at all your grain before you mash, and verify that there aren't a significant number of un-cracked kernels. The kernels should be split into at least thirds, if not quarters after they go through the mill. If your kernels are only split in half, that would lead to a low efficiency. The smaller the crush, the higher the efficiency. Once you start all-grain brewing though, if you get the crush too small, you will have a hard time sparging the grain, because it will be smaller than the holes in the false bottom.

Good luck!