Time to do the semi-annual brew of my world-famous recipe (by virtue of appearing in Zymurgy), Eagle Face Oatmeal Stout! This iteration has only small modifications, to account for my current mash efficiency (~75%), which means a slight reduction in the amount of base malt. I also changed the hops (to use up one of my high-alpha hops), which shouldn’t result in a substantive difference for the flavor profile because they’re really just for bittering anyhow. Finally, I toasted my oatmeal to try something a little different. The day before brewing, I set the oats in a 350° oven for 1.25 hours, which resulted in a nice toasty aroma and crispier oats with a slight golden edge on most of the flakes. We’ll see how that changes stuff (if it does).

Toasted oats, ready for the brew.

Eagle Face Oatmeal Stout 1.4

• 7.5 lbs. 2 row malt (Great Western)
• 1.5 lbs. old-fashioned oats (lightly toasted)
• 1 lb. 80° L crystal malt (Briess)
• 1 lb. Victory malt (Briess)
• 0.75 lb. chocolate malt (Briess)
• 0.5 lb. roasted barley (Bairds)
• 0.38 lb. rice hulls
• 1 Whirlfloc tablet, 10 minute boil
• 0.82 oz. Magnum hop pellets (13.2% alpha), 60 minute boil
• 1 pkg. English Ale yeast (White Labs WLP002, in starter)

Target Parameters

• 156° mash, 60 minutes
• 1.061 o.g., 1.022 f.g., 5.1% abv, 37 IBU, 41 SRM, 5.5 gallons into the fermenter

Procedure

• A few days in advance of the brew, I prepared a 2L starter. After two days on the stir plate, it was starting to flocculate out, and so I cold-crashed the starter. I split the starter into a 1.4L volume for pitching in this batch, and set aside 0.6L for a later brew.
• As with my most recent brewing session, I have modified my mash procedure slightly. I added the strike water directly to the unheated mash tun, and then added the malt after temperature stabilized at my desired strike point. In this case, I added 4.2 gallons of water at 180°. Once in the mash tun, the temperature dropped to 175°, a bit above my target of 168.7°. So, I let things sit until it matched my target, and then mashed in. For future reference, I should only overshoot my strike water temperature around 5° or so; this will result in a little bit shorter time to reach the planned temperature in the mash tun.
• My mash temperature settled at 154-156°, depending on where I measured it in the tun. It was down to 152° after 45 minutes. After 60 minutes, I added 0.75 gallons of water at 185°, let sit for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and collected the first runnings. I then added another 3.5 gallons of water at 175°, which raised the mash bed to 160°. After sitting and vorlaufing, I collected the second runnings.
• In total, I collected 6.4 gallons of wort at a gravity of 1.052, for 76% mash efficiency.
• I started the boil, adding ingredients per the schedule. After 35 minutes of boiling, I added an additional 0.25 gallons of R.O. water, to bring up the boil volume slightly and drop the gravity slightly.
• After a 60 minute boil, I turned off the flame and started chilling. Once I got down to 70°, I transferred the wort (while aerating with the usual Venturi pump and wort sprayer) into my primary fermenter.
• My pre-fermentation volume was 5.25 gallons, up to 5.5 gallons (approximately) once I pitched the yeast.
• Starting gravity was 1.060, close enough to my target for me to be happy (anything within 0.001 is well within instrument measurement error)! I’ll be fermenting at 68°. This batch was brewed on 2 January 2017.