Hi Friends, I’m gearing up to brew my first all-grain oatmeal stout this weekend and have a question for all the vets of such brew days: is combining both flaked oats and torrified wheat in the mash to enhance the beer’s body and head retention redundant? Here’s the current grain bill:
Do the adjunct combinations make sense here? Or would it be simpler to go with flaked oats alone and dial up their contribution a bit? Thanks for the advice!!!
Personally, I would drop the torrefied and use an extra lb of base malt. The oatmeal is obviously integral and will provide plenty of mouthfeel in addition. I would also drop the brown and sub in chocolate in the same amount. And Maris Otter is fairly toasty/biscuity on its own so I would drop the Victory`which is biscuity and sub in .75 lb more of your base malt. That is a streamlined recipe now which is pretty similar to mine. By no means am I saying that your recipe couldn’t be good, but sometimes too many malts can give you a ‘muddy’ poorly defined malt character. Good luck !
Have to agree pretty much across the board with Hoosier. 8 grains is too many. Keep your recipes as simple as possible. I don’t have my recipe handy, but its: Marris Otter, flaked oats, Crystal 60 or 80, roasted barley and chocolate malt.
Awesome, thanks so much for the pointers! The feedback is most helpful and appreciated, this being my first foray into the style. Here’s how I’ve simplified the recipe:
Thoughts? And while I’m at it, I might as well ask you about your preferred yeast strains; I’m torn between White Labs’ 004 Irish Ale and 022 Essex Ale (my local homebrew store is a WL supplier). What do you think?
I agree with most of this, except I’d probably keep the torrified wheat. Torrified wheat has a nice nutty flavor that I personally like in many of my English-style ales.
I think the takeaway is to know what each ingredient is doing in a recipe and pare down anything that doesn’t have a clear purpose. For me, I’d be including torrified wheat as a flavor component. But if you’re using it for mouthfeel and not flavor, then the oats have you covered and you can get rid of it.
Normally I’d agree because I like the flavor of torrefied in paler ales. I just don’t know how noticeable it’d be in an oatmeal stout. I could be wrong.