Oatmeal Stout Instructions/Recipe

Trying to make an oatmeal stout today. It has been a bit of a process but things are moving along. Here are the steps I have taken:

1. Cleaned and sanitized everything. **See step 5 for yeast instructions
2. Measured out my 'hack' ingredients. They are as follows:
- 8oz of cracked roasted barley. To crack it I used a glass and lightly crushed it. Didn't want to crush it too much.
- 8oz of flaked barley
- 8oz of quick oats (this is only to make an oatmeal stout)
- I put the 3 above ingredients in a grain bag I bought from the Vineyard in Calgary, then set them in 5.5 litres (this was an accident, it is supposed to be 7.5 - shouldn't make a big difference) of cold water. I brought this up to a temperature of approximately 55 Celsius, let sit for 15 min, then raised to 65 Celsius for another 15, then put it just under a boil for another 15 (recommended by the guy at the Vineyard). The whole process took about an hour.
- After the above, I disposed of what was in the grain bag and cleaned it out, then added the hops.
3. Then I boiled the hops for 20 minutes and discarded what was left in the grain bag.
4. After this I set the pot in cold water to get the mix to room temperature.
5. Earlier in the process it is important to 'crack' the yeast if is store boughten. I am using 'wyeast' and you crack it in the bag and let it expand for 3 hours. I have to wait because I didn't read the back beforehand.
- **I was informed that it is VERY important to sanitized the yeast bag before opening it. Also the type of yeast I am using is 1728 Scottish Ale. The Vineyard was out of 1084 Irish Ale yeast. The guy at Vineyard said they are similar and its not a big deal.
- The bag ballooned after 3 hours.
6. Next I put in the PH Indicator into the primary bucket.
7. Then added the mix I made earlier - now at room temp. and stirred aggressively. Also, because some water boiled away in the previous steps when I poured the mix, I measured how much was left. There were 4 Litres left from the 5.5. I topped it off with 3 litres of water to make 7 litres total.
8. Poured the wort into the primary (I did this aggressively because my book 'How to brew' says that the yeast feeds off the oxygen created when pouring. It says you can repeat for better results.
9. I stirred aggressively for 1 minute.
10. Measured the specific gravity - 1.06 - higher than what the kits says it should be.
11. Finally, I pitched the yeast

In the end it was just under 23 litres. Stay tuned for further details... see pics above.

After 6 days in the primary, my Specific Gravity is 1.022. I am going to transfer on day 7 to get the specific gravity down a bit more. Good experiment to see if it actually does.