Oatmeal Stout
Yesterday I got to brew a beer I had planned on brewing in preparation for St. Patrick’s Day. Any guesses? Yup, it’s a stout, but I’ve decided on making an Oatmeal Stout.
As of now I haven’t committed, but I’m pretty sure I am going to split the batch during secondary. Most likely half as an ordinary Oatmeal Stout and half as at least a Vanilla Oatmeal Stout – maybe with oak too, or bourbon too, or bourboned oak . . . like I said, I haven’t committed to the split.
The brew day went well, very uneventful which is the way I like it. It took about six hours which is the faster side of normal for me so I was pleased. I almost hit the numbers I was looking for too, with my mash 156F, and with my OG 1.046. One was a little high and one was a little low, but both were in the totally exceptable range. I also used Star Chemicals 5.2 Stabilizer for the first time. Don’t know how much it helped, but it felt like buying the extended warranty on a piece of electronic equipment, it couldn’t hurt, right?
Didn’t try any new beers yesterday during the session, didn’t really do much – tried to stay on top of cleaning and being organized in my new space and read most of the second issue of Beer Advocate Magazine, which is really good. The biggest downside to the magazine so far is that the majority of the articles are very short, 1 page-ish, 3 pages is long. I also could live without the beer reviews in the back – isn’t that what the website is for? Oh yeah, with ground water being so cold (37F), I was able to cool my wort in less than 15 minutes – nice!