BIAB Oatmeal Stout- first go

[Hengoedbrewer]

Hi all

After some back and forth and researching a few different recipes; I have ordered the ingredients for an oatmeal stout to brew either this weekend or next. It will be my second BIAB attempt. Recipe and method is here:

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/844423/biab-stout

Pretty standard copying of Clibit's simple all grain method except for cold steeping dark grains. If anyone spots anything obviously wrong or has any pointers, would greatly appreciate it!

 

[HarryFlatters]

Make sure you've plenty of water to soak your specialist grains in, and watch your absorption/sparge calculations. I've just brewed a similar stout with a cold steep and I don't think I used enough water (2:1 is what I thought would be enough, it wasn't and it turned to a sludge that I couldn't pass through a sieve) and ended up under gravity and over volume.

 

[Hengoedbrewer]

Make sure you've plenty of water to soak your specialist grains in, and watch your absorption/sparge calculations. I've just brewed a similar stout with a cold steep and I don't think I used enough water (2:1 is what I thought would be enough, it wasn't and it turned to a sludge that I couldn't pass through a sieve) and ended up under gravity and over volume.

Thank you for that. As it is only my second attempt I am still getting to grips with all grain and the whole efficiency thing, I didn't to be honest pay too much attention to it last time, planning to be a bit more thorough this time. I'm looking at 2L of water for the cold steep, for 330g of dark grains- does this sound okay to you? I also ended up over volume in fermenter last time, but only bottled 15x 500l, so 7.5 litres or so.

 

[HarryFlatters]

I think I forgot to subtract the cold steeped grains (and how much I ended up having to sparge them) from my total sparge volume, and I added the cold steeped grain's weight to the total grain bill for calculating absorption, so ended up 5 litres over volume, and many gravity points down.

I still made beer though, so I'm fairly happy

 

[Hengoedbrewer]

Ahhh. I think I have worked out that I have 13L of water in total including all mash / sparge / cold steeping liquor, so with grain absorption / boil off taken into account, I hopefully shouldn't be too far off what I want in the fermenter in the end....

 

[matt76]

Just playing devil's advocate, why are you cold steeping your dark grains? The might be an argument for doing it in something like a black IPA where you just want the colour but surely the flavour you get is part of what makes it a stout?

Are you sure you're not just making life harder for yourself if you're still finding your feet?

(I'm on a make-things-simpler kick at the moment - if it's something you particularly want to try then go for it! )

 

[HarryFlatters]

From the reading that I did @matt76, the cold steep (even in a stout) rounds out the flavours so you don't need anything like the conditioning time as you don't have the harsh and astringent flavours in there in the first place.

https://homebrewacademy.com/cold-steep-dark-grains-experiment/

http://brulosophy.com/2017/12/04/roasted-grains-pt-4-cold-steeping-vs-full-mash-exbeeriment-results/

 

[Hengoedbrewer]

From the reading that I did @matt76, the cold steep (even in a stout) rounds out the flavours so you don't need anything like the conditioning time as you don't have the harsh and astringent flavours in there in the first place.

https://homebrewacademy.com/cold-steep-dark-grains-experiment/

http://brulosophy.com/2017/12/04/roasted-grains-pt-4-cold-steeping-vs-full-mash-exbeeriment-results/

@matt76 doing it for these reasons, pretty much this spot on ^ Cold steeping of roasted grains apparently makes a dark beer smoother taste wise, rather than being harsh and roasty. I've cold steeped grains in a partial mash before and it turned out quite well.