Amy's Stout

Classification: stout, oatmeal stout, all-grain

Source: Spencer Thomas (Spencer.W.Thomas@med.umich.edu), HBD Issue #1417, 5/6/94

My wife really liked Sam Adams Cream Stout when we had some last summer. I thought I'd try to make a beer with that nice creamy, roasty flavor, but lower gravity, for her graduation party last weekend.
Tasting notes (after 1 week in bottle/keg): Yum! Initial roasty-malty aroma with a hint of hop flower-spice. Fills your mouth, smooth, silky and medium-full body. Sweet but not too much, balanced with hops but towards the sweet side. Really right-on with what I was aiming for. Too bad I didn't make this in time for the Nationals.
Amy loves it, the party guests liked it, once they got past the intimidating (to a beer neophyte) blackness.

If you really love the roasted coffee flavor of roasted barley, the beer could easily take more of it, or maybe 1/4lb chocolate malt to "sharpen up" the flavor a bit. But it's darn good as it is, and tastes a lot "bigger" than you might expect from its OG.

Ingredients:

5.5 lb Hugh Baird Pale Ale malt
0.5 lb Carapils malt (Hugh Baird)
0.5 lb Hugh Baird 50L crystal
1.0 lb flaked oats (McCann's Irish Quick Oats)
0.7 lb roasted barley
30g BC Kent Goldings flowers (5%) (60 min)
15g Kent Goldings (15 min)
15g Kent Goldings (5 min)
Yeast Lab Irish Ale yeast

Procedure:

Step mash all grains together @61C for 30 min (3 gal strike), 65C for 30 min. (infuse 2qts boiling water). Sparged 5.8 gallons at 1.038.

Yield: 4.7 gallons @ 1.046 (I did add some top-up water during the boil).

Fermented 1 week in glass at 19-22C with a pint starter of YeastLab Irish Ale. FG 1.012.

Bottled with 1/3c corn sugar into 2 5l mini-kegs and 18 bottles.

Specifics:

O.G.: 1.046
F.G.: 1.012