| Author |
Message |
    
Greg Brewer
Intermediate Member
Username: Greg_r
Post Number: 268
Registered: 03-2005
Posted From: 64.124.83.190
| | Posted on Friday, July 30, 2010 - 06:47 pm: | 
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I'm planning an oatmeal stout and was planning on a cereal mash with oatmeal, but recently became aware of oat malt available from Fawcett. Has anyone used it? What differences could I expect? I have been a little disappointed with the oatmeal character from flaked oatmeal in previous efforts. |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 7300
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 74.83.191.159
| | Posted on Friday, July 30, 2010 - 07:34 pm: |
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My experience was bad. I had waited years to try a 100% oat malt beer. I will never do it again.
1. Being small, it was hell to mill, needing two passes.
2. After about two hours, it failed to convert. A little pilsner malt fixed that fast.
3. Despite having a lot of husk material, the wort never cleared during vorlauf.
4. The cloudy wort made for huge trub that could not be transfered to the fermenter clear.
5. The extraction was very poor - 17 ppppg IIRC.
6. The sediment losses in the fermenter deeply cut my yield.
7. The biggest kicker of all - it tasted boring. It was nothing I could not get with barley malt and showed none of the flavor or body that just a bit of flaked oats can give.
If you want to get fancy, find some McCann's steelcut oatmeal and do a double mash with it. That makes a nice beer. |
Ric Heinz
Intermediate Member
Username: Rheinz
Post Number: 479
Registered: 01-2004
Posted From: 34.254.247.222
| | Posted on Friday, July 30, 2010 - 08:03 pm: |
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Dan -
A double mash? |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 7301
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 74.83.191.159
| | Posted on Friday, July 30, 2010 - 08:49 pm: |
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Cereal cooking. You have to boil the oats with some pale malt to gelatinize it and then you use that mash as your strike water. That is very simplistic. |
Nephalist
Intermediate Member
Username: Nephi
Post Number: 355
Registered: 12-2005
Posted From: 71.129.32.18
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 12:23 am: |
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I have no experience with oat malt but to say that a bit of flaked oats gives more flavor than a whole recipe of oat malt seems odd. What gives the flaked oats such a presence? |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 7302
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 75.246.111.118
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 01:22 am: |
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I can only relate my experience - my first, only and last experience with oat malt. |
Greg Brewer
Intermediate Member
Username: Greg_r
Post Number: 269
Registered: 03-2005
Posted From: 76.224.4.102
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 02:41 pm: |
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Thanks Dan, a cereal mash with oatmeal was my original plan. I do it with corn meal and prefer those results to flaked corn, but have not tried oatmeal yet.
Dan, do you think 100% flaked oats would have turned out better than 100% oat malt? It is the flaked vs. malt aspect I am trying to weigh. |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 7303
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 75.246.111.118
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 05:34 pm: |
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Flaked oats have no enzymes - no conversion. You might go 50/50 with 6-row and see what happens. Don't forget rice hulls and do a starch test. |
Graham Cox
Senior Member
Username: T2driver
Post Number: 2486
Registered: 11-2004
Posted From: 72.15.105.173
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 06:40 pm: |
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The enzymes in cereal grains are largely created during the malting process. Unmalted flaked oats, like unmalted flaked barley, are highly deficient in enzymes, with the added bonus of being high in undegraded starch and high-molecular-weight proteins, beta-glucans, etc.
Unmalted grains are largely unsuitable for brewing by themselves. All rolling (flaking) does is to pre-gelatinize some of the starch through heat, moisture and pressure. Malting degrades the starch more completely, making it more water-soluble and thus more accessible to further enzymatic degradation in a normal amylase-rich mash. Since the flaked ingredients are highly deficient in amylolytic enzymes, you will not convert the starches in a 100% flaked mash - you would end up with a starchy, sticky soup that might be enjoyed by some wild yeast and bacteria, but that is wholly unsuitable for our friends Saccharomyces sp. It is impossible to brew successfully with 100% flaked anything. |
John McElver
Junior Member
Username: Johnmc
Post Number: 47
Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 144.29.1.19
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 04:16 pm: |
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Graham, what you call a starchy stick soup, others would call oatmeal... or Cream of Wheat, or Cream of Rice. Just the right thing with some brown sugar and milk or cream; right out in brewing, as you and Dan said.
FWIW, Saccharomyces diastaticus could handle it, but it wouldn't taste very good, being wild yeast and all. |
Graham Cox
Senior Member
Username: T2driver
Post Number: 2489
Registered: 11-2004
Posted From: 72.15.105.173
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 12:18 am: |
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Ha! Good points, John. |
Nephalist
Intermediate Member
Username: Nephi
Post Number: 360
Registered: 12-2005
Posted From: 71.129.45.61
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 07:41 am: |
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I learned a little about starch recently. I always assumed it was a jumbled polymer of glucose. Turns out it's very ordered. Here's a good link with some visuals. I was fascinated to learn about it.
http://www.scienceinschool.org/2010/issue14/starch |
Greg Brewer
Intermediate Member
Username: Greg_r
Post Number: 270
Registered: 03-2005
Posted From: 64.124.83.190
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 04:33 pm: |
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I searched a few other web resources and oat malt generally did not receive favorable reviews. It also does not appear to be used for any of the commercial oatmeal stouts which list their ingredients (a Mr. Beer kit was the notable exception).
I think I will stick with my original plan for a cereal mash using raw oatmeal. |
Graham Cox
Senior Member
Username: T2driver
Post Number: 2490
Registered: 11-2004
Posted From: 72.15.105.173
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 07:26 pm: |
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Neph, I learned something recently that surprised me, that being that starch and cellulose are remarkably similar, with the only difference between them being the point at which the carbon rings connect to one another. It would seem that it takes a particular enzyme to break that bond that some animals possess but humans and many other animals lack. |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 7312
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 74.83.191.159
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 07:44 pm: |
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I have noticed beaver teeth marks around and on my dock. Evidently they have the enzyme needed to break down cellulose, that or some bug in their gut does. They even munch a bit on treated lumber. So far, they haven't bothered any of the trees there. |
John McElver
Junior Member
Username: Johnmc
Post Number: 48
Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 144.29.1.19
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 08:28 pm: |
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Graham, the animals that can break down cellulose can't actually do it themselves; they all need microbes to do the trick (at least as far as I recall). Cows multiple stomachs are actually fermentation chambers teeming with bacteria, fungi, and even protozoa. Termites host a bunch of really good cellulytic bugs that are being looked at as a source of enzymes for cellulosic biomass conversion to ethanol.
Dan, I think beavers mainly get their nutrition from the layer under the bark (the cambium) that's pretty soft and nutrient rich. They just have to gnaw a lot of wood to get to it. They also gnaw wood to make their dams, maybe your dock fits the bill... |
Alec
Junior Member
Username: Pdxal
Post Number: 77
Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 71.38.150.90
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 06:15 am: |
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Am I missing something, or are beavers necessary to make a good oatmeal stout? |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 7313
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 75.246.4.76
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 10:55 am: |
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Well certainly not the whole thing. |
Brews and Views Archive 2010 
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