Oatmeal Stout Take II

I brewed an oatmeal stout as my second batch back in April 2014.  I didn't think it turned out very well which I attributed to improper yeast pitching technique.  The grain bill also seemed a bit more complicated than it should be.  For this batch I have put together my own simple grain bill which will hopefully yield me a smooth drinking beer.

I wanted to try a new hop variety for this batch that would get me a fairly substantial bitterness so I will be using Admiral hops.  I will also be trying a late hop addition of Simcoe which should be fairly interesting.

I will be re-pitching the Wyeast 1968 from my English Barleywine for this batch which will save me some money and the trouble of having to build a starter.

I'm really interested in refining my process with my new brew rig after the last disastrous brew day.  Hopefully I will learn more about how to use it from this batch.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 7 lbs 2 Row
• 2 lbs Flaked Oats
• 1 lb Chocholate Malt
• 8 oz Crystal 80L
• 4 oz Roasted Barley
• Hops:
• 1 oz Admiral (Pellet, 13.1% AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz Simcoe (Pellet, 12.3% AA) at 10 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1968 London ESB Ale Yeast (Third Pitch from this beer)
• Used 8 cups of slurry
• Water:
• 10 gal Spring water
• 4 gal Tap Water (in sparge)
• 1 oz Calcium Chloride
• 1 oz Gypsum
• 1 oz Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 5.5 gal (Target 6.0 gal)
• Mash:
• 154 F for 60 min (Target 156 F for 60 min)
• Boil:
• 60 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temp:
• 65 F
• Primary Duration:
• 5 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.052 (Target 1.046)
• Efficiency:
• 76% (Target 72%)
• FG:
• 1.006 (Target 1.018)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 88% (Target 60%)
• ABV:
• 6.04% (Target 3.68%)

Brewing Notes:

• 6/20/15 - Brew day - 8:10 to 1:40 including setup and cleanup
• Brought 6 gal up to 200 F - took 30 min
• Transferred 1.5 gal of water via pump to the mash tun - filled the space under the false bottom.  This raised the temp to only 120 F
• Cycled the water from the mash tun to the HLT until the mash tun was at 165.  Filled the tun to 3 gal above the false bottom and then cycled
• Once temps were right I allowed the water to transfer to the grant which took about a half gal.  Topped up the mash tun to 3 gal again
• Cycled water through the RIMS to even out the temps.  Evened out at 165 F.
• Turned on the RIMS to 156 F
• Added CaCl and Gypsum to the tun
• Added the grain while the RIMS was cycling.  Stirred to eliminate dough balls
• Added another half gal of water to cover the grain more - temp in the tun settled to 158 F
• Set the cycle rate to ~1 qt per minute
• Mash tun temp fell to 152 F after the first 10 minutes of cycling.  Raised the RIMS temp to 160 F - not sure what this is going to do to the enzymes
• Measured gravity as 11.8 brix after 30 min - this is 1.046.  There is about 5.5 gal in the system at this point so this is a bit lower than the planned 72% efficiency
• Cycled for 60 min.  Had to make several adjustments to the pump rate out of the grant to get it to match the flow out of the tun.  I also stirred the mash several times as it turned out the water level wasn't above the grain bed and the wort was pooling which was likely screwing up the heat distribution and draining.

• Measured the gravity as 13.2 brix after 60 min - this is 1.053 which is probably about 76%
• Heated 4.5 gal of spring water and 2 gal of tap water up to 200 F for fly sparge - took 25 min
• At the end of the mash I turned off the RIMS, put the valentine arm in the upright position, and pumped all the grant volume back to the mash tun.  I then pumped an extra half gal of water from the HLT on top of the grain bed.  I setup the autosparge to a height a little above the current level.  I then turned on the fly sparge at a rate of 1 gal per 8 min, setup the valentine arm to drain at that liquid level, and pumped from the grant, through the RIMS, to the kettle at the same drain rate.  I used the RIMS to heat the wort to 185 F during the drain

• After collecting ~2.5 gal of wort the gravity of the runnings in the grant were 14 brix
• After collecting about 5 gal the runnings in the grant were at 12 brix
• Ran out of sparge water so added 2 more gal of tap water to the HLT - heated it while sparging
• Measured gravity after collecting a couple more gal as ~2 brix so I stopped collecting (as this is ~1.010 SG) as I didn't want to risk extracting tannins.  I had collected about 7.5 gal at this point so I added 2 more qt of tap water.  Gravity was 8.8 brix at this volume which is 1.035 which would be ~74% efficiency
• Brought to a boil - took 20 min
• Added 60 min hops after hot break subsided
• Added irish moss at ~15 min
• Added flavoring hops at ~10 min

• Added wort chiller to sanitize just prior to flameout
• Chilled down to 65 F (was as low as it would go) took 20 min
• Drained to fermentor - allowed cold break and hops to go over as well

• Collected 5.5 gal of wort
• Added 8 cups of yeast slurry to the beer
• Put in fermentation chamber set to 65 F
• 6/21/15 - The beer was bubbling vigorously the next day
• 6/26/15 - Moved the beer out of the chest freezer to cold crash another batch
• 7/28/15 - Bottled ~5.5 gal with 3.5 oz of priming sugar - got 53 bottles of beer out of the batch.  The gravity was measured as 1.006 which was much lower than I was hoping for.  It's a pretty smooth beer - it might end up more like a black IPA than an oatmeal stout with the dry finish though.
• 9/26/15 - Tasting Notes - Complex and interesting beer with combination of roast malt, firm bitterness, interesting hop flavoring, and expressive/fruity yeast.  The low FG, and dry finish, make this a bit of a rougher and more bitter beer than I'd had in mind when I planned the recipe.
• 11/8/2019 - Drank the last one of these tonight.  It was still very tasty.  Still had a good amount of hop bitterness and the malt flavor was still nice - very roasty and quite dry.

Lessons Learned:

1. Brew day went much smoother today but took a long time (5.5 hrs).  I think I could shave quite a bit off this time in the future though.
2. Warming the mash tun was tricky for me.  I think being able to cycle back into the HLT until the temps are good would be my best bet for heating the mash tun quicker.  I need to add a return valve to allow for that connection.
3. Had good efficiency on this batch but my pH was probably off.  Being able to set the pH to optimal values would be a good thing for efficiency purposes.
4. Top up the mash tun with a layer of water over the grain bed for recirculation next time.  This will hopefully allow the heat to more evenly distribute through the grain bed.
5. Heat 8 gal of sparge water next time to ensure that there is enough to collect the pre-boil volume.

Flanders Red 1.4.1

For this fourth round of Flanders Red I'll be doing two beers again - one with a primary fermentation with brewers yeast and one without.  This beer will be with a primary.  The previous batch I tried this with, 1.3.1, ended up fermenting down to 1.006 in two weeks with WLP530.  This was disappointing.  To avoid this happening again I am going to go with a short (15 min) mash at 160 F.  I tried this with my previous Sour Blonde (1.3.1) and my efficiency really suffered.  This will be my first batch using a RIMS tube and fly sparging.  Hopefully this will allow me to get the starches into suspension and rinsed better than last time.

I have been reading about Rodenbach's primary method where they use a mixed culture of Saccharomyces and Lactobacillus in primary.  This allows the beer to develop a good bit of sourness quickly up front.  My beers using Roeselare only haven't developed much sourness yet over the 6-9 months they've been in progress (which isn't a surprise or a problem) so I'm thinking it might be interesting to try this.  I will be using WLP672 Lactobacillus Brevis for this batch pitched with Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes which should give the beer a nice fruity flavor for the Brett to work with.  I had tried to save slurry from my last batch with WLP530 in the freezer but the starter showed no activity for a couple day so I think the freezing killed the yeast (or at least most of it).  I have also decided to go with no hops for this round.  I think I have been using way too high an IBU for these beers which has likely resulted in the Lacto in the Roeselare being suppressed.  I'm not sure no hops is a good long term approach with these beers but it will be interesting to see how sour it gets in the first few months with this approach - I'll start adding back smaller amounts of hops for the next round.  I will plan on saving the slurry from this batch and re-using it going forward.

Finally, I'm going to start oaking these beers during the three month period on the Roeselare yeast cake.  I would like to build up a large amount of inoculated oak cubes to allow for some different methods of propagating the various microbes.

The basement is starting to get into the high 60's to low 70s with the warmer weather.  I'm thinking my stockpile of sour beers may start experiencing some more dramatic changes over this next couple months.  It will be interesting to see how they are impacted as well as how this fresh beer with lacto behaves with a bit of extra heat.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 4 lbs Pilsner
• 4 lbs Munich
• 3 lbs 8 oz Vienna
• 1 lb 8 oz Flaked Wheat
• 12 oz Caramunich II
• 12 oz Aeromatic
• 12 oz Special B
• Hops:
• None
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes Yeast
• WLP672 Lactobacillus Brevis
• Wyeast 3763 Roeselare Ale Blend (Fourth Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 1 gal tap water
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min
• Extras:
• 1 oz Medium Toast Hungarian Oak cubes

Batch Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6.5 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 156 F for 60 min (Target 160 F for 15 min and then ramped up to 175 F over 30 min)
• Boil:
• 60 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temp:
• 60 F to 75 F (Ambient Basement Temps)
• Primary Duration:
• With yeast and lacto:
• 1 month
• With Roeselare:
• 3 months
• Secondary Duration:
• TBD (15 to 33 months)

Results:

• OG:
• 1.052 (Target 1.062)
• Efficiency:
• 63% (Target 70%)
• FG:
• 1.004 (Target 1.012)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 92% (Target 80%)
• ABV:
• 6.30% (TBD 6.83%)

Brewing Notes:

• 6/12/15 - Created the lacto starter with 5.5 oz of DME in 1.5 litres of water.  Also added 1/8th tsp of yeast nutrient.  Left it to ferment in the kitchen where it has been in the mid 80s.  The yeast has an odd asperigus like smell - not super pleasant.
• 6/14/15 - Created the yeast starter with 5 oz of DME in 1.2 litres of tap water.  Also included 1/8 tsp of yeast nutrient.  Set it up on a stir plate in the 70 F basement after boiling it and then chilling it in the sink.
• 6/15/15 - Brew day - 5:00 PM to 9:30 PM - Including setup and partial cleanup
• Taste tested the lacto starter at the start of the brew day.  It had a strong sourness - stronger than I would want in the beer even.  So, WLP672 definitely seems stronger than the WLP677 I used before.
• The yeast starter started very strongly - it has started to overflow the flask with foam

• Heated 11 gal of strike water to 190 F - Took 45 min
• Transferred about 7.5 gal to the mash tun and grant - ran into trouble with my valentine arm not holding it's position - it behaved fine during my cold runs.  I had to prop it in place with a shovel which really pissed me off.
• After the transfer the water was at 150 F.  I cycled the water through the RIMS to try to heat it up to 165 F which took me about an hour to figure out.  I ended up giving up once it got to 163 F.
• Turned off the pump when I added the grain - stirred well to eliminate dough balls.  Temps fell to 157 F after this.

• I cycled the RIMS to try to bring the heat up which was very slow going.  It seemed like I was loosing more heat than gaining with the recycling.  Ended up just mashing for an hour.
• Heated the remaining 3.5 gal of sparge water to 200 F
• Attempted to fly sparge but ended up going way too fast and had a lot of trouble with my rates - the damn valentine arm slipping killed me - it ended up being a glorified batch sparge.

• Collected about 8 gal of wort
• Boiled for 1 hr - added the irish moss after 40 min.  I don't have lines on the kettle sight glass so I had to guess at volume
• Added the wort chiller at flameout
• Chilled down to 70 F
• Transferred to the fermentor - I probably ended up with about 6.5 gal
• Pitched the entire yeast starters.  The beer was almost overflowing the fermentor so I split the batch between a bucket and a glass carboy for fermentation.  I will combine them for souring
• Measured gravity as 1.050 at 70 F - this is 1.052 at 60 F.  Still got bad efficiency with the new setup.  The brew day was very disappointing
• 6/16/15 - Good fermentation underway the next day
• 6/18/15 - The beer still has a good layer of krausen a few days later
• 6/27/15 - Both halves still have a bit of krausen.  I sampled both of them and found they had each developed very little sourness at this point - they were barely sour at all actually which surprises me.  They still have a couple more weeks in primary though so we'll see how this goes.  Measured the gravity as 1.016 so the lacto has some room to sour left.
• 7/25/15 - The half in the bucket fermentor had developed a bubbly pellicle which is something I hadn't expected - I wonder if there may have been some cross contamination or something from the racking equipment.  Measured the gravity as 1.010 which is down a bit from a few weeks ago.  The beer has a fruity smell - it's quite different than the fruit aroma from Roeselare by itself.  The flavor is belgiany with a slight sourness.  Racked this beer onto the yeast cake from Flanders Red 1.3.1 along with oak cubes (unboiled).  I saved off the yeast cake in a jar in the fridge to use on my next batch.

• 10/25/15 - Transferred this beer to a glass carboy for long term aging with a vented silicone bung.  Freed up the yeast cake for Flanders 1.5.1.  Measured the SG as 1.004.  The beer had a very light pellicle.  The aroma is fruity and has a rich funk - smells wonderful.  It has developed a pretty firm sourness like the other beers that fermented through the warm summer months.  This one has a lovely toasty/malty/chocolate flavor in the finish that I can't quite place.  This is definitely the best Flanders Red batch so far.  Hopefully it retains the title as it ages.

• 7/20/16 - I noticed a small crack had opened up towards the bottom of the glass carboy.  I moved my beers onto some shelving last month.  It may be that I damaged the carboy while moving it.  It isn't leaking but I'm worried that it may start to grow.

• 7/23/16 - Decided to use this beer (along with it's sister batch:  Flanders Red 1.4.2) in my first blend.  Based on initial tasting notes I thought this was the best of the beers brewed so far.  That the carboy was cracked is some extra incentive to include this beer.  It would be great by itself but I think it would also be very nice in a blend.  I took a sample and measured the gravity as about 1.004.  It has a really nice fruity character and a firm sourness.  It has maintained the slight maltiness in the finish over the last 9 months.  I am going to blend half this batch with Flanders Red 1.2.1 which has quite a bit more brett character than this one.  I will transfer the other half into the carboy with Flanders Red 1.4.2 (other half of 1.4.2 will be blended with the other half of 1.2.1)
• 7/30/16 - Blended this beer with 1.2.1 and then bottled.  Ended up with 58 12 oz bottles of this beer.  Primed with 4 oz of sugar and added some rehydrated champagne yeast as there probably wasn't much viable yeast left in these batches.  I will start drinking these as soon as they're carb'd.  Transferred the other half of the batch into the 1.4.2 carboy for more aging.
• 12/16/18 - See 2018 Status

Lessons Learned:

1. I didn't expect learning to use the my new RIMS setup would be easy but I was hoping it would be easier than it turned out.  I feel like almost nothing went right for me with this batch - couldn't him my temps, could raise the temps with the RIMS in a timely manner, used way too much water in the mash which left way too little for the sparge, and botched the timing with the fly sparge.  Regardless, the final product was still red beer with my typical efficiency (or maybe slightly higher).  I hope to do better next time but I'm sure it will not be perfect.  Either way I think the product will likely be good so I'm not going to worry so much about that.
2. Some lessons learned on my equipment:
• My valentine arm will not hold it's position.  It was meant to be a static level set that I could then drive the flow rate adjustment based on.  I need to find a way to set the level and keep it there.  I ended up propping it up with a shovel which sucked.  It would also be really nice to be able to determine the volume in the mash tun a particular level of the valentine arm is going to get me.
• My mash tun performed heat loss is still a mystery to me.  I added water at 190 and it settled out at 150 in the mash tun which is very surprising  There is a lot of thermal mass from the marbles under the false bottom.  I need figure this out over the next few brew days.
• I believe I lost a lot of heat to the valentine arm and my grant - need to insulate these better.
• My understanding of the RIMS/PID temperature controller was lacking.  I could not get the damn thing to raise the temperatures for me using a decent flow rate.  At the slow flow rate it wasn't moving wort fast enough to avoid heat loss from the grant and valentine arm.  I read up on it afterwards and I think that using auto tune once I found a good flow rate could have been my best bet