Birthday Chocolate Oatmeal Vanilla Stout

Recipe Notes:

This is called Birthday Chocolate Oatmeal Vanilla Stout because the plan is to brew it on my birthday weekend and have it ready for the party on Hailey’s birthday weekend.  Also, because if it is half as delicious as planned, it would make a great birthday gift to anyone. The goal is a thick, creamy, chocolaty glass of goodness.  The bitterness should come from the grains and the chocolate as much or more so than from the hops.

2-Row Brewers Malt – For economy.
Oats, Flaked – For that oatmeal flavoring.
Chocolate Malt – For that tasty chocolate flavor and for color.
Crystal 40L – For color and a little sweetness.
Roasted Barley – For color and a little bit of coffee flavor.
2-Row Carapils – To put a big frothy head on the beer.
Fuggle hops – Selected for the earthy tones and medium bitterness.  The extra once of bittering hops is meant to balance out the sweetness of the milk sugar (lactose).
Cocoa powder – For even more chocolate flavoring.
Lactose – This should give it a smooth, milky texture and add sweetness.
Vanilla Beans – This really doesn’t belong with this style of beer, but I love a hint of vanilla w/ chocolate, so it’s going in.

Early Fall 2013

Brew Day: 11Aug13

The OG of this thing is off of the charts (for one of my typical brews) at 1.073.  This is going to be a BIG beer.  The OG might be propped up by the chocolate and the milk sugar.  But even preboil the gravity was 1.058, so there is plenty of potential in this thing.

The aromas you get from the beer are of dark chocolate and coffee.  The wort was incredibly sweet to the taste and had a great chocolate flavor to it, even before the actual chocolate was added.  The Fuggle hops was a perfect pick for this beer.  It added a subtle, earthy aroma to the beer.

The yeast starter I made seems to have turned out ok.  I guess I’ll see how well it ferments to pass final judgement.  There wasn’t a ton of head space, so I’ll have to keep an eye on the beer to make sure I don’t end up with a lid blowing off of the bucket.

I ran out of cocoa powder, so I had to substitute 4 oz of bakers chocolate squares.   (Note:  This recipe has been modified to reflect this.  The original called for 8oz of cocoa powder.  Given how tasty this beer is, I decided to make the recipe match what was brewed.)  Hopefully that doesn’t impact the final product too much.

The beer had a ton of particulate matter in it.  This will definitely require a secondary fermentation.  I’ll drop the vanilla in then.

I’m looking forward to trying this thing.

Brew notes:
With 90*F ambient temps, it took approx 30 minutes to bring strike water up to temp.
At the end of the mash, the temp was 154*F.
Mash out temp achieved was 160*F (w/ addition of 212*F water).
Mash out water required approx 15 minutes to bring to boil.
Pre-boil wort OG was 1.058 (temp corrected).
Post boil wort OG was 1.070@86*F (1.073 temp corrected).
Original recipe estimated 75% efficiency.  Actual OG indicates 81% efficiency.
5.25 gal target yielded good fill in the keg

Transfer to Secondary: (1Sept13)

Time to put the vanilla in!  I used pure vanilla extra this time.  Knowing it was already in 30% alcohol, I still couldn’t resist adding a little bourbon (which you would normally add to vanilla beans to help sterilize them).  Very little – about 1/2 oz of Elijah Craig.  I doubt this did much at all for the overall flavor, but I added it anyways.  The secondary was absolutely necessary as, even with my best attempts to avoid transfer of sediment from the primary, I still ended up with nearly 2″ at the bottom of the secondary.

Kegging Day:  (10Sept13)

Knowing this batch was going to go through a secondary and contain plenty of sediment, I made a little more than 5 gal initially.  This worked out almost perfect as the keg was filled almost to the top.

I had a little trouble force carbonating this beer.  I started at around 25 psi with the CO2 hooked to the “out” on the keg.  After a day like this, the beer was still mostly flat.  Needing to have it ready to go soon for the party, I went all out and hit it w/ 40 psi, shaking the keg until I didn’t hear any more gas flow.  The next day, they beer had plenty of head on it.  Too much.  But, it was tasty.  And this problem went away very early in the party, as people dove into the beer.

Tasting Notes: (12Sept13 – Happy Birthday Hailey!)

Winner, winner, duck dinner!!  This beer nailed it!  It was a huge it at Hailey’s first birthday party (no, we didn’t let the kids try any of it.).  In a single day, we killed all but a few beers out of the entire keg (along with what was left of the Red Bearded Duck keg).

The aroma is almost like a glass of hot chocolate.  There is no hops aroma.  You get this smooth, milky, dark chocolate aroma.  And it tastes as good as it smells.  The “milk” makes this start out very smooth.  Then you get the chocolate flavors – milk chocolate then the bitterness of the dark chocolate hits.  A little bit of hoppy bitterness shows through, at the very end.  Only a very little and it blends well with the bitterness of the chocolate.  The aftertaste starts off with a little of the bitterness then settles in to a dark toffee flavor.  It’s absolutely delicious!

Late Fall 2013

Brew Day:

This beer was so good, that after the party it was gone.  So, I decided to brew it again.

Due to availability at the local home brew store, I was force to use a different yeast this time.  The closes match available was the Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale.

A tip for introducing the bakers chocolate chunks, using a sharp kitchen knife, shave the squares.  This will leave you with a near powder that is easier to melt into the wort.

This was my first time doing two all grain batches in the same day.  I also made a batch of the all-grain Oktoberfest and was able to do so in 8 hours total from starting to set up equipment to final clean up.

I really messed up my mash temps.  Given that this was early in the morning and that I was juggling the schedule of two brews, I made a mistake of reading my thermometer incorrectly.  When I thought I was reading 167*F, I actually had water at 178*F.  I didn’t realize this until I was into my second batch of the day and I looked at the thermometer more carefully.  Even with this, I still seemed to get a decent OG (1.082).

Transfer to Secondary:  9Nov2013

You can tell this is a higher alcohol content on the first tasting.  The beer has more of a “bite”.  There are heavy tones of dark chocolate and the dark coffee flavors of a stout / porter.  There is also a noticeable absences of the “milk” flavor due to the lactose.  So much so that I had to check my supplies to make sure I didn’t have leftover lactose.  It is also missing the smoothness of the oatmeal.  This did ferment a few degrees lower (around 66*F) than the last batch, due to the change in seasons.  There seems to be a significant amount of carbonation (relative to most beers after fermentation) in the beer at this point.

At this point (before the addition of vanilla and bourbon), the FG is 1.023.  Leaving this at 7.74% ABV.  Some other small deviations from the recipe; I added 1-1/2 Tbsp of vanilla this time as well as substituting Makers Mark for the bourbon.

OG: 1.082
FG:  1.023
ABV: 7.74%

Tasting notes:

The excess alcohol content in this batch really stands out.  The beer is dryer than intended.  The smoothness of the milk (lactose) gets completely lost.  This batch is much more bitter than the last.  The vanilla is also lost.  The good is, this is still a tasty stout.  It’s just a very strong stout.  The chocolate does come through in the beer.  You have to be careful drinking more than a couple of these.  At nearly 8%, they sneak up on you fast.

Brewday – 30Jul2017

Well, it’s almost my birthday, so I figured I should brew this again.

The homebrew store didn’t have the yeast that I wanted, so I used WLP004 Irish Ale instead.

I amped up the lactose on this batch, using 1.5 lbs (I had 1/2 lbs left over from a different brew, and decided to dump it in.

I also changed up the chocolate, using 8 oz of powder and no bakers squares.  I think this will be the new recipe going forward.

I ended up with a low OG (I was a little low on my mash temp), so I’m guessing this will be very sweet when it is done.

OG:  1.060
FG:
ABV:

Style Information