Posted by: pdtnc on: January 21, 2012
Toasted Oatmeal Stout – Its about time I made a Roasted Barley based Stout so the other week I toasted some oats in the oven, checking every 5 mins and turning them, they just began to catch so I stopped at this point (Slight oven-smell to them, hope this doesn’t come through to the finished beer).
Nice solid bittering from Northdown and a little Challenger thrown in at the end too. The Malt bill is just an altered Guinness recipe splitting the 20% Flaked barley between Caramalt & Flaked Oats (should be better than Guinness).
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 70%
Flaked Oats, Toasted – 10%
Roasted Barley – 10%
Caramalt – 10%
Hops:
Northdown – 6.2 % @ 60 mins – 42g (FWH)
Northdown – 6.2 % @ 30 mins – 42g
Northdown – 6.2 % @ 0 mins – 15g (15min Steep at 100c)
Challenger – 7.6 % @ 0 mins – 15g (15min Steep at 100c)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.046
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 4% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 45 EBU
Colour: 211 EBC
Mash: 67°c for over 2 hours as I had stuff to do.
Yeast: Safale US-05
The malts, this actually dropped to 10°c, the Oatmeal is at the top so you can see the colour:

Copper filling onto First Wort Northdown hops:

I managed the protafloc all by my self:

Flameout hops going in:

Malt Recycling, she turns it into poo amazingly well:

One division in the meniscus, 1046 on the nail at 20°c:

Pretty slow but no fuss brewday, left the copper to clean later, in the fridge set at 19.5°c
According to BeerEngine I just topped 90% Mash efficiency on this brew, I shall put this down to the Oatmeal which simply disintegrated in the mash and the extended mash rest.
*Bottled 5th Feb ’12 with 60g White Sugar.
2 | pdtnc
January 31, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Unless you read that at the top of the meniscus, that still reads 1046 to the level surface of the wort. Checking my records, the Refractometer actually said 12.4 brix so 1048.
3 | Gregg Irwin (@dredpenguin)
February 1, 2012 at 12:30 am
Are they not calibrated to read at the centre of the meniscus? Ie the highest point as you would with a measuring cylinder. I have just realised I have no idea if this is how the refractometer works….
4 | pdtnc
February 1, 2012 at 7:20 am
Well the Saccharometers (Hydrometers) we use at work read to the level surface of the liquid, so you have to use your judgement from the last visible line and project downwards to the surface to take the reading. From doing this you also find that the size of the meniscus isn’t always the same, sometimes a larger or smaller radius, so reading from the center of it would seem odd.
This is in relation to the meniscus on the stem of the Hydrometer. http://www.stevenson-reeves.co.uk/howto.htm
The Refractometer is a different thing entirely and works via the bending of light through a liquid, I had it explained once by a very knowledgeable chap from Elland Brewery, something to do with concentrations of substances in water will rotate the light either clockwise or anti-clockwise. Don’t quote me on this, read up
anyway, a rough Brix to Gravity calculation is 4*brix-2=Gravity.
5 | Gregg Irwin (@dredpenguin)
February 1, 2012 at 9:53 am
It was late, I should have said “I have no idea if this is how the hydrometer works”… I am aware that this is not how the refractometer works
Cheers for the link, clears things up nicely. If I could be bothered I would go and reassess all my abv’s but I can’t.
Theme: Albeo by Design Disease.
January 31, 2012 at 11:33 am
Looks like a nice beer. One thought…I would read that hydrometer as 1.044, the long lines being the round numbers. (I have the same hydrometer)