Oatmeal Stout Take II - Tasting

This was a recipe that I came up with.  It had a significant percentage of the grain bill made of up of flake oats (~20%), was hopped pretty strongly, and used Simcoe for flavoring.  The beer ended up fermenting all the way down to 1.006 and initially tasted something like a black IPA.

The beer has mellowed a bit over the last month and a half I've been drinking it but it is still very hoppy.  The low FG really makes it hard to tell that there were any oats in the beer.  Still, it's tasty enough without that - just not what I was planning.

I had considered submitting the beer to a local contest to try to get a bit of objective feedback (not that I think this would score all that well).  The beer has a complexity that challenges me to describe.  I ultimately decided not to as the entry form requires a list of ingredients and this beer drinks much more like an American Stout than an Oatmeal stout and I suspect that, even though the oats don't actually taste like 20% of the grain bill, the judges will consider the large percentage as a flaw and not be able to see past that.

As I continue to brew my own recipes I'll look to submit something to a competition.  This one just doesn't really fit any style very well.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• It has an interesting aroma - complex and difficult to describe.  It think it's mostly a mix of roast/chocolate and pine.  There is also quite a bit of spicy fruityness with some alcohol.  I can't say whether malt, hops, or yeast character are the dominant force here.  The aroma has not really faded or changed in the month and a half I've been drinking this beer.
• Appearance:
• Very dark brown - pretty much black.  Pours with a pretty good head but that fades down to nothing in a few minutes.  Leaves no lacing on the glass.
• Flavor:
• Up front the flavor is slanted towards the roast malt flavor with some pine and spicy yeast character.  The finish has a pretty firm bitterness that lingers.  Most of this is the hops but I think some of the bitterness is from the roast malt.  There's also a bit of chocolate mixed into the finish.  As it warms the 6% alcohol starts to gain prominence in the flavor.  The bitterness has decreased but it could still almost pass for a black IPA - not quite bitter enough for that maybe.
• Mouthfeel:
• The beer is fairly thin bodied and dry.  Slight astringency gives it a bit of prickliness on the tongue.
• Overall:
• The beer has a mix of interesting things going on between the roast and chocolate malt, strong bittering charge & piney finishing hops, and expressive English yeast.  I believe those are the three major contributors to the flavor.  This batch was an experiment so that I got something interesting out of it was the most I could really hope for.  I'm not sorry to have 50 bottles of this to drink but it would have also been interesting if I'd gotten the expected character from the oats and the higher gravity I'd planned for.  I might have to revisit this recipe at some point.