Eagle Face Oatmeal Stout 1.2

I've brewed my house oatmeal stout recipe twice previously, and both times it has been a winner. Looking towards my keg rotation, I thought it would be nice to roll this one out for 2016. I'll note that this is the third time I've brewed this one in essentially the same form--probably a record for my home brewery.

The primary minor change to this batch versus the others has been to use "old fashioned oatmeal" out of the pantry instead of the flaked oats from the brewshop. Based on my reading, they are essentially the same thing. Many brewing forums tout using oats from the grocery store as cheaper--however, I think this is fairly overstated, particularly for the amounts of oats used in most recipes. In some cases, even, the brewshop oats are cheaper! And ever in the worst-case scenario, it's a savings of a few cents at most. Thus, the "wisdom" of grocery store products being a massive savings over the homebrew shop products is not entirely correct here. I think the primary utility is as a quick alternative if you need to add oats flavor but forgot to buy them with the rest of your grains.

Eagle Face Oatmeal Stout 1.2

• 8.5 lbs. 2 row malt (Great Western)
• 1.25 lbs. old-fashioned oats
• 1 lb. 80° L crystal malt
• 1 lb. Victory malt
• 0.75 lb. chocolate malt
• 0.5 lb. roasted barley (Simpsons)
• 0.3 lb. rice hulls
• 1 tsp. Irish moss, 10 minute boil
• 1.1 oz. Northern Brewer hops pellets (9.9% alpha, 4.5% beta), 60 minute boil
• 1 pkg. English Ale yeast (White Labs WLP002, 0.9 L starter)

Procedure

• Three days before brewing, I began a 1.5L starter (191 g of extra light DME and ~.5 tsp of yeast nutrient in 1.75L of water, for a target gravity of 1.040). After 48 hours, I decanted 0.6L for future use and cold-crashed the rest of the starter.
• I mashed in with 5 gallons of water at 170°, and hit 156.5° for my mash-in temperature. The mash had dropped to 155° after 30 minutes and was down to 153.4° after 50 minutes.
• After 60 minutes, I added 0.5 gallons of 162° water, let this sit for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and collected the first runnings. Then, I added 3.75 gallons of water at 185°, which raised the mash bed to 162°. I let this sit for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and collected the remainder of the wort.
• All together, I collected 6.8 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.049, for a mash efficiency of 72%. I note that the relatively small quantity of rice hulls seemed to be just fine for this recipe.
• I brought the wort to a boil, adding the hops and Irish moss as scheduled.
• After 60 minutes of boiling, I turned off the heat and chilled the wort to 75°. The final yield was ~6 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.060. I decanted most of the spent wort from the starter, and pitched the yeast slurry before sealing up the fermenter.
• I brewed this beer on Sunday, January 3, 2016 (first brew of the year!). It will be fermenting at 68°.