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That right, the days are getting shorter, the leaves have fallen.  It’s time to break out the high octane brew!  In this case, it’s my second iteration of Wilford’s Best Oatmeal Stout.  This time, I am doing the same volume, but splitting it with my brother-in-law as his first homebrew batch.  It was a great brew day, a little chill in the air, we hit all of our temps and things worked out well.  In fact, things worked out so well, we had fantastic efficiency.  Below are the details on the recipe:

• 26lbs UK 2 row
• 3lbs Flaked oats
• 1.5 lbs roasted barley
• 1lb Chrystal 120L
• .5lb Chocolate malt
• 1oz Warrior (60 min)
• 1oz Northern Brewer (30 min)
• 1.5 oz homegrown cascade (10 min)
• Wyeast American Ale Yeast 1056

If you decided to go back and take a look at the recipe from last year, you’ll notice that I used 3lbs roasted barley for the flavor malt on this recipe.  After I received some tough love from the brew club, I took some of the advice I received and decided to diversify the flavor malts.  As a quick overview, I was previously seeking to simplify my recipes to gain a better respect for what I was adding into the beer.

In this recipe, I wanted some notes of chocolate, some toffy and the mouth-feel you get from a good oatmeal stout.  I decided that the ratio of specialty malts to base malt was good, so I decided to break up the amount over three ingredients leaving roasted barley as still the dominant flavor malt (as I was generally very happy with my beer last year, I just wanted some depth).

So, as you can see from the pictures above, I have racket the brew over.  The brew day itself was really successful, we did a two batch sparges with, the first running was 22brix, the second was 15 brix and the final running was 11 brix.  This made for a 1.070 OG and is going to make for a nice winter brew to start the cold season.

It finished off at 1.010 and had a great taste.  More to come on that, but thing biggest thing I noticed was that there was a slight burn on the way down from the high ABV, but it was slight and I think once there is some carbonation and cold, it won’t be noticeable.

More to come on this brew, but Wilford Brimley is back!