Oatmeal Stout Tomorrow
Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 3:08 pm
Tomorrow is Oatmeal Stout day at my brewery. For some reason, I rarely brew stout (maybe twice in my long and infamous brewing career). Anyhow, I am going to make a chewy stout tomorrow using the recipie in the great Jamil's book. I toasted the oats a couple of weeks ago (I read someplace that it is best to let the oats sit a while after roasting to avoid harsh flavors) and picked up the rest of the grains last night on my way home from work. Boy, does all that roast barley and chocolate smell great, I can't wait to fire up my kettle tomorrow I know the garage will smell wonderful. I just did a Mild last weekend and have a great big yeast cake of WLP02 to use on this stuff so fermentation should go very quickly. I plan to mash pretty hot so along with the oatmeal, I should get a gigantic body on this beer if I do it right (as in spoon it out of the glass).
As an aside, I also racked my Mild into secondary last night and of course tasted it so I could see what was going on. I used the formulation I did last time I made this style with a couple changes. First of all, I swapped the white suger for jaggery, I figured, why not get a little taste out of the adjuct additions? Secondly, I boiled down some of the first runnings and finally I backed off a little on the chocolate malt since I felt I was getting a little too much roast in the beer. These three changes made a gigantic difference to the beer in a good way. There is a very strong toffee taste augmented by a touch of diacetyl from the yeast that I think tastes fantastic (the jaggary may also be adding to this as it has a somewhat creamy, buttery component). Also, backing off on the chocolate malt gave me a more nutty taste with just a slight touch of roast which goes really well with the toffee. The other great thing about this beer is that the O.G. was only 1.036 (which for a Yank is almost water) so I can drink quite a lot of this stuff without getting stupid (something I prize more and more the older I get). When looking at the style guidelines, I get the impression that Milds can display all sorts of flavors so hopefully all my fooling around did not throw the beer out of the category. I guess the only way to find out is to pull off a couple of bottles and throw them into a contest to see what happens, meanwhile I think I'll just drink the rest
As an aside, I also racked my Mild into secondary last night and of course tasted it so I could see what was going on. I used the formulation I did last time I made this style with a couple changes. First of all, I swapped the white suger for jaggery, I figured, why not get a little taste out of the adjuct additions? Secondly, I boiled down some of the first runnings and finally I backed off a little on the chocolate malt since I felt I was getting a little too much roast in the beer. These three changes made a gigantic difference to the beer in a good way. There is a very strong toffee taste augmented by a touch of diacetyl from the yeast that I think tastes fantastic (the jaggary may also be adding to this as it has a somewhat creamy, buttery component). Also, backing off on the chocolate malt gave me a more nutty taste with just a slight touch of roast which goes really well with the toffee. The other great thing about this beer is that the O.G. was only 1.036 (which for a Yank is almost water) so I can drink quite a lot of this stuff without getting stupid (something I prize more and more the older I get). When looking at the style guidelines, I get the impression that Milds can display all sorts of flavors so hopefully all my fooling around did not throw the beer out of the category. I guess the only way to find out is to pull off a couple of bottles and throw them into a contest to see what happens, meanwhile I think I'll just drink the rest
