Breakfast of Champions - Oatmeal Coffee Stout

This past Saturday I spent the afternoon brewing my second all grain recipe, an Oatmeal Coffee Stout. I designed the recipe shortly after brewing the ESB and did a lot of reading on forums to figure out the best time/form to add coffee to the beer. I've decided to add 1/2 pound of whole coffee beans to the carboy once I rack to the secondary in a week or so. I could probably get a stronger coffee flavour by adding espresso or drip coffee, but I'm concerned that the acidity would ruin the mouthfeel, which is important for an Oatmeal Stout.

The grain bill is a bit more complex than the ESB, with the base malt being 2-row malt and the supporting malts being roasted barley, chocolate malt and crystal 60 malt. The roasted barley will add a roasted coffee flavour as well as darken the beer, while the chocolate malt will provide a bittersweet chocolate flavour and also darken the beer. Since I'm making an Oatmeal Stout, I also used 1 lb of flaked oats, which makes up 10% of the grain bill. The flaked oats will provide a smooth, silky, creamy mouthfeel.

Since I stayed in Friday night for Valentines day, I decided to mill all of the grain in preparation of brew day the following day. It's sort of a long tedious task, so I entertained myself by taking a couple of selfies.

Brew day kicked off smoothly on Saturday and I made it my goal to stick to my recipe and ignore any second thoughts I may have. I used a strike temperature of 165 F and used 1.6 quarts of water per lb of grain, which equates to 4 gallons based on my grain bill. This time around I stirred and waited a couple minutes to take the settling temperature before making any adjustments. I ended up with a temperature of 154.9 F, which is slightly above the temperature I was targeting (154 F), but over the course of the 60 Min mash it should hold consistently.

I had some time to kill while I waited for the 60 Min mash to complete and I was home alone, so I had nothing better to do than bust a move to some Tokyo Police Club. Once the mash was complete, I transferred the wort to the brew pot, then added an additional 2 gallons of sparge water at a temperature of 170 F to get to a total of 6 gallons pre-boil. I did run into a bit of a stuck sparge situation as a result of the gumminess of the flaked oats, but I just stirred, recirculated again and continued to transfer to the brew pot. While I waited for the wort to get to a rolling boil, I took a sample and measured the boil original gravity (OG). It ended up being 1.040, which means I had an efficiency of 24 (40 X 6 (gallons of wort) / 10 (pounds of grain)). An efficiency of 28 is average, above 30 is great and below 25 is low. It means I'm not getting a good conversion in my mash, which could be caused by the grain being too coarse, the wrong temperature or not long enough of a mash.

Once the wort got to a rolling boil, I added 2 ounces of UK East Kent Golding pellet hops and gave it a good stir. I only added bittering hops at the start of the boil and no aromatic hops later on, as I just want the hops to balance out the sweetness and I'm not looking for any of the aromatic characteristics. In the last 5 minutes of the boil I added a whirlfloc clarifying tablet, which encourages the precipitation of haze. Once the 60 Min boil was complete, I cooled the wort in my bathtub to get it down to 70 F. I took another sample of the wort to measure the OG post boil, which ended up being 1.055, exactly the number I was targeting. I'll have to do a bit more reading on conversion efficiency, because even with a low efficiency, I still managed to hit the OG I was targeting. Sure helps when you stick to the recipe!

I transferred the wort from the brew pot to the primary fermenter through a strainer to aerate the wort, then added the Wyeast 1318 London Ale III Yeast. Now I wait for a week or until the fermentation is complete to rack to the secondary carboy. In the meantime, I need to decide on the type of coffee beans I want to add to the secondary.

Thanks for reading!