Joan's Potholder Oatmeal Stout

Classification: stout, oatmeal stout, Anderson Valley Barney Flats, all-grain

Source: Paul Timmerman (ptimmerm@ kathy.jpl.nasa.gov) r.c.b., 4/30/92

This is an attempt to emulate Anderson Valley's Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout.
This beer is super thick and creamy. I think the body is almost a dead ringer for Anderson Valley's stout, as I did a side by side two nights ago. I would not go with dark DME if I was to do this again as a partial mash, as darker than the AV. The hops are quite different than AV's, but I think nugget / n. brewer / willamette or something closer will give a very close match to AV. I would also probably go with a chico yeast, since the irish adds prominent flavors at the 70 temperature of my fermentation.

Hope you try out this gem, it's the best I done yet, except for the pale ale I racked to the secondary last night, of course. It does use the chico yeast, nugget, nor. brewer, willamet combination. I find it more interesting than straight cascade.

Ingredients:

5 pounds, 2--row pale malt
1--1/2 pounds, steel cut oats
1/2 pound, malted wheat
1--1/2 pounds, 80 L. crystal malt
1 pound, black patent malt
1 pound, chocolate malt
1 pound, roasted barley
1/2 pound, Cara-pils malt
3 pounds, dark Australian DME
1/2 pound, lactose
1 teaspoon, Irish moss
1 ounce, Chinnok pellets (13.6% alpha) (boil 60 minutes)
1/2 ounce, Perle pellets (8% alpha) (boil 35 minutes)
1/4 ounce, Hallertauer pellets (3% alpha) (boil 35 minutes)
1/4 ounce, Tettnanger pellets (3.4% alpha) (boil 35 minutes)
3/4 ounce, Hallertauer (steep for aroma)
3/4 ounce, Tettnanger (steep for aroma)
1 ounce, Cascade (dry hop)
Wyeast Irish ale yeast

Procedure:

Single-step infusion mash, partial mash recipe.

Strike Temperature 170 into 12 liters of treated water, alla burton on trent. Note This was a little too thick, so use a little more water. Mashed for 45 minutes, 170 F. proteolytic step for 10 minutes. Sparged for almost two hours, while adding runoff to brew kettle to get boiling. Sparge SG ran from 1.09 down to about 1.025 when I had enough wort. Added 3 lbs DME (Dark Australian) to bring wort to 1.06 SG. I added 8 oz. of lactose and a tsp. of dry moss before killing the fire.

I pitched a large starter of the Irish Wyeast strain and got lots of blow off. I had extra wort in a 4 liter auxillary. I used this to fill up the secondary afer racking off the lees. Dry hopping was done in the secondary with the cascade. After 2 weeks, the SG was only down to 1.03, and fermentation was very slow.