If you have the book, take a look on page 56 for Ed’s Honey Oatmeal Stout.  We followed this recipe excepting the following items:

• Instead of Liberty hops for aroma, George suggested Mt. Rainier — more alpha acids with the same flavor.  Who are we to argue?!  Just by smelling these malts, you can tell it’s going to need some serious balancing.
• George didn’t have any black patent malt at the moment, but set us up with some dehusked Carafa instead.  The dehusking removes some bitterness, tasting mellower and smoother than whole grains.
• Grains went in at 175°F instead of 155°F, but with the heat off.  By the time the half hour soak was up, the temp was down to 160°F.  My excuse theory is that over any range of temperatures, a wider flavor profile will be extracted than if it was held constant at one temperature…
• We used buckwheat honey from a farm in Gardners, PA—always good to use local honey if you can.  Thanks Ben!
• The recipe called for 1.5oz of cascade hops for bittering, but we used 1oz of cascade and 0.5oz of centennial that I found in the freezer.  They’re only three months old and still smelled great.

Sampling a little of the wort immediately brought back tastes of Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout, and a little Big Black Voodoo Daddy.  Sweet, dark, but not overly focused on chocolate notes.  I tried eating some of the sweet, sludgy oatmeal, but the intensely astringent hoppy bitterness made it impossible to stand for more than 2 seconds.

Even though the book has a complete guide on using Starters for high-gravity beers directly above the recipe we used, we didn’t do it.  So, I immediately blamed myself when I looked at it on the morning of day 2 only to find the whole bottle completely still.  I asked my beerologist, Ed, who immediately suggested the starter.  He also said that dropping a sterilized aquarium air stone with a pump into the wort can give the yeast the oxygen they need to reproduce to numbers high enough for complete fermentation.

Luckily, Monday night brought me home to find a thick foam on the surface and an airlock bubbling away.  We’ll see if it’s enough…

Notes for next time

• Use a starter.  By thinking ahead 2 or 3 days, you’ll have enough yeast to immediately drown out any undesirable organisms that would create off-flavors.  I also won’t spend the next day wondering if we wasted $70 because it’s not bubbling yet.
• Plan & measure.  We measured every ingredient except the water, and didn’t account for the volume lost boiling the grains and oatmeal.  We should do a gallon extra (especially with our awesome new 7.5 gallon brew kettle—thanks Joe!) and rack it into a gallon carboy.  Then, hold that carboy at a different temperature.  See how it compares with the big batch…
• Strain properly.  We need a bigger funnel and cheesecloth.  How big do they make ‘em?

How will it turn out?  Only time will tell.  Two weeks, to be exact.