Alemans Effin Oatmeal Stout

Ok about time I did another batch of this, and while I'm trying to wake up a tube of WLP0838 that went out of date in may I may as well do it because its going to be a quick one

Aiming for 80L at 1.052. 31 IBU and 68EBC (75% Efficiency and Tinseths)

12000g Pale Malt
2250g Flaked Oats (Toasted - 45 Minutes in oven at 150C Or until golden brown :roll
1000g Chocolate Malt
1000g Flaked Barley
750g Brown Malt
750g Crystal 120EBC
250g Roast Barley

The Oats, Flaked Barley and 500g of pale malt will under go a glucan rest, but the main mash will use a Hochkurz mash schedule with this one, (30 minutes at 60C and then 60 Minutes at 70C), as I want to try and get as much fermentability as possible and a lot of those grains don't convert that well at all.

A 90 Minute boil with

175g Bramling Cross Hops (5.8% Alpha for 60 Minutes)
25g Bramling Cross (5.8% Alpha steep at 80C)

I'm hoping to get more blackcurrant/Blackberry flavour coming through from the hops than the last batch. (I'm waiting on an order from Rob at the Malt Miller before I know the actual alpha values of the hops ops

Once fermentation is finished, I'm going to dry hop two of the cornies with cocoa nibs one with vanilla pods and also put vanilla pods in with one of those with cocoa. It should give me a nice comparison between 'plain' stout, chocolate stout, vanilla stout and chocolate vanilla stout. I picked chocolate and vanilla because i think they will complement the creamy smoothness of the base oatmeal stout particularly well . . . I may even do an espresso version, depending on how much I make.

The burner is lit under the kettle, grain weighed out and ready to crush. Mash Tuns sorted (yes 2 . . . I must fettle my 80L tun )

BRING IT ON!! :cheers

Running slow today, kettle taking ages to heat up because of the wind. Batteries dying on my drill crushing the grain . . . still got the Glucan mash on consisting of 2.5Kg Flaked Oats, 0.65kg Flaked barley, and 1 Kg of base malts. . . in at 40C and into the oven on slow to keep it warm.

Hopefully the kettle will get to strike heat fairly soon.

Edit : Useful point . . .when you have lit the burner remember to turn the rings up to full or you may be waiting a while . . . :sulk:

And the Mash is on arty: arty:

My new mash mixer combined with under letting made mashing in a dream. Need to set the HERMS up on Tun One . . . for when the Glucan Mash goes in. . . . .



. . . . So far everything seems to be going smoothly . . . . What have I forgotten :hmm: :hmm:

Unfortunately I haven't enough room in my mash tuns to add back all of the glucan mash . . .So I've taken some of the mash out of Tun 1 and put in in the glucan mash . . . which is nor back in the oven. When I've drained off some of the wort from Tun 2 I'll Add it back in before sparging

Still sparging . . . . very very slowly . . . My 50L mash tun keeps sticking . . . I've hoisted it onto the HLT shelf and am letting it drain . . . 60L in the kettle . . . needing 100L pre boil

Once I've got the tun draining . . . I'm off to do the horse, and when I get back hopefully it will have finished, and I can start the boil

I lost the will to live

I have just started the boil of the wort I got . . . 89L @1.047 so around what was expected gravity points wise (100l at 1.043) so not to shabby.

Even this morning after an overnight rest, when I opened the tap on the tun I only got 0.5L of wort out and then nothing . . . It's a very gooey mess in the mash tun, i'll post pictures.

The main issue here I feel is that doing everything in two tuns without having the full capacity required has caused this blockage . . . a lesser volume in the 50L tun worked fine. . . I was getting worried when it blocked as the HERMS had recirculated fine with good temp control and has always done so in the past. . . .

Still boil under way and it will be beer

Yeah it was a real PITA brew I lost 12% efficiency in the gunged up mash, but still got 15.5 gallons at 1.051 so not a total loss.

As promised here are some piccies.

Grain Bill . . . All 18Kg of it



Underletting, as the easy way to mix liquor and grain



Strike temp as measured by the HERMS :thumb: which needs an outside wipe down ops:



Hop Filter in place even though its been a while since brewing I didn't make the elementary mistake



Running off and FW Hops in . . . it was about this time that the realisation Dawned . . . "Huston, we have a problem!"



Mash Comparisions . . . Good Mash



. . . . Bad Mash!!



The very lonely hop bill still waiting for their bath



My cooling setup, in a very dirty unclean shed ops:



The obligatory shots of filth



And Connor the conical with his load . . . No insulation as it's not too cold . . . will be adding another heat belt though

[graysalchemy]

Now Tony is this the most upto date recent recipe

You do have a habit of 'changing' it a little.

Now Tony is this the most upto date recent recipe

Well it was the last one I brewed . . . In Jan 2013

You do have a habit of 'changing' it a little.

. . . . Where is the damn 'Shrug' Smilie??

Good to see this recipe here!

I recently made my first Oatmeal Stout (not this recipe!) and I'm a little disappointed with the creaminess and head retention. Comparing with the recipe above I noticed that I used only 6.7% flaked oats rather than 12.5% and also no flaked barley. Was I too light on the oats?

I'm also thinking it might be the carbonation, I didn't want it to be too fizzy (don't like fizzy stout!) so went for just about 1.6-1.7 range. Should I up that a little next time?

There is a thread to discuss What Yeast To Use here.

Here is effin oatmeal stout recipe I scaled down some time ago.
I am particularly worried about 2 step mash routine as I usually do single infusion mash. Maybe somebody can comment on my strike water volume grain ratio and recipe it self. I will be using Ashbeck spring water from tescos. Should I add some calcium sulphate to the mash? I don't measure my water alkalinity and I don't treat my mash water as I started brewing only in February and want to concentrate on more fundamental things, but it is on my to do list in near future.

Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 10.00 l
Boil Size: 15.11 l
Boil Time: 90 min

Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU
1.45 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 61.6 %
0.27 kg Oats, Flaked (2.0 EBC) Grain 2 11.6 %
0.22 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (118.2 EBC) Grain 3 9.4 %
0.15 kg Chocolate Malt (886.5 EBC) Grain 4 6.2 %
0.12 kg Barley, Flaked (3.3 EBC) Grain 5 5.1 %
0.11 kg Brown Malt (128.1 EBC) Grain 6 4.7 %
0.04 kg Roasted Barley (591.0 EBC) Grain 7 1.5 %
23.36 g Bramling Cross [5.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 28.8 IBUs
3.12 g Bramling Cross [6.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 0.0 min Hop 9 0.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg Windsor Yeast (Lallemand #-) [23.66 ml] Yeast 10 -

Est Original Gravity: 1.052 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.016 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.7 %
Bitterness: 28.8 IBUs
Est Color: 55.2 EBC

Sparge Water: 9.10 l
Sparge Temperature: 75.6 C
Total Grain Weight: 2.36 kg

Mash Steps Name Description Step Temperature Step Time

1st step Add 5.74 l of water at 65.9 C 60.0 C 30 min
2nd step Add 3.94 l of water at 86.8 C 70.0 C 60 min

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun , 9.10l) of 75.6 C water



Thank you

I've got this ready to start tomorrow. (thanks Aleman)

Two things though. I don't have Bramling Cross, I was going with Challenger and I don't have the right yeast, my choice is Nottingham ale yeast or S-04.

Hmmmmm, have I gone so far from the recipe it's not Effin? I think the yeast might be an important aspect of this recipe

Never had that before! Boy that's active. Krausen has gone straight through the airlock! And there was loads of head room too. only 22L in a 30L FV. Blimey.

So what did I do wrong? Or was it something I did right?

[calumscott]

Sounds just right to me!!! It's a yeast

Sounds just right to me!!! It's a yeast

I used Notty in the end. I've never had this before Calum.......... I didn't really know what to do so I lifted the lid (I never do that) scooped the krausen off and let it form equally as big all over again

Can anyone advise on the appropriate amount of priming sugar per litre for bottling this excellent stout please?

Cheers

Greg

The usual 1/2 teaspoon per pint . . . Perhaps a touch less.

The usual 1/2 teaspoon per pint . . . Perhaps a touch less.

Thank you

I'm going to make this one soon, only question I have so far are the flaked barley and oats, I have a choice of malted or unmalted, which one is preferred?

Cheers
Andy

I'm going to make this one soon, only question I have so far are the flaked barley and oats, I have a choice of malted or unmalted, which one is preferred?

I use unmalted

many thanks Aleman

I have an 80 litre HERMS set up, for the Glucan rest I was going to do that in parallel with the 60 degree mash, then add the contents of the glucan rest at the end of that mash carefully then up it 70 degrees.

Does that sound like a reasonable schedule or would you suggest an alternative?

cheers
Andy

Exactly what I would do, my last one set solid, so if you have any rice or oat hulls add them to the glucan mash and give it a stir before putting it back on top of the main mash, and don't stir it in, the HERMS recirc will take care of the 'Mixing'

Perfect! I shall add a couple of hundred grammes of rice hulls to the glucan mash and do as you suggest

I'm doing a very simple summer ale first, then the stout in a couple of weeks, but wanted to order all the ingredients at the same time. I now have all the info I need so game on!

Many thanks for your help.

Cheers
Andy

Brewday looks like Friday, however I haven't sourced flaked oats yet. Are rolled oats good enough? I know rolled oats are processed slightly differently, i.e. not pressure heated to gelatinise the starches. If rolled oats are OK then do I use them the same?

Cheers
Andy

I use rolled oats, and do a cereal mash with them. . . . at a push you could use steel cut oats but they are nowhere as easy to toast

Thanks for that, rolled oats obtained. The cereal mash plan is as follows, toast the rolled oats, add water and get a thin mash around 50c then add the pale malt and flaked barley to bring it down to around 40c for 30 mins or so then add to the second step of the main mash as previously discussed.

Does that sound about right?

Cheers
Andy

Add the flaked/rolled grain and the small amount of pale malt and mash at 40C for 30 minutes, then take it up to the temperature of the main mash, and add the cereal mash to the main mash for another hour.

Add the flaked/rolled grain and the small amount of pale malt and mash at 40C for 30 minutes, then take it up to the temperature of the main mash, and add the cereal mash to the main mash for another hour.

You want the pale malt to be about 10% of the weight of the oats... so you want about 30 grams of pale malt in your ceral mash...... I always end up flinging more in!