(Coffee) Oatmeal Stout

I was very happy with my last oatmeal stout and with the cold weather coming soon to the area I figured now would be a good time to rebrew it.  While I was very happy with the original it was slightly more berry/fruity and less coffee/roasty than I would have liked. I also currently have a large quantity of American 2-Row that I am using in place of the Maris Otter so a few substitutions were required. To reduce the fruity character I dropped the 4 oz. of Special B and instead upped the Crystal 80 by 2 oz. and switched the yeast from the West Yorkshire strain to WLP002.  To make up for the lack of biscuity character from the Maris Otter  I added a quarter pound of Munich malt and a couple extra ounces of Victory.  Lastly, I slightly increased the roasted barley amount to increase the coffee character that I desire in a stout.  I did make sure to keep the 2 pounds of Oatmeal which seemed to give the original batch a great nutty and silky quality.

I managed to mess up my mash temperature somehow, initially hitting only 146 instead of the 154 I was aiming for. After 10 minutes I added about half a gallon of boiling water to bring it up to 156. I'll be interested in seeing how this affects the attenuation and body of the final beer.

Cooled to 75 F then placed in 65 degree basement and added the yeast.

11/6/15
Racked one carboy to 3 gallon keg. Added .5 oz of medium toast oak cubes to the other carboy, with plans to also add coffee in the future.

11/27/15
Added .25 oz Peet's Major Dickason's Blend and .5 oz Eight O'Clock Coffee Original to the carboy with oak.  Keg kicked of straight version.

11/29/15
Racked to keg at 10 PSI.  Coffee flavor is very strong but not overwhelming in still sample.

Tasting of Coffee Version:

Appearance: Very dark black, almost entirely opaque. Pours with a moderately big head despite the slow exit from the tap. Head is tan and lasts shortly before falling to a foamy covering that sticks around.  Pretty good all around.

Smell: Roast hits the nose first and dominates the aroma with heavy face-in-the-bag-of-coffee-beans character being augmented by a sweet cream-caramel and victory malt toasty/nutty malt characters.  Just a touch of ash that may be from the malts or the heavily roasted coffee.

Taste: Subtler than the nose, the coffee is present but blends smoothly with other roast characters, light creamy caramel, and a moderate to low bitterness.  The coffee character isn't overwhelming but is certainly present.  Oak flavors aren't particularly noticeable, every once in a while I get some definite oak character but it's only just there.

Mouthfeel: Smooth and fairly dry.  The body is a bit lighter than I would like but comes in creamy and goes down easy. I'm not sure if the oatmeal or oak give it the creamy impression despite the dryness or whether that is more a factor of the moderately low carbonation, but it certainly works. The dryness is likely related to the error with the initial mash temp, but it didn't fully sink this beer.

Overall: I can't find too much to complain about in this beer, it's smooth, easy drinking, refreshing, and has just enough coffee and roast to keep things interesting.  While I think the beer could be a little better with Maris Otter instead of 2-row I don't know that I would change anything else about it. If I wanted to give more oak flavor I would probably either double the dosage or contact time, but I don't know that it would necessarily benefit the beer.

The un-oaked, un-coffeed version was enjoyable but without the Maris Otter malt character and a slightly higher attenuation and cleaner yeast profile than the previous batch it came off a tad boring. This version seems to have taken it up a notch without overwhelming the base beer.

12B - Imperial Assassin (Imperial Licorice Stout) Tasting

A lot has changed since I brewed my first stout, a licorice forwards Imperial Russian Stout that saw half of the batch receive Jaegermeister soaked oak. The beer was brewed 3 years, almost to the day, before this tasting took place. While the beer tasted good relatively fresh, it has been a while since I have I have had one.  Having a bottle of Jaeger in the apartment and seeing an article in Draft magazine about beers that taste like cocktails, and especially the one which is aged in Absinthe barrels (Absinthe and Jaeger both have predominant Anise/Licorice flavor profiles and are among my favorite liquors/liqueurs) prompted me to want to try this one again.  I was lucky enough to find a bottle in my parents basement and gave it a go.

A- Deep dark and oily with lots of carbonation bubbles that support an everlasting 1 finger eggwhite foam.  Doesn't leave lacing as much as a full wall of bubbles.

S- Sweet, candy, oak, licorice, a touch of smoke.  Pretty good, though more sweet and sugary than most stouts.

T- Initial sweetness is swept aside by a moderate alcohol and licorice character that gives way to a long, creamy, oaky finish.  Honestly: it's awesome, similar to, but better than I remember with the sweet sugary character being nicely balanced by slight alcohol and licorice and finally the oak showing through.  Not enough roast character or bitterness to be a classic RIS, but delicious nonetheless.

M- Seems somewhat thin and snappy on the front, but the finish is long, smooth, and creamy.  The oak tannins could very well be what gives this sensation of a fuller body as the carbonation is clearly fairly high and the high alcohol makes the body feel relatively thin.

O- I would pay for this beer.  I would pay a lot for this beer.  This very well may have been the last bottle (I might have one more stashed away...) and that's somewhat sad since it seems to have just peaked with the alcohol barely present, and at over 9% ABV this one can definitely sneak up on you. While it is certainly on the very sweet side for an imperial stout, missing some of the chocolate and coffee character expected of any stout, and the licorice and Jaeger do not come through very strong, the overall impression is just a deliciously oaked dark brown ale.  One of, if not the single best beer I have ever brewed.   A very Good Beer indeed.

#29 - Simple Lambic (Funky Kast #4)

Not sure what took me so long to post this but I'll finally publish...

After bottling half of my sour brown I was ready to crank out another sour. Taking half of the yeast/bacteria cake from the sour brown and adding it to an extract lambic seemed a simple, effective method.  I used just under an ounce of saaz hops for 35 minutes to keep the ibus down and also boiled half a pound each of flaked wheat and Maltodextrin combined with 6 lbs of Wheat LME. In addition to the sour blend I also added American ale yeast to ensure full fermentation and 1 oz of Hungarian medium toast oak for the full barrel flavor of a classic lambic. I plan to add dregs of various sours as this one progresses.

Updates:
7/14/2013
A little over a month in the carboy and this beer is already down to 1.002.  Light sourness but also pretty young and sweet.  Added dregs of Cantillon Geuze.

8/25/2013
A very bad outhouse smell began to develop.  Pulled a sample and it doesn't seem to be the beer, maybe mold around the top of the carboy?  Beer smells and tastes about the same as a month ago, light lemony sourness and some grainy sweetness despite the extremely low gravity.

10/04/13

Wasn't able to taste/test gravity but the outhouse smell is gone. This beer might be ready for at least some to be bottled. I will have to taste in about a month and make some determinations but it is beginning to smell fairly sour and funky and I don't want this to go nearly as sour/acetic as the Flanders red.

11/02/13

Gravity down to 1.000. Taste is tart and refreshing. It might be about time to bottle at least some of this.

11/29/13

Racked 3 gallons onto .5 oz of previously used oak and bottled the rest. Still moderately sour but not overly complex.

5-28-14

Received some positive comments on this beer from a brother and his friends.  Might be time to do a full tasting write up.

11-18-15

Beer is over 2 years old with half the batch kegged.  Decent flavors, moderate acidity, no noticeable acetic acid or other off flavors.

12-13-15

14.5 oz. Oregon Fruit Red Tart Cherries pitted in water added to the keg with about 2 gallons beer remaining. Sweet Cherry puree and juice reserved for a later addition.

#18 Saison Double Tasting

Today I'm doing a tasting on some of the last bottles of my 18/18B Saison batch.  Originally intended to be a sophie inspired oak aged brett saison with large amounts of wheat, the brett really never came through in this one and I added half the batch to both oak and asian pears.  I brought a bottle of this to a brew club meeting where it seemed to be fairly well received.

A- Both versions are a pretty amber color but the pear version is both darker and cloudier.  The pear version also pours with a bigger head, hold the head longer and still has a ring around the outside after a few minutes while the other has just a few bubbles throughout.

S- Straight: White grape juice, hay, orange peel, juicy fruit gum.  Pear: Much lower levels of fruitiness with some slightly tart pear character and a nice oak level that gives a faint touch of smoke and vanilla.

T- Straight: fairly light flavors compared to the nose, the Juicy Fruit and hay/wheat character come through a bit while the beer finishes lightly sweet.  Pear: Light pear character definitely shines through, I can sense the oak but it helps to bolster the light flavors from the malt/yeast/fruit more than it sticks out on its own.

M- Both beers feel both a bit underattenuated and undercarbonated.  I feel this may be due to the brett never kicking in and bringing the gravity lower as I had expected.

D- Not bad.  The asian pear/oak version is certainly better and seems to have enough fruit to be perceivable without dominating while the oak seems to enhance that fruit character.  I don't think I will use this yeast again (WLP670 White Labs American Farmhouse blend) and the overall character was a bit like Urthel Saisonierre, though more complex.  I will probably never have a chance to do an asian pear beer again but I was happy with the results here and certainly would recommend for anyone else with easy access to them.

Imperial Licorice Stout

To me the best Imperial Stouts have a noticeable, if not assertive, licorice quality.  This is very evident in Heavy Seas' Peg Leg which is one of my favorites of the style.  As a black licorice junky who not only gladly drinks straight Jagermeister but also eats the black jelly beans that no one else likes, I wanted to bring this flavor to the front of a brew.

For Imperial Assassin, my take on an imperial licorice stout, I planned to use licorice root in the boil to give a decent licorice flavor.  Near the end of the boil I noticed that the flavor of the root had not come through nearly as strongly as I was looking for and added in a stick of Brewer's Licorice in hopes of increasing the flavor.  I plan to leave the beer in primary for one month before secondarying on Jagermeister soaked oak.  If the flavor is still not where I want it at that point I plan to use fresh anise seed at bottling to bring a bit of the classic licorice candy flavor through.  It might be hard to hold off this long on this beer but I hope I'm rewarded for it.

Updates:

2.15.2012 - It's been one month to the day since I brewed and I finally checked the final gravity on this bad boy and it's down lower than I had expected at 1.017! That means that despite missing my OG it's still about 8.5% ABV.  More importantly it tastes amazing: raisins, chocolate, coffee, campfire, a mild tingly sweetness (I suspect the licorice root) and a bit of warming alcohol but not hot at all.  On the downside it does seem a bit thin and dry (probably due to the high attenuation shown by the FG) but hopefully with some carbonation it will come out creamy and delicious. I also received all my brewing supplies so I boiled the hungarian medium-plus toast oak cubes and added them to a jar with Jaegermeister in preparation for the secondary.  Those things smell HEAVENLY, they smell the way the best red wines taste (not surprising as most red wines are oaked). Despite this being my new favorite smell in the world I am hesitant to oak the entire batch and risk ruining the beer with two ingredients (oak and Jaeger) that I have not used before and, despite my plan, might not mend well with the other pieces.  I'm letting the oak sit in the Jaeger for a day or two while I decide but at the least half of the batch will be on the ounce of oak (if only 2.5 gallons are on the ounce there might be a stronger oak flavor for better or worse).

2.18.2012 - Bottled one half of the batch (one case worth) with .8 oz. Sugar. Other half was racked to secondary with oak and Jaegermeister.

1/17/2015 - Final Tasting.  A little too sweet and lacking in roast, but otherwise absolutely delicious.

5/11/2017 - Found a bottle of the 12b version that I didn't know existed. A little strange and unbalanced due to the licorice root unfermentable sugars showing a bit. Fortunately not oxidized and certainly not bad. Hard to tell if the beer has gotten worse after 5+ years or my tastes have just developed but it seemed 'meh' at best.