Oat Wine

I decided it was time for a big beer that can sit around for a while since all I've been brewing lately have been small beers. The recipe is one I threw together, knowing that I wanted to include a high percentage of malted oats. Thomas Fawcett is the only malting company out there who produces them that I know of. As you can see in the picture, they're much longer and skinnier in shape than malted barley. The mill had no trouble with them either, thankfully. The rest of the recipe is composed of standard malts you would see in a barley wine as well as some flaked oats and barley to hopefully accentuate the mouthfeel associated with oats. I used primarily American hops, but kept it fairly light on the additions as opposed to most commercial examples. The other exciting part was getting a chance to use Wyeast's special Old Ale (9097) strain. As the description details, it is designed to mimic old English stock ales that were barrel aged, often imparting a light Brettanomyces character. This should give my oat wine a slight sweaty, maybe horse hair light aroma and dry it out a bit more than most barley wines. I'll give it several months to age (perhaps add some oak) and hope to bottle this summer.

OG 1.098 FG 1.020 IBU 61 ABV 10.1 % SRM 15

Specifics Boil Volume 7.5 gallons Batch Size 5.5 gallons Yeast Wyeast 9097 Old Ale 80% AA

Fermentables

% Weight	Weight (lbs)	Grain	Gravity Points	Color
41.2 %	10.00	American Two-row Pale	41.7	3.3
33.0 %	8.00	Oat Malt	31.6	5.8
12.4 %	3.00	American Munich (Light)	11.2	5.5
4.1 %	1.00	Flaked Oats	3.7	0.4
4.1 %	1.00	Flaked Barley	3.6	0.4
1.0 %	0.25	German Carafa	0.8	13.6
4.1 %	1.00	Demerara Sugar	5.1	0.4
	24.25		97.7

Hops

% Wt	Weight (oz)	Hop	Form	AA%	AAU	Boil Time	Utilization	IBU
25.0 %	1.00	Chinook	Whole/Plug	13.0	13.0	60	0.190	33.5
25.0 %	1.00	Simcoe	Whole/Plug	11.9	11.9	30	0.146	23.6
25.0 %	1.00	Glacier	Pellet	7.6	7.6	5	0.042	4.3
25.0 %	1.00	Glacier	Pellet	5.5	5.5	DH	0.000	0.0
	4.00							61.4

4/01/09 Brew session took longer than usual given all the grains and hop additions. As you can see, I'm using Tasty Brew's calculator to paste into the blog. I'm not overly happy with the format, but I'll use it for now.

Efficiency was pretty terrible, around 59%. I don't know what to contribute it to, but I know it generally falls on big brews like this. Pitched a 3L starter of Wyeast 9097 and have it sitting in the basement in the upper 50s.

4/11/09 After a pretty heavy fermentation, things have quieted down. Gravity is down to 1.015, 84% attenuation? I did not anticipate that given the really cool ferment and being only 10 days. Flavor is really smooth, very malty. It's much like a thick Scotch ale. I'm very excited to see what the Brett does over the next couple months.

4//22/09: Racked into secondary on top of 1 ounce of French Medium Toast Oak cubes. Should give it at least a few months to mature.

6/27/09: Gravity down to 1.010. Beer is coming along nicely and the Brett seems to like the increased temps (hovering around 73-74). Will give it until about August until bottling.

9/09/09: Bottled with 5gm rehydrated Champagne yeast and 4oz of sugar. I'm noticing a bit of butter coming through and am concerned that I didn't let it go long enough with the Pedio. It's not super viscous like the latest batch of Sanctification I had, but it has a pretty thick mouthfeel. We'll see how this one turns out in a few weeks.