Oatmeal Coffee Stout feedback

Looks good, I use notty for my oatmeal but 05 should be fine.

 

Dry Yeast isn't magic. You still need to pitch an appropriate amount of viable cells for the gravity and volume of wort. If the amount of dry yeast you have isn't adequate, you can either make a starter or pitch more than one pack. (The latter is typical with dry yeast, because it's relatively inexpensive.) The reason people often say you don't need a starter with dry yeast is that dry yeast packets typically come with a higher cell count than most liquid yeasts. But you should still be aware of what you're pitching and adjust if necessary. There are a few yeast calculators out there to make the math easy.

 

A quick run of the grain bill and US-05 through BrewCipher suggests "If No Starter, use 1.5 Vials/Packs". It also shows a Predicted ABV of 8.6% if mashing 60 min @ 152°.

 

72%. Lowering it to 60% returns the same 7% you got.

 

x2

 

Where's the coffee in your Oatmeal Coffee Stout?! You ignore it in your original post.

I've never brewed a coffee beer before so I have no experience to make any comments, but plenty of other folks in this forum have expressed a myriad of opinions about how to get that flavor into a beer. In case you don't have experience either, here's a link to a search of thread titles that use 'coffee' in the wording, and it produces a myriad of posts on the topic. Good luck with your methodology decision.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/search/68095978/?q=coffee&o=date&c[title_only]=1&c[node]=8

 

You're basically doing a batch sparge. It will increase your mash efficiency compared to a full volume BIAB mash. At the time you're doing this sparge, conversion has already (hopefully) been completed, so there's no reason to let the grains "steep" from an efficiency standpoint. As soon as the sparge water and the grains have been thoroughly mixed, you can start draining. The exception would be if you are intentionally doing a mash out, i.e. adding water that's hot enough to raise the overall temp to about 168-170F, in order to lock in the wort's sugar/dextrin profile. In that case, I'd let it sit for about 10 minutes.

ETA: you asked about a "better" way to sparge. Well, there's Fly Sparging, which is more efficient, but does not make better beer. But I can't think of a way to do this with BIAB.

 

Two notes. #1 it's helpful to start looking at your recipes in terms of % per ingredient. That way it doesn't matter what size batch you're doing, you know that you only want to put so much of a certain something in.

#2 is that I feel the best way to do coffee is with a cold brew. You can google that for more info. and instructions but make sure you use a medium roast coffee. A lighter roast will not give you what you want, and a darker roast can give you harsh acidic notes.

 

Breaking it down into percentages this is what I get:
70.58% 2-Row
11.76 Flaked Oats
5.88% Crystal 60L
5.88% Chocolate 350L
5.88% Roasted Barley 300L (can that be right?)

I left out the Crystal 20 as that's just an add on.

Given those percentages I'd say you're low on base malt and high on dark malts. I generally don't go much past 5.0% on roasted barley - although you can, and I try to keep chocolate around the same. I know it's easier to weight in solid increments but that doesn't necessarily make the best beer. I'd say you need @ 3 % more base malt.

One more question... why just 2-row and not pale? Or by 2-row do you mean pale? I'm thinking of Briess Brewers 2-Row malt which is a little lighter in flavor and color. Also, on the other end, I see no need to use something richer like Maris Otter in a dark beer.

 

Do you mean the 300L part? If so, the grain Briess sells as Roasted Barley is 300L.

 

Exactly. I generally use Bairds which is 550.

I should probably note, I am not a fan of Briess Malts.

 

You can set the mash water to grain ratio to whatever you want. The logic will then direct the rest of the total water needed to the sparge. The most efficient mash and batch sparge is where the runoff from each step is equal. Others can tell you whether that's practical with BIAB. I suspect it's not, but I don't do BIAB.

 

And there are professional brewers who only use full increments of 50 or 55#'s because that's what their bags of grains come in. Do you think that those are the best brewers? Exactly.

As for the 550L vs. 300L, I'll say you'll learn. It just takes time. I do an Imperial stout that's more on the soft side that uses lighter grains and it works, but it's a different beer than most people think of when they hear Imperial Stout. In the same way, many people find Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout to be too fruity, so who knows? And I should also point out, that you're planning on adding coffee which adds roastiness. Why don't you stick with what you've got and see how it comes out? That's the best way to learn. None of my recipes are ever done until they've been brewed again and again and I've made enough changes to them that I'm happy with them. It's very rare that you hit the nail on the head the very first time.

Best of luck with it.