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A Litttle Guidance on Cream or Oatmeal Stouts, please?
So, the wife and I were out eating dinner at a little taphouse in Seattle the other night, and had a fantastic stout. It wasn't labeled as a cream or oatmeal stout, but it had that really nice, rich and smooth palette.
So far, I've only ever made Dry Irish stouts, which are easy enough, but I was wondering if any of you out there have enough experience with a more velvety stout to give me some pointers before I start trying to craft the grain bill and hops?
Could have been a Sweet Stout -
http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style13.html#1b
A very dark, sweet, full-bodied, slightly roasty ale.
Or a Foreign Extra Stout-
http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style13.html#1d
A very dark, moderately strong, roasty ale.Tropical varieties can be quite sweet, while export versions can be drier & fairly robust
Originally high-gravity stouts brewed for tropical markets (&hence, sometimes known as Tropical Stouts). Some bottled export (i.e., stronger) versions of dry or sweet stout also fit this profile.
Just looked up some styles in BeerSmith
I make a sweet stout all the time. If you mash the grains below 153 temp range the stout will have more fermentables and be on the dry side. mash the grains at 155, and add 1/2 to one pound of crystal (60 L), and up to a pound of lactose. the lactose in unfermentable and will add a little sweetness to it.
here's the recipe I used last 2 weeks ago:
5.5 gallons:
6 oz roasted barley
.25 lb black patent
.25 lb. Wheat Malt
1 lbs. Chocolate Malt
.5 lbs. American Caramel 60°L
.5 lbs. American Victory
.25 lb honey malt
.5 lbs. Belgian Cara-Pils
4 lbs. Dry Extra Light
1 lbs. Oats Flaked
.5 lbs. Molasses
1 lbs. Lactose
.6 oz. Columbus hops(Pellets, 14.2 %AA) boiled 50
OG 1.058
SG 1.018
IBU 25-30 range
heat 2 gallons of water to 167 degrees, add all the grains, temp should be 156 degrees. maintain this temp for 30 to 45 minutes. Remove grains and add water to get to 3 gallons pre boil. Add DME and bring to boil, add hops. At 30 minutes left add lactose, and molasses.
cool and pour into fermentor. when temp reaches 65 t0 70 degrees add ale yeasto f your choice. I usually use Muntons premium gold dry yeast, or safale o4 dry yeast. I have used irish ale smack pack also with good results.
I have this in ferentation fridge and will be bottling it this weekend.
DC
What does your normal dry stout recipe look like? Some thing like basemalt, flaked barely and roasted barley, little to no crystal.
I love Oatmeal Stout mainly for that velvety flavor.
So some hints from me would be to start adding in some crystal malts (60L or 85L) to the tune of 0.5 or so. Use some chocolate or even better pale chocolate malt, use less than a 0.5lb of roasted barely.
A higher mash temp like DC mentioned and still keep some flaked malt will help out. You could use even a mix of flaked barley and oats if you wanted to, keep the total to around a 1lb to start.
I'd say to shoot for an OG of ~1.055, to help with finishing gravity.
The key beyond that will be a slightly less attenuative yeast strain too. Try WLP002 or WLP011.
I avoided putting up some sort of off the cuff recipe to let you play without too much influence. But I can certainly throw something together if we want to discuss it more.
Let's see. My dry stout is pretty much a Guinness ripoff.
72 oz. DME
14 oz. Black Barley
1.67oz Tettnang @ 60
Irish Ale Yeast
It winds up around 1.040 for a OG, so I've got room in my grain bill to play with.
Nothing too thrilling. I'll probably pull back the black barley and toss in some chocolate malt (50/50ish?) to get some better depth of flavor. If I toss in crystal, I'd probably go 4 oz 60 and 4-6 oz of 100. I like the caramel flavor they give, but want to make sure the chocolate from the malt of that name is prevalent.
What sort of % do I want to keep the oats/flaked barley under?
I'd use 1/2 to a full pound of chocolate, same with the flaked oats.
DC
Rubberchrist wrote:
What sort of % do I want to keep the oats/flaked barley under?
To get the full effect of oats most will say you HAVE to mash them. While I do agree you can get away with steeping them along with your specialty grains. But I'd keep them to 0.5lb per 5 gallon batch if you are just steeping them.
In my oatmeal stout recipes I have gone as high as 12% before with the oats. But I'd try and keep it to 5% in an extract batch. Reason being if you introduce to much raw starch in there is slows down the yeast and provides a great nutrient base for wild yeasts and bacteria that would normally not be a problem at such low levels. But that added starch seems to favor them after the beer has been stored for a while. Resulting in gushing bottles.
Sounds like you have a good recipe started. I'd add that you should go with a good English extract as your base.
brewchez wrote:
I'd add that you should go with a good English extract as your base.
You know, I've not yet played around with different extracts beyond "light/amber/etc" and have found that for use across recipes, it's easiest just to get light and use a little extra grains.
How does one tell if the extract is "English"?
All right. I think this is what I'm going to toss together after the holidays:
5 lb Light DME (half at 15 mins)
8 oz. Chocolate malt
6 oz. Crystal 60
6 oz. Crystal 120
5 oz. Black Barley
5 oz. Flaked Oats
1 oz. Goldings BC@ 60 mins
1 oz. Fuggles @ 15 mins
2 Vials WLP002
OG: ~1.052, FG: ~1.017
29.6 IBU
I'll be using some cheesecloth to try to do a "bag mash" at 155F to try to get some extra sugars and a little more action out of the flaked oats.
I may or may not play with this also being a vanilla stout. Depends on how jaunty I feel that afternoon.
English made extracts include Muton and Fison, Coopers.
Briess is a Domestic extract. Just look for the country of origin and find one that is from the UK. It will typically have been made using Enlgish 2-row malt.
If you are going to try and mash a little, you'll need at least 2lbs of basemalt in there to actually lend some conversion enzymes. None of the specialty malts you are using have the ability to convert starches to sugar.
All right!
First brew day of 2010, and we are a go!
3 lb 2 Row
1 lb Flaked Oats
8 oz. Chocolate Malt
6 oz. Crystal 60
6 oz Crystal 120
5 oz. Black Patent
Bag Mash @ 155 for 30 mins, and @ 157 for 30 mins.
Sparge and Build to 3 gallons for boil.
.5 oz Chinook @ 60
.5 oz. Goldings @ 30
3 Lb Amber Extract @15
.5 oz. Willamette @15
2 Pk Safale-05.
So far the Mash has gone well (I think), and about to begin the boil! Updates in a bit.
Rubberchrist wrote:
All right!
First brew day of 2010, and we are a go!
3 lb 2 Row
1 lb Flaked Oats
8 oz. Chocolate Malt
6 oz. Crystal 60
6 oz Crystal 120
5 oz. Black Patent
Bag Mash @ 155 for 30 mins, and @ 157 for 30 mins.
Sparge and Build to 3 gallons for boil.
.5 oz Chinook @ 60
.5 oz. Goldings @ 30
3 Lb Amber Extract @15
.5 oz. Willamette @15
2 Pk Safale-05.
So far the Mash has gone well (I think), and about to begin the boil! Updates in a bit.
Looks good. Should be mighty tasty. I'm down to one 22 oz bottle of my oatmeal sweet stout and now after reading this I'm gettin the urge to brew it again.
I really like stouts. Guiness got me hooked on stout and when I made the sweet stout man oh man I really liked it. I've done 6 tweaks of it and it's almost where I want it. Maybe a couple more times, and by then I'll be graduating to all grain and have to start all over with it. LOL.
DC
All right. It's in, it's pitched.
Came out to approx: 1.048-1.050 SG, which is about 8 points low for what I was hoping, but whatever. So long as I wind up with about 4%, I'll be a happy boy.
It does put my bag mashing at about 60% efficiency, though, which I'll need to refine.
Rubberchrist wrote:
It does put my bag mashing at about 60% efficiency, though, which I'll need to refine.
What is your method of sparging? Are you just pulling the bag, or are you rinsing the grains? The easiest way to better efficiency is a slower sparge, so maybe you are leaving some sugar behind?
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