Recipe: Toasted Oatmeal Pale Ale (bonus brewday footage)
Many moons ago I had a pale ale made with a pretty decent percentage of oats. It created an interest in that technique that I filed away for later brewing. The person I happened to be having that beer with also really loved that style and it happens to be his birthday. At his request I have fashioned him a liquid birthday present. Hope you enjoy this oatmeal cookie beer Rene!
The idea here was to make a light session strength pale ale, but make it feel bigger with the addition of the oats. The toasting was an experiment to see how much flavor that would contribute and if it would add anything to the beer overall. A word of caution with this recipe, I was playing it by ear through most of the brewday. While this is the grist for the beer, I was adjusting pre boil gravity with water and had a very high mash efficiency this time around. Your results may vary.
The Recipe
The Grist
3 kg Pale Ale (castle)
200 g cara blond (castle)
550 g Flaked Oats (258 grams toasted in oven)
Easier for replicating on another system would be a ratio of 80% two row, 15% flaked oats, 5% cara. I wanted a session beer but feel free to bump up the ABV.
Mash
18 liters mashed in @ 68 degrees C
*Held 65-66 degrees C for 90 minutes
*Had trouble with the thermostat on my electric kettle so I checked with thermo probe to 65-66 C and then wrapped the whole thing up in blankets and jackets to insulate. Bottom line I wanted the gravity low so i kept the mash low. See what those oats can do to a low FG beer.
After the mash had a gravity of 1.065 so sparged through the grain bed with water until I hit my target pre boil of 1.044 (session beer remember) the sparge was about 6 liters of water.
Pre boil volume about 22 liters with no grain bag squeezing to recover liquid.
Boil
10 grams herkules 14% Alpha @ 60 min (22 IBU)
14 grams Citra 14% alpha @ 0/whirlpool (theoretically 14 IBU)
14 grams Cascade 7% alpha @ 0/whirlpool (theoretically 8 IBU)
Fermentation
**Ended on an original gravity of 1.047
**the electric kettle struggled with the boil so I didn't get as much boil off as calculated. Still within a few points of my target.
Aerated with pure O2 for 30 seconds
Pitched one package of fermentis US 05 california ale yeast fermented at 18 degrees C
Dry Hops
Moved to secondary after one week. Gravity 1.009
21 grams citra for 7 days
21 grams cascade for 7 days
Packaging
Racked to keg and force carbonated to 2.3 volumes of CO2
FG: 1.008
