Went to F. H. Steinbart’s yesterday and bought ingredients to make 10 gallons of oatmeal stout.
Oatmeal Stout Ingredients
Ingredients: 2lbs of rolled oats, 8lbs of Six Row malt, 1lb of crystal malt, 1lb of chocolate malt, 1/2lb of roasted barley, 7lbs of dark malt extract syrup, and some Wyeast 1084 Irish ale yeast. I had the gypsum and the Irish moss and the Willamette hops for the rest of this. The nice thing about this recipe is I get to use my big pot! Another nice thing is that I had some help from my friend Rob.
Added grains to 3 gallons of 150 degree water. The theory is that the grains added to this would take the temp down to 130. Well, they didn’t. Quickly added extra water to try to cool it down. Finally got a nice stable 130 degrees for my protein rest and let it sit for 30 minutes.
Protein rest
While this was going I took 1.5 gallons of water up to a boil. Added it to my wort once the protein rest was over, hoping to take it up to 150 degrees. Well, it didn’t get to 150 degrees, so we cranked up the burners and slowly brought it up to temp. Dinosaurs kept getting in the kitchen wanting to help.
Dinosaur stirring the wort
Another Dinosaur eating the wort
Mashed the grains for 45 minutes at a temp of 150 degrees. Once that was done it was time to sparge the grains. Now, I had added gypsum to the water for the wort, and in good measure I added some to the sparge water as well. Something I read from Papazian about the calcium ions in the water providing for better extraction from the grains, especially during the sparge. I’m not one to argue with Papazian!
Sparging grains in my lauder tun
The sparge took a good 1/2 hour, which is good, it’s supposed to take a while. No stuck runoff on this one either.
Collected the wort and began the boil. Once the wort was boiling we added the dark malt extract to the pot. I also added about 2Tbsp of maltodextrine in. Last time I brewed this I added 6oz of maltodextrine, which was way too much and ruined the beer. I figured 2Tbsp won’t hurt it and might actually help it.
Rob adding the dark malt extract
With the malt extract in it was time to add my 4oz of Willamette hops. Problem was, I only added 2oz. After 15 minutes into the boil I realized my mistake and added the remaining 2oz. Oops. It’s so hard to do anything these days anymore with all the distractions going on. It’s bad enough the days my brain distracts itself!
T-Rex checking on the boil
With 15 minutes left I added the Irish moss. Once the boil was done we began to slowly drain it into two separate fermenters. I remembered to strain the hop pellets out of the wort, but unfortunately forgot it when it came time to actually do it. So, with 1/2 of the wort already in the fermenters, I began filtering the hop pellets out with my strainer. Silly me.
Once this was complete I had two beautiful fermenting buckets each containing 5 gallons of oatmeal stout. Ahhh, this will be a nice winter.
Today, 12/28, I went to take my hydrometer reading and pitch the yeast, when I noticed one of the buckets had a small leak. Right near the stupid spigot that I use for bottling. Grr….. this does not sit well with me. I’ve had nothing but issues with that since I purchased it. I tightened it up as best I could without removing the beer into another container and began aerating my beer. Initial gravity came to 1.058. Had to retake the first fermenter’s reading as it was way different from the second. The second reading put it right at where the other fermenter was at, so I’m going with that.
Two fermenters with Oatmeal Stout
Looking forward to this one.
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