#49 Belgian Oatmeal Stout

Eureka, its time for yet another peek into my recipe book. Todays recipe is a straight forward oatmeal stout recipe fermented by a Belgian stout yeast (Wyeast’s #1581 Belgian Stout). I already did some Irish Dry Stout recipes in the past but many of you might know that these beers tend to get really thin. My approach to increase the body and structure of such a beer was to add some oatmeal. This increases the body of the beer due to the increasing amount of unfermentable sugars and other components I guess. I intended to use Wyeast’s Irish Ale yeast to do the job in the first place. Then decided to give Wyeast’s Private Collection strain #1581 Belgian Stout yeast a go. The recipe bellow is a slightly changed version of Jamil Zainasheff’s recipe (“Brewing Classic Styles”). I normally adjust all recipes to fit my system and efficiencies. But this time, I went with the original grist to check if my calculations are correct. The original recipe called for a 5 gal batch with an OG of 13.5°P. My OG was a bit less than the original recipe but had 0.8 gal more beer. Works for me. More beer is always ok…

Recipe:	Belgian Oatmeal Stout
Numbers:	Volume [L]	22 (5.8 gal)
	Original gravity	13.2°P
	Terminal gravity	4.3°P
	Color	Around 100 EBC
	IBU	36 IBU
	ABV	4.9%
Grains:	Pale malt (6.5 EBC)	4.3 kg
	Chocolate malt (700 EBC)	0.34 kg
	Roasted barley (1150 EBC)	0.15 kg
	Carafa 1 (900 EBC)	0.08 kg
	Crystal (120 EBC)	0.23 kg
	Oat flakes	0.45 kg
Hops:	East Kent Goldings (5.2% AA)	49 g and boil for 60 min
Yeast:		#1581 Belgian Stout
Water:	Burgdorf	Mash: 14 L (3.7 gal), sparge: 19 L (5 gal) @78°C (172°F)
Rest:		Mash in @68°C (154°F), 60 min @ 66°C (151°F), 10 min @ 78°C (172°F)
Boil:		Total 60 min
Fermentation:	Primary	7 days @ 20°C (68°F) in plastic fermenter
	Secondary	17 days @ 20°C (68°F) in plastic fermenter
Maturation:	Carbonation (CO2 vol)	2-3 (carbonated with fresh wort)
	Maturation time	> 6 weeks

Fig 1: Look at the grist…

Fig 2: Look at the boiling wort…

03/31/12: And yet another brew day begins. I had to substitute some of the roasted barley with Carafa 1 because I had no roasted barley left. But this should not have a big influence I guess… Nevertheless, the resting went great, iodine test was negative after resting for 60 min at 66°C (151°F) and so I proceeded to the sparging process. Then added the East Kent Golding hops and boiled the wort for 60 min.

I then transferred the wort to my whirlpool kettle and let the sediment settle down. Then cooled the wort down to 20°C (68°F) and pitched the appropriate amount of the Belgian Stout yeast. I bottled two liters of the fresh wort for the later carbonating process. The OG was 13.2°P and I had 22 L (5.8 gal) in total. This is more or less what I expected from my calculations. Isn’t it nice if your calculations can foresee the future? I am quite proud of my self-made calculation program. I have to mention that it took my several batches to tune it. And now it works like a charm. Back to the beer, the fermentation started within several hours.

04/07/12: Racked the young beer into a secondary fermenter.

04/24/12: Kegged the beer with 2 L of wort. By the way, I stored the wort I collected after the boil in a 2 L bottle in my fridge. The remaining of the beer went into 1 L bottles with some sugar. I become a pretty patient brewer lately: I will let the beer carbonate and mature for nearly eight weeks at 15°C (59°F). I already tasted the beer after measuring the final gravity. And it tasted pretty nice already. I am really excited how this beer tastes like after a maturation step. By the way, the terminal gravity was 4.2°P. Stay tuned for the tasting results.

06/09/12: Tasting

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