Breakfast Stout '22

Full pour off the stout tap

I've brewed several versions of an oatmeal stout in the past, usually with very good results. For this batch I decided to repeat the coffee version that I made in my second attempt for a nice breakfasty stout. This recipe is extremely similar to Yooper's Oatmeal Stout and it's easy to see why that's such a popular recipe. The differences between the recipes are that I have increased the amount of oats and switched from flaked to rolled, cut the flaked barley, replaced the chocolate malt with more pale chocolate, added a small dose of Golden Naked Oats, and changed the yeast. Ok, that seems like a lot but I think the essence of the beer is probably still very similar to that recipe.

I did make a mistake when ordering for this batch and bought crystal 60 instead of 80 and this will probably lead to a little more sweetness and less dark fruit character but should still make for an enjoyable silky smooth stout. This is my first all-grain batch at my new house/with my new setup so repeating a previously enjoyable recipe should help me continue to dial-in my processes.

Tasting Notes:

Appearance: Pours jet black with some mocha and garnet highlights in the light, so it's not entirely opaque. Large off-white to tan head off the stout tap. Looks like a solid stout.

Smell: Coffee up front with a blend of roast, ash, chocolate, and a light green pepper note. Hard to pick out other characters from the coffee since they are also mostly coffee/chocolate/roast but there is some toffee and graham cracker sweetness. No noticeable yeast or hop derived aromas.

Taste: While the roasty characters of chocolate/coffee/burnt marshmallow dominate the coffee is less apparent here and blends in more to the toffee/caramel sweetness and blend of earthy and subtly vegetal/fruity notes. There is a bit of a medium malt/oatmeal character in the middle before finishing with a slightly acidic and moderately bitter finish that is both coffee like and vegetal.

Mouthfeel: Fairly thick and smooth with moderately low carbonation. In a lot of ways the mouthfeel seems to be where it should be but the finish feels long and awkward rather than silky and enjoyable, possibly due to the calcium carbonate additions.

Overall: Not the best oatmeal stout I've made but it has certainly improved a lot over time. With the other half of this batch still sitting in the carboy and having not received the coffee, oak, or mineral additions I am interested to see how that compares and if what I had earlier perceived as issues were merely due to drinking it too young. If I were to brew this again I would probably switch back to the WLP002 or similarly clean English yeast, switch the Magnum hops for Target or another English variety, and maybe reduce the golden naked oats to simplify the malt bill. I also won't use the Trader Joe's Colombia Supremo coffee again as I found this batch to not be great in this beer or when drinking my morning cup of joe.

3/13/22

Weighed and milled malt in preparation for brew day.

3/14/22
Brewday:

Scheduled a vacation day to be able to recover from a busy weekend/week/month and also to get an extra chance to brew. Collected 4 gallons of tap water in two separate pots, added a quarter Campden tablet to each and began heating one for initial mash in. Missed mash in temp hitting only ~148F with the first ~3.5 gallons of 170F water but added about half a gallon of boiling water after 5 minutes to bring up to 156F. Ran off slowly after 1 hour while heating sparge water to 170F. Used the first half of sparge water on a fly/hybrid sparge that was added while first runnings were still running off. Put pot holding first ~4.5 gallons of first/second runnings at 1.052 OG onto burner and performed batch sparge with last ~2 gallons of sparge water. OG of last runnings was 1.027, giving a combined pre-boil OG of ~1.044, a little lower than expected but not terrible (depending on the boiloff this would give an efficiency in the low 70% range rather than the near 80% anticipated).

I had a slightly smaller amount of Magnum hops than anticipated (.6 oz rather than .75) but added them pre-boil to try to get the maximum extraction of alpha acids. Given the slightly lower gravity this beer appears to have and the slightly higher alpha acid content of the hops (14.8 vs 12.6) the smaller amount of hops might be better for balance.

Refractometer measured OG of 1.057 ended up being only a touch below expectations. I find the pre-boil often measures much lower than expected when measuring pre-boil and post-boil OG and so I generally don't make any adjustments based on the pre-boil gravity.

3/16/22
One carboy blew its bung and was allowed to open ferment. About 12 hours later I found the other carboy's airlock had overflowed with krausen. Clearly this is a traditional top fermenting yeast and needed more room than provided in each carboy. I cleaned, sanitized, and re-applied the airlocks and bungs to each but placed on loosely so they could easily be pushed out by the yeast if it again gets that active.

Not sure how this photo got in here but I do love Spanish Love Songs and saw them the night before brewday so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3/17/22
Fermentation activity seems to have calmed down. While one bung was dislodged overnight the krausen on both carboys has fallen back down and the bungs were re-inserted fully. Still a decent sized layer of thick yeasty krausen and plenty of bubbling in the airlock but not nearly as active as 24 hours earlier.

3/22/22
Gravity reading shows 1.013, slightly lower than expected. Taste is a little astringent and muddled, hoping it just needs some time to settle down.

3/26/22
Gravity still showing 1.013. Less yeasty taste in the sample but still a bit astringent, with some acrid ashy roast. I probably should have capped the mash with the roasted malt but hopefully it’s not too aggressive once carbonated. Added .25 oz Peet’s Major Dickason’s Blend and .5 oz Trader Joe’s Colombia Supremo to one carboy along with 1.2 oz of boiled oak cubes. Should be ready to keg in a couple of days. Unlikely to get much oak character in that short amount of time but hoping it will help to round it out a bit.

3/28/22
Transferred coffee version to keg. Coffee aroma is fairly strong but coffee flavor is a little subdued. There’s still some astringency and acidity that I assume is from the dark malts in the mash and not adjusting water chemistry. To try to resolve these issues I added the coffee and oak to a mesh bag and added it to the keg. I also boiled 4g Chalk (CaCO3) and 1g Calcium Chloride in 1 cup of water and added it to the keg. Will taste from here and remove the coffee when flavor seems right and add additional water salts if needed.

4/2/22
One of the four beers on at a housewarming party. Not the most liked by most but a few people enjoyed it. The coffee does seem pretty strong at this point and the off characters seem to have subsided (or been hidden).

4/7/22
Tasting day.
Not part of the tasting but I will note that the Intertap stout faucet seems to work about as expected causing a lot of the carbonation to be released during the pour. While this give a good looking pour that resembles a nitro stout, reduces the carbonation in the beer for a good mouthfeel, and produces a big (usually too big) head, there are some downsides to the faucet. My main issue with it is that the design of it seems to cause a lot of beer to stay trapped inside leading to a large amount of splashing and dripping later on when it does finally fall out. While this isn't a huge deal it does seem to cause more lost beer and more of a mess than the other Intertap faucets that I am otherwise very happy with. Probably more of a novelty than something I'll regularly use, I did this tasting with a beer poured off the stout faucet but might change it up in the future to see how much of an effect it has.