Too dark?

[stanzela]

hello all,

well, that I've caught the bug is now a confirmed fact -brewed up my fourth all-grain batch on Friday using up the last of my grains. The beer: a dark oatmeal stout with a meagre attempt to approximate McAuslan's Oatmeal Stout. I had found an ancient recipe online calling for 50% 2-row, 15% chocolate malt, 15%Roasted barley, 10% crystal 120, and 5% each of flaked oats, and corn.

Without reading further I went to work grinding, although I suspected that the roasted barley addition seemed high. The rest of the post containing the recipe went on to talk about how that almost definitely wouldn't be a close approximation, but of course by then it was too late. Now, I'm not one to shy away from dark and strong beers, but in all honestly, will this be too much??

Here's my recipe:

4 gal batch (appx)

-3.2lb Maris Otter
-1lb of chocolate malt (self roasted from the MO, likely a pale chocolate as it wasn't black, just dark)
-1lb of roasted barley
-1lb of oats (66% were toasted until golden, 33% were untoasted)
-1lb caramunich I

mashed at 156 for a little over an hour, and it was a pretty slow sparge.
75 minute boil

- 1oz Northern Brewer (80min)
- 0.35oz of each Fuggles and Northern Brewer (45 min)

yeast - safale US-05

The wort tasted great although the roasty character was strong - hadan amazing deep brown foam. I am just wondering how this will settle out over the course of the month. I am hoping for a drinkable if strong, dark stout.

Thoughts?

 

[acuenca]

What was your og? Your fermentables seem low for 4 gallons...

 

[andyhat]

What was your og? Your fermentables seem low for 4 gallons...

I agree with this. That doesn't seem like very much grain. That having been said, I don't seem much wrong with this. It will turn out with a very strong chocolate/smokey taste and not too much alch.

 

[BigEd]

hello all,

well, that I've caught the bug is now a confirmed fact -brewed up my fourth all-grain batch on Friday using up the last of my grains. The beer: a dark oatmeal stout with a meagre attempt to approximate McAuslin's Oatmeal Stout. I had found an ancient recipe online calling for 50% 2-row, 15% chocolate malt, 15%Roasted barley, 10% crystal 120, and 5% each of flaked oats, and corn.

Without reading further I went to work grinding, although I suspected that the roasted barley addition seemed high. The rest of the post containing the recipe went on to talk about how that almost definitely wouldn't be a close approximation, but of course by then it was too late. Now, I'm not one to shy away from dark and strong beers, but in all honestly, will this be too much??

Here's my recipe:

4 gal batch (appx)

-3.2lb Maris Otter
-1lb of chocolate malt (self roasted from the MO, likely a pale chocolate as it wasn't black, just dark)
-1lb of roasted barley
-1lb of oats (66% were toasted until golden, 33% were untoasted)
-1lb caramunich I

mashed at 156 for a little over an hour, and it was a pretty slow sparge.
75 minute boil

- 1oz Northern Brewer (80min)
- 0.35oz of each Fuggles and Northern Brewer (45 min)

yeast - safale US-05

The wort tasted great although the roasty character was strong - hadan amazing deep brown foam. I am just wondering how this will settle out over the course of the month. I am hoping for a drinkable if strong, dark stout.

Thoughts?

In short, it's a bad recipe. There is almost 28% dark malt and close to 14% crystal malt to go with it. That is over 40% of the grist bill. It is not only way more than necessary it's going to give you a pretty low alcohol result as the black malts have virtually no fermentables. While it may at least be drinkable, next time reduce the black and crystal to about 10% and 5% respectively and up the amount of base malt. Maybe something like this:

4.75 # Pale
1 # oats
.5 # CaraMunich
.5 # Roasted barley
.5 # Chocolate malt

 

[stanzela]

well, a little disappointing to hear, but in the end, it was a 'kitchen sink' batch that i threw together because i just wanted to brew.

As for the low grain-weight, yup, bang-on. It was a 3gal conversion, and I just ended up tossing some extra wort into the kettle to try to snag a few more bottles. It is more like 3.5gal. I'm sure it`s a classic rookie-mistake - going for quantity over quality - and I'm embarassed to have fallen into the trap.

I'm looking forward to it in any case...

Will post results as they come in.

Thanks, all, for responding.

Matt

 

[midfielder5]

As others have said, it has too much dark/ roasted grains. I also would have mashed lower, like 150, to dry it out.
You might want to brew 5 or so gallons of just two-row and blend them. but it might be throwing good money after bad!
good luck.

 

[stanzela]

I think there's a good chance it will be drinkable...probably a nice little morning stout. I mean, I'm sure for someone who's done a thousand batches, this would taste pretty off and may not be worth drinking, but after a couple of hours of hand grinding, and then a slow brew-day, I'm not going to be wasting any of this stuff.

I look forward to it - an interesting mistake.

 

[stanzela]

Well, fermentation has been finished for about four days now so I siphoned off a 750ml, swing-top and primed accordingly - figured I'd do a little tester bottle. I had a little taste from out of the carboy and I must say it was darn pleasant. It really did have a feeling similar to McAuslan's with a rich malty taste and a dark foam. In any case, we'll see how it mellows. Maybe not everyone's taste, but I'm pleased.

 

[stanzela]

Well, it certainly looks the part:

It is definitely lacking on the sweet side, which is where I think an extra 2-3lbs of Otter would have worked wonders. I really do think that the roasty/chololatey profile is a good replication of the original, but it's missing that sweetness to support it. It's drinkable for sure, but next batch will (obviously) need some tweaking. Very happy with carbonation, texture, appearance and the roasted profile though.