Oatmeal Stout!

We're almost brewing too fast to keep up with the blogging! Last week we racked the IPA into secondary fermentation (more about racking in another post), got our kegs ready for the Octoberfest, made some beer grains bread, and brewed our first stout. Overall, I'd say that sounds like a pretty good week!

After going to Rogue Brewery's Valentine's Day beer and chocolate tasting a few years ago (TEN courses of chocolate and beer!!), I became inspired by how well stouts go with dessert. A creamy stout pairs just as well with cookies as a glass of milk. And for those who haven't tried it, a scoop of vanilla ice cream in your stout is a divine dessert! So this year I hope that we can keep ourselves from drinking up the stout we made on Wednesday before my holiday baking spree begins. I'm sure Santa will appreciate a stout with his cookies in place of yet another glass of milk.

The stout contained 11.5 lbs of delicious grains, including oatmeal and a tad bit of chocolate malt for that yummy chocolaty goodness. We decided to make a low IBU stout, opting for creamy, smooth drinkability over heavy bitterness and excessive ABV%. We added a couple ounces of hops to balance out the malts, but not enough to overwhelm the flavor. Lactose was added to the boil for an extra bit of creamy sweetness (milk sugar is unfermentable). Like the IPA we did an infusion mash, this time at 153 degrees F for 60 minutes. From the photos you can see the delicious, dark, stouty color!

The OG was 1.055, with IBUs around 35. The expected alcohol percentage should be 5.5-6%.

Check out the album for some shots of the process.

I also made bread again with the spent-grains. This time it came out even better than the last one, and makes excellent toast! Today we are brewing yet another beer, so there will be more posts to come soon!

Love your beer, it comes out better! (Me infusing the stout with love during the mash).