Brew 6 - Coffee Hobnob Stout

Brew 6 - Wake Up Call! (Coffee & Oatmeal Breakfast Stoat)

Brew day: 30/06/2020 
Bottle day: 13/07/2020

After 4 consecutive IPAs - it is time to go back to the dark side and brew a stoat. On of my favourite beers is Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stoat and this is my next aim - an Oatmeal based Stoat with a twist. 

I am loosely following Brewdog recipe #129 (Dead Metaphor) but have made some changes to the suggested ingredients. Firstly, I am going to use Northern Brewer hops in place of Magnum (this is all I could source at the time). Secondly, I have increased the ratio of Flaked Oat so that my beer with have more Oats. The third twist comes at the end of the boil, more on this later. 

I've also decided to use a liquid yeast again - Get 'Er Brewed had a smaller selection of dried yeasts and nothing really suited to a stoat so after some reading online around the various Wyeast strains, I opted for 1318- London Ale III as a liquid yeast smack pack. I almost forgot to get the packet out of the fridge and activate.  

I decided, after a day sat at the computer (still working from home) that I would do an evening brew - this worked well last time and I can fit it in if I get the first mash on before dinner. I follow the same process as Brew 5, insulating the mash tun with tin foil and a blanket (and an added raincoat for extra warmth). I also overshot the strike water taking into account heat losses when the malt goes in and during the mash and started with 12 litres into the mash tun. 

The first mash sat for 90mins, starting at 70 deg C this soon sat nicely at 67 deg C and ended up at 64 deg C. I am losing heat but this doesn't concern me too much at this stage as I am still within normal mashing temperature range. I squeezed the bag again to extract as much sugar and wort as possible and resulted in 10L with a preboil gravity of 1.043 (coming out as 62.78% efficiency which is towards the top end of the scale of what I have managed with this set up). 

First boil goes well and hops are added, again in hop bags to reduce trub at the end. Using Protafloc tabs to aid flocculation - these have actually worked a trest since I used them on Brew 4. 

Now for the twist... I'm going to leave the wort cooling in the fermentation bin for a while at gas off and chuck in a shot of ground coffee (in a hop bag) which will sit there for 30mins. This will make it a proper Breakfast Oatmeal stoat - it is a bit of a gamble but I love coffee and I love oats so what have I got to lose. 

Batch 1 Gravity came out at 1.063 (73.59% efficiency) which is excellent - very happy with this so far. 

I pull out the 2nd batch and it looks A LOT darker. I think most of the dark and crystal malts must have been at the bottom of the bag - might need to shake and mix the bag better before starting next time but I guess all the extract is mixed in the end anyway. This batch is looking really stoaty!

A quick Batch 2 Pre boil gravity reading gives me 1.042 (58.26% efficiency) which is really close to batch 1 - a nice bit of consistency. I tried a bit of the sweet wort and it has a serious coffee kick! I can't wait to try the final beer. 

Batch 2 gravity comes out at 1.056 (65.41% efficiency) and the 2 combined batches gives me 14 litres with a OG of 1.061 (brewhouse efficiency of 62.34%) against a target of 1.064 I'm really happy with that - a good improvement on previous brews and some decent consistency. 

I left the wort to cool and then went to add the pack of yeast before realising that only half of the smack pack had broken open. Thankfully the packet says you can actually pitch the yeast without leaving it to start up so I bunged in the whole packet and will hope for the best. More on this plus pics in a few weeks!

Update - The yeast was fine - in fact the Krausen was incredible and rose up quite a way!






Bottling Day: (13/07/2020) - 2 weeks arrives and SG has flat-lined nicely at 1.012 - below target but bringing the beer in at a whooping 6.7%! Really pleased with that and the beer already tastes great without conditioning. 

Bottling is fairly smooth and I get 24 bottles out of the batch. Using the same set up with the pressure barrel to fill the bottles worked really well. 

An idea from the previous brew from my Dad to make labels for each brew was continued - the label design is at the top of the page. I'm going to do this for every brew now (I think!) - it is a really nice way of capturing the beer for memory's sake! Now to wait for a taste!



Update: Another home brew, all grain result! Wake Up Call tastes dark and roasty. The coffee is prominent (Although I think it could have more!) and the bitterness from the Northern Brewer hops provides a great aftertaste. I've really enjoyed making a stout and have learned a lot about different malt varieties with this brew. Using a different yeast strain has also be really interesting. I made some little errors on the way with this one but it doesn't show in the final product. My main area for improvement comes in the body of this beer - perhaps more oats, a lower mash temp or some lactose (or a combo of the 3) would be worth playing with next time. Overall beer rating: 4/5. 

Ingredients
Malts: Crisp Extra Pale Malt, Wheat Malt, Crisp Brown Malt, Carafa Special Type 1 Malt, Crisp Black Malt, Crisp Dark Crystal, Crisp Organic Crystal 150, Crisp Flaked Torrified Oats. 
Hops: Northern Brewer. 
Adjuncts: 10g ground coffee (steeped at gas off for 30mins)
Yeast: Wyeast London Ale III 1318 (Liquid Yeast)
Batch size Target: 15L 
Batch size Actual: 14L
Number of bottles from batch: 24 bottles (22 x 500ml and 2 x 330ml)
Target OG: 1064
Actual OG: 1061
Target FG: 1.016
Gravity on 07/07/2020: 1.014
Gravity on 09/07/2020: 1.014
Actual FG: 1.012
Target ABV: 6.27%
Actual ABV: 6.4%
Brew Efficiency: 57%

Notes: Based loosely on #129 (Dead Metaphor) in DIY Dog Recipe. 

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