Oatmeal (Coffee) Stout - Brew Day

So today was brew day for my oatmeal (coffee) stout. I put "coffee" in parentheses because there isn't any coffee in it yet. That is, I plan on putting coffee in it, but not until the bottling stage. More on that later.

This was my first time doing a mini-mash and I think it went quite well. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

In the large pot I have 2.5 gallons coming up to 160F. The smaller pot has 0.5 gallons which will eventually be brought to 170F and used to sparge.


While waiting for the water to heat up, I put the grains in the nylon mesh bag. The bowl is to prevent grain dust from going everywhere. After ruining one temperature probe by submerging it, you can see I got smart and am using a clothespin to this probe in place.


Here goes nothing.


Now the grains will soak at about 155F for 45 minutes.


Here I have the temperature right on the nose. The enzymes responsible for converting the starches in the grains to sugars work best around this temperature. If you go much higher than 160F it's pretty much game over.


Here's what it looks like after the grains have been removed and sparged. It looks fantastic and I can't wait to drink it.

There aren't any photos of the sparging process because I needed both hands to get the strainer under the grain bag. Then I had to hold the strainer and the grain bag over the pot with one hand while I rinsed the grains with 170F water with the other hand. This part of my process definitely needs some refinement, but I managed for now.

At this point I brought the wort to a boil, turned off the heat, and added the liquid malt extract. After dissolving all the extract, I brought it back up to a boil.

This photo was taken just a few seconds after I added the hops and narrowly avoided a boil-over with my lightning-quick reflexes. The wort will now boil for one hour.

After the hour long boil, I cooled the wort in an ice bath. Normally, I would just let it sit, but this time I carefully circulated the wort with my sanitized brew spoon. This had the effect of cooling my wort to 80F in about 10 minutes and it helped to gather and settle out the hot break and hops. Thus, when I went to pour the wort into the fermenter, I did not have to worry about getting any break or hops in it until the last inch of liquid. At that point I grabbed my stainless fine mesh strainer, which let me separate the breaks and hops from the last bit of wort.

Before pitching the yeast, I took a specific gravity reading and came up with 1.060. The recipe says it should be about 1.053. I attribute the difference to the fact that the volume of wort is less than 4.5 gallons. The final gravity is supposed to be 1.012, which will give me an ABV of about 6%.


After pitching the yeast, I placed the fermenter in my freezer turned beer cooler and attached the blowoff hose. Now to wait for the yeast to get cranking. The probe of my temperature control is taped to the side of the carboy to get a better measurement of the beer's temperature.

Next: Initial activity?