Oatmeal Stout - Tasting Part II

I wasn't very happy with my Oatmeal Stout after tasting it about a month and a half after it was brewed and two weeks after it was bottled.  At that time it had an alcohol bite to it that really dominated the flavor of the beer.  It has been about two months since that tasting and the beer has mellowed considerably.

I have been drinking the beer for the last three weeks and have been pretty happy with it (although some sips still seem to have the stronger alcohol taste - not sure how that's possible).  There have been quite a few process changes since I brewed this batch (and no repeat of these issues) so I'm not sure what it really tells me except that a bad beer can mature given time and turn into something drinkable.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• It has a nice, but subdued, roasted malt smell to it.  I get a little bit of chocolate as well.  There is also a nice bit of sweetness in the aroma.
• Appearance:
• It has a really rich, beautiful, black color (the picture does it pretty good justice).  The head is beige.  It fades down do a thin layer after an average pour.
• Flavor:
• With some age the alcohol has faded into the background for the most part.  Up front I get a little bit of a sweet flavor with some malty complexity.  The finish is almost all roasted grain with maybe a tiny bit of chocolate mixed in.  It's a relatively restrained roastyness compared with an Irish Stout but still pretty dry on the finish.  I don't really get any hops or yeast ester character from it at this point.  The flavor definitely gets a lot fuller and richer as the beer warms up - It's about 60 F at the moment which seems to be about the perfect temperature.
• Mouth-Feel:
• It has a medium body.  Even with light carbonation it doesn't feel thin (now that the alcohol flavor has cleared up).  It think the body is about right for an oatmeal stout - this is about what I had thought it would be like anyway.  The finish is quite dry but not at all unpleasant.
• Overall:
• Now that it's matured I think it's a pretty nice stout.  It's dry and roasty the way I would expect a stout to be but not aggressively so.  I wish there was a bit more going on in the finish than the dry roastyness.  As it is, it's not unpleasant anymore but it's a bit one dimensional.

So, I am very happy that the beer improved but not completely happy with the end results.  It think a bit more chocolate and some additional residual sweetness to the beer would have been interesting.  This recipe was a nice starting stout but I'm not sure I'll use it as any sort of basis for recipes going forward - too much going on with that grain bill.