Brewday: Chocolate Coffee Oatmeal Stout

It’s the last brewday here at the 1840 Brewing Company, the next time I put malt to water I will be a Texan again. Today we are brewing a Choco-Java-Oatmeal Stout with a project ABV of about 8-9%. Hopefully this will blow a few socks off with both flavor and high gravity. 

Today’s grain bill is a healthy 1 lb of chocolate malts, and half pound of both black and caramel malts.

For those not familiar with the brewing process I will start by boiling about 3 gallons of water to the point of about 160 degrees. Once the target temp is met, I will place the grains in a nylon bag, place the bag just above the bottom of the pot and let the grains seep flavor and color for about 30-40 minutes. 

Sitting in the freezer is another 3 gallons of water, chilling obviously.

After sufficient steeping has occurred, I will get the temp back up to 160 and then add my sugars and malt extract. For this recipe, put together by the wonderful staff at Hop City in Atlanta, I have 9lbs of dark malt extract and another pound of local honey.  

 As well, at the 0 minute mark of the boiling I will add a half ounce of the Fuggle hops. 

Now I will sit back with a beer, and listen to some Western Swing, and kill the next 30 minutes, barring an occasional stirring to avoid malt from sticking to the bottom of the pot, till it’s time to add another half ounce of hops to the mix.

45 minutes in we add the oat flakes, and at 50 minutes the last addition of another half ounce of hops goes into the pot.

With the 60 minute mark coming up on us, we need to start an ice bath that we will transfer the pot into once the hour is finally up. Once sitting in the ice bath I’ll need to let it cool to about 90 degrees. 

When at the right temp we will dump the contents of the pot into our sterilized fermentor, over our sterilized colander to sift out oatmeal. Once we have emptied our pot, we then need to top off the tub to the 5 gallon mark with our chilled water.  Once the wort gets to about 70-75 degrees we will pitch the yeast, and let things sit for about 14 days before putting it in a secondary fermentor where we will then add an 8 ounces of cold, French pressed coffee and let it sit for another a week or so before bottling. 

Once bottled it will take another 10 or so days of bottle conditioning before ready to consume.

Pope Crisco