IC Stout

This is a homebrew blog, but most of my posts so far have been about other people's beers.  I'm working on a small scale, so I can only turn out a new beer every 2-4 weeks.  This one is good but was not what I was shooting for.  The 'IC' stands for Identity Crisis.  I intended for this to be a chocolate stout, but when I went to the brew store, I was talked into buying the ingredients for their oatmeal stout.  The first brew store I checked out in the central MA area was the West Boylston Homebrew Emporium. I bought some yeast from them and all was good. Later, a friend and fellow homebrewer told me that the prices were lower at the Strange Brew shop in Marlborough. They are nice folks at Strange Brew, but their prices are definitely not lower and the drive out there is almost 3 times as long. Also, instead of letting me follow my own recipe, the woman at the counter insisted I use their house recipe for oatmeal stout.  I will be sticking with the Homebrew Emporium in the future, mostly because it is closer.  

Back to the stout.  It pours a very dark brown color with a thick tan head.  The head is probably the nicest of my homebrews yet.  It disappears quickly, but leaves lacing down the side of the glass throughout the drinking.  The smell is chocolately with a floral, hoppy character to it.  The taste progresses from sweet and malty to chocolate to bitter.  The finish  more like eating a bar of very dark chocolate than it is bitter from the hops.  That's a good qualit

y, since I'm fond of bitter chocolate.  The body is...quite light.  I was expecting the oatmeal to add more oomph to it, and I'm disappointed with that.  The taste definitely has improved over the bottles I opened earlier, and I suspect this will only continue to be true.  

Recipe, 5 gallons

13 November 2008

Oatmeal Stout

6.6lbs Muntons Dark Liquid Malt

4oz Malto-dextrin

3oz Dark Crystal

3oz Roast Barley

8oz Chocolate malt

7oz Flaked oats

1oz Centenial Hops (bittering)

1oz Cascade (aroma)

Wyeast liquid #1084 Irish Ale

1 tsp irish moss

5oz priming sugar

Soaked grains at 158 degrees for 20 minutes in 2 gallons of water.  Removed and added the malt and malto-dextrin.  Brought to a boil while stirring and added bittering hops.  Boiled for 50 minutes.  Added Irish moss for 10 minutes and finished with aroma hops.  Strained the wort into the bucket and added water and ice to fill up to 5 gallons.  The ice was a solid chunk, which dropped the wort down to 52 degrees when I pitched the yeast.  I really need to use smaller chunks of ice next time.  The yeast got off to a slow start.  Racked to a secondary after 8 days and bottled after 9 more days with 5oz of priming sugar.

OG: 1.052, FG: 1.018 which gives me an ABV of 4.6%

I'm pretty sure that the oatmeal and roasted barley actually needed to be mashed, which I didn't know enough about at the time to do.  I've done some reading since then, and I think I can handle it from now on.  I think I will move up a bit on the homebrew scale and start with partial mashing 2-4 lbs of grain with my brews.  For things like the smoked ales and that really, really awesome looking rye ale in the last issue of BYO magazine, partial mashing is a must.  Gah.  I've got a long list of beers I want to brew and only a limited space to do them in.  

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We have our first winter storm of the year going full blast outside.  I think I'm going to brave the weather and treat myself to a bowl of pho at the Vietnamese restaurant down the street.  After that, it might be time to bake some gingerbread cookies.  Yum!