Oatmeal Stout

Break Stuff

This post wasn’t meant to be about oatmeal stout, it was meant to be about making the Landlord clone, Grenadier. Unfortunately, however, that brew was afflicted by the same issue as the last batch of La Marmotte d’Or so there’s no post about either brew! Pouring away two batches of 35 litres of beer is pretty heart breaking. Annoyingly the Marmotte d’Or was the first brew I had made to go through the beer engine (did I not mention that I’d invested in a beer engine?), and whilst it looked amazing it tasted revolting. I’d originally thought it was caused by an issue with the tap on the fermenter, but as I changed that for the Grenadier I am more inclined to believe it was sanitiser related.

I made a number of changes to the process when I brewed the oatmeal stout the other weekend (plus I bought some new sanitiser), and having had a cheeky little taste as I was bagging it (the beer engine uses the bag in box system which I think I might cover in a separate post), I think that has solved the problem. As such, I am very excited at the prospect of finally having some drinkable beer to go through the beer engine – fingers crossed for some hand pulled oatmeal stout on Christmas day!

This recipe has evolved from the Sam Smith’s oatmeal stout clone recipe I found on a pdf somewhere online. It’s not too dissimilar, but I have bumped up the chocolate malt and the amount of oats.

GRAIN BILL

Brew day went nicely and for the first time making this I actually hit my numbers! Bagging 20 litres of it last weekend also went pretty smoothly too. Ironically this was the first beer I made in 2020 and also the last – things were a bit more mellow this time around (despite the worry over whether it would follow the same path as the previous two batches). There’s still 15 litres left to bottle, but I decided to leave that another week on the yeast. It’s still early days for the whole bag in box thing so I’m sure I will continue to refine the process. Let’s just hope that no more beer needs to be poured down the sink along the way!