Batch #28: Oatmeal Stout

A 10 gallon re-hash of the previous oatmeal stout, or so I thought. The last batch went very smoothly, this stuck like nothing I've ever seen before, probably because I had no foundation water in the lauter tun. Good thing I had help (Thanks, Mike!). The sparge was messy, and I didn't get clean wort into the kettle or fermenters, leading to a headless ferment which almost had me tossing this beer. It certainly put a damper on plans to reuse the yeast in a re-hash of another successful beer the next week. C'est la vie...

Recipe

Grain Bill

10 lbs, 7 oz. Crisp Maris-Otter
1 lb, 13 oz. Crisp Amber Malt
1 lb, 7 oz. Hugh-Baird Black Malt
4 lb, 8 oz. Flaked Oats (co-op bulk aisle)

Hops

4 oz Fuggle leaf hops (4.5% AA) @60 minutes, slightly concentrated boil.

Yeast

Batch 28a - White Labs WLP013 London Ale
Batch 28b - White Labs WLP023 Burton Ale
Single tube of each, no starter.

Mash

Single Infusion, 60 minutes at 154F.

Vitals

OG: 1.048 (est.)
FG: 1.018
Calculated IBUs: 38 (est.)
Carbonation: Forced CO2

Timeline

Brew day: January 17, 2004

1:00 Mash-in in kettle @159F
1:08 Transfer to cooler lauter tun, temp stabilizes at 154F
2:10 Begin sparge
After about 10-20 minutes, the sparge stuck, and stuck hard. We fought with it quite a bit, made a huge mess of the kitchen, and then:
3:20 Give up, Re-seat mash (transfer to buckets and back), run off what we can.
3:45 (est.) 8 gallons go on to boil
5:11 Boiling, OG 1.060
5:28 Good hot break, clean up for a while.
5:45 Add hops
6:15 Add gooseneck tube and whirlfloc tablet
6:45 Burner off, start rack/chill
7:10 Done racking, about 3.5 gallons in each of two buckets.
7:22 Top up with 1.5 gallons of water in each fermenter.
7:38 Pitch yeast. Move fermenters upstairs to south-facing computer room, about mid-60s temps.
8:00-8:15 done with clean-up.

The next morning, found the fermenters in the low 60s with no visible activity. After that, there was a cold snap which lead to overnight room temps in the high 50s, much too cool for either yeast. I moved them to the 70-80F closet, and got the fermenting smell, but no krausen even with these champion top-croppers.

1/23: Went to dump these, as they did not seem to be fermenting, and were surely infected by now. Took gravity readings, found them up around 1.018, a little high, but not unexpectedly so given the 160F mash-in, 154F rest. Taste tests suggested green beer, rather than coliform soup. Roused the yeast and moved to low-50s basement for final conditioning.

2/9: Transferred to kegs, with a quarter ounce of EKG leaf hops. Pressurized headspace to 20-30 PSI for carbonation. Beer is very clear, and much more promising than the hydrometer samples (the thief had been picking up some of the yeast cake and trub from the bottom, yuck.). I will be keeping the WLP013 keg, and giving away the WLP023 to Mike.

4/8/2004: Bottled remainder of keg for competitions and tastings. Three primetabs per 12-oz bottle of (mostly) flat beer. 11 bottles total.

Tasting notes

02/17/2004

Well, I'm glad I didn't dump it :-) Pleasantly tart flavor, with a crisp coffee-like roastiness, and an appropriate level of hop bitterness. Overall, it's a bitter beer, but well balanced between hop and roast malt. The oatmeal is very noticeable in the mouthfeel, and gives a pleasant nuttiness to the flavor. The only thing missing from the previous batch is the full-bodied roastiness. That might be due to the yeast (London ale is tart and fruity, rather than bready), or it could be from the lack of brown malt.

5/5/2004

Preparing to send to 2004 Upper Mississippi Mash-out. Not much change. Still a bit tart for my taste, some of that from the dry-hops. Hop aroma blends into roasted flavor quite well. Main flaw, to my tastes, is the tartness and moderate overcarbonation. Still quite good, though.

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