Hopping an oatmeal stout: the "google special"

When I brew my Oatmeal Stouts I only use bittering hops: 8 AAUs of Northern Brewer. IMHO, an Oatmeal Stout should be ‘defined’ by the malts.

Cheers!

 

I like Goldings for 60 minutes and Fuggles at 20. Or I've brewed it with Wye Challenger for 60 and Goldings for 20.

 

My last Oatmeal Stout used 0.5 ounces of EKG and 1 ounce of Fuggles, both at 60 minutes. I would just as happily have used all EKG or all Fuggles, in whatever amounts to reach target IBUs.

Extra Oatmeal? If I didn't know what I already had, but trusted that I had thought it through when I made the (now lost) recipe, I wouldn't add any.

 

Challenger, Fuggles, and Glacier have bittered my recent stouts, porters, and English brown ales.

 

Surely you have asked your LHBS if they still have your email. Right?

 

I missed the part of: “…oatmeal (1 lb). Might just toss in some extra oatmeal, what's the limit on that when you don't know what's in the recipe?”

I use 1 lb. of Oatmeal in my Oatmeal Stouts. I personally have never even considered adding more than a lb.

Cheers!

 

My last four recipes with oats use a 1# for a 5-6 gallon batch. 3 of the 4 use oat malt, mostly because I think it's cool.

 

I have used EKG, Fuggles, and Northern Brewer before. I like what fuggles brings to the party along with an English yeast strain.

 

EKG. Fuggles is a little too earthy for me (To clarify, it is too earthy in a non-weed/dank bomb style of beer).

Go crazy on the extra oats. As a tribute to Eazy E. (Name of beer was "Oats on your Chin") I made an Oatmeal stout with 85% oats in the grist (GNO, Oat Malt, Flaked Oats), and it was weird but tasty.

 

Check out Google Drive. Or Dropbox. Or Box. Or Amazon Cloud Drive. Or one of the 100 other backup services out there...

 

I target 28 Tinseth IBUs for a 5.0% ABV Oatmeal Stout. All from a 60 minute addition.

 

I don't own a document that's not saved in one of these services, and I haven't had to purchase a membership either. I'm up to 27GB on Dropbox, 50 on box, and Google offers 15 out of the gate.

 

Thats a ton of saved ****.

 

You asked about yeast selection. The yeast that I have used the most in making my Oatmeal Stouts is Coopers dry yeast. I fully recognize that Coopers gets zero love on BA but that yeast makes a damn fine Oatmeal Stout.

In my last Oatmeal Stout I mixed things up a bit and used Windsor. I really like Windsor for making my English Bitter Ales so I thought: maybe this yeast would be good in an Oatmeal Stout? That batch turned out just fine but frankly I really didn’t notice any difference from my Coopers Oatmeal Stouts. One word of caution, Windsor is a non-attenuative yeast. In my Windsor Oatmeal Stout I got an Apparent Attenuation of 73%, With Coopers I get closer to 80%. I frankly don’t notice the difference between the different levels in this beer style but I thought I would mention it.

I also suspect that S-04 will be a good yeast choice for an Oatmeal Stout but I haven’t used it yet for my Oatmeal Stouts. I know that there are a number of BAs who are not big fans of S-04.

Cheers!

 

I like to use 1968 for my porters, and some lower ABV stouts myself.

For the oat stout, I'd think that N. Brewer and some Willamette would be perfect.

 

Have your local hbs just "reply" to your original email

 

Maybe check out that new Neobrittania yeast.