Oooh... Oatmeal Stout!
Last week my friend Mike and I went to Steinbart’s to check it out, as he’s never been there before. Of course, I can’t walk in there without getting something, so we left there with ingredients to make an oatmeal stout.
Mikey- The Man, The Legend.
Now, I’ve made this particular stout before, and it turned out awesome! This time, I wanted to spice it up a bit by adding some maltodextrine to it, which I was planning on putting into my first batch.
Now, I got the water going for the protein rest and the extra boil water before Mike showed up. Once he got here, we got to business adding the grains.
Mike adding grains
With the grains added, we let them sit at 133 degrees for 30 minutes, having some issues getting it there. Then we added the boiling water to get the temp up to 150 degrees for the mash. Keeping it at 150 was pretty easy, it stayed a nice even temp once we got it dialed in. Also started the sparge water at this time, using the last of my gypsum in it.
Grains at mash temperature
Mikey and Me
With the grains mashed, we took the temp up to 167 to end the extraction and dumped into the lauder tun. We then slowly poured the sparge water into the lauder tun, not having a sprinkler thingey that Papazian always shows pictures of in all his books. The sparge went well, with a slow drain of wort back into our brew pot.
The Sparging Aftermath
Then, it was time to boil the wort. We got the wort boiling, added 1/2 of the dark malt extract and 6 oz of maltodextrine. Now, I was planning on using my hops bag for the 2oz of Willamette hops, but for some reason I couldn’t find it. Don’t know what happened to it. So, I improvised. I used a fine grain bag instead.
Dark Malt Extract
Maltodextrine in wort
Grain bag in wort
With the boil on the way, Mike had to say goodbye, as he had an appointment to be at. I had a homebrew, set the timer for 45 minutes to add the rest of the dark malt extract and the Irish Moss, and sanitized my fermenter.
Homebrew (Liberty Pale Ale)
Fermenter being sanitized
Once the timer went off I added the rest of the malt extract and got back to studying for a test this Friday. At a certain point, I realized I had forgotten to add the Irish Moss, so with 5 minutes left I added it.
Once the boil was done I removed the grain bag and the remaining hop pellets still in it, and poured the beer into the fermenter. I then topped the fermenter off to a little over 5 gallons, put the lid and air lock on, and called it good.
Tomorrow I will aerate, take the initial gravity, and pitch the yeast. I so can’t wait till this beer is done. I’m craving one as I write this!
Oatmeal Stout in Fermenter
Note: Pitched the yeast this morning, initial gravity came out to 1.050.
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