4/15/12 - Hoggetowne's Oatmeal Stout
Recipe
- 6.6lbs LME (Dark), used Briess Porter LME
- 8oz flaked oats
- 12oz 55L Crystal malt
- 8oz Chocolate Malt
- 4oz Roasted Barley
- 2oz Willamette Hops
- 1 pack of Coopers yeast
- OG 1.050, 29 IBUs
Boil
I decided to go with a full volume boil this go around - all six gallons. On my first brew I did a partial and my wort cooler was half exposed at the end of it, which I was not a fan of. This recipe felt a bit easier, but I think that is at least partially because I have a little experience under my belt now. The malts, barley and oats needed to be steeped at 150 F, similar to my first recipe. With the extra volume though, I was able to more easily manage the water temperature. This time around I also purchased a reusable nylon grain sack, rather than using cheesecloth. The temperature actually ran a little hot on me this time through, staying about 155-160 F for the first 15 minutes of the steeping. I ended up just cutting the gas off completely for the last half of the steeping, and the liquid maintained its temperature just fine.
After the 30 minutes was up the grain sack got pulled and I brought it to a boil, then added the 6.6lbs of LME and half (1oz) of the hops, thus starting the timer on the 60 minute boil. At T-30 I added the last of the hops - unlike my last brew, which had hops added once more at T-15. This being an Oatmeal Stout, it should be less bitter. The later hop additions add more bitter.
At T-15 I set in my new and improved wort cooler, so it would have time to sanitize before cooling. I was talking with some of the brew shop folks about brewing outdoors in the summer here in Florida, and they said that I would have trouble getting my wort cooled to 70 F with just hose water, as hose water runs around 80 F in the summer. So I talked to a few other brewers and got some ideas, and ended up getting a second wort cooler which I had connected to the first in a chain. The water hose connected to the first cooler which sat in a bucket of ice water, so water would run through and cool off before it ran into the second cooler which was sitting in the brew kettle. The set up worked very well, with the single caveat that I did not get enough ice, so the wort, true to the word of the brew shop employees, only cooled to about 74 F. The second small disaster was me dropping my thermometer and having it shatter. I ended up using a digital kitchen thermometer, which I have always been leery of, simply because I don't know how exactly they work.
I did not do a yeast starter this go around, I just pitched the dry yeast straight in to the carboy. My temperature was a little high; I could, and maybe should, have waited a bit before pitching the yeast. We'll see how it goes. The OG read a little high again at 1.052, but my volume looked a little low in the carboy so I just added a half gallon more of water.
In the words of Peter Griffin, "Now we play the waiting game..."
