Oatmeal Stout

Two weekends ago I brewed a low-ABV oatmeal stout, as I haven't made a session beer in quite some time, and my wife seems to prefer dark beers like porters and stouts. Also, this was the first time I used my new March pump in brewing, having recently installed a weldless fitting with a 1/2" ball valve onto my brew kettle and bought some high-temp silicone tubing. Fortunately I had tested everything the day before to ensure against leaks, etc..


Session Oatmeal Stout

About 3.2 gallons
 
4.5# US 2-Row
1# 2oz Instant Oatmeal, lightly toasted
8oz Victory Malt
6oz Chocolate Malt
4oz Crystal 80L
4oz Black Patent Malt

.3 oz Willamette, 5% AA, 60 min
.3 oz Nugget, 13% 60 min (substitution since I didn't have enough Willamette)

S-04 Yeast

Mash at 155F

Expected OG/FG/IBU/ABV: 1.048/ 1.012 / 27 / 4.7

Brewed 3/2/14

Brewed with several people who I had invited over, which was really fun but prevented me from taking gravity etc.. Also I didn't take any pictures of my new pumping set up, but I will on my next brew.

Hit my mash temps spot on. I pre-heated my MLT by putting about 1 gallon of boiling water inside for 15 minutes. I think I will do that every brew session in the future.

The only problem was that I didn't measure out enough sparge water, so I had to use about 1/2 gallon of hot (but not hot enough) water from the tap.

During the boil there were no leaks through the fitting. Yay!

At around 20 minutes before knockout I connected the pump, being sure to tighten the hose-clamps very tightly around the barbs so that no leaks would occur. Using hose-clamps is a pain, so at some point I'll upgrade to quick-disconnects for easier connecting of the tubing. I had also attached a ball valve to the output side of the pump so that I could if needed to control the amount of wort going through the recirculating arm.

The input to the March pump was from the kettle, and the output was to the recirculating arm of my wort chiller. After opening the ball valve on the kettle and the valve on the March pump, the boiling wort entered the pump. I then turned it on, and voila, I had boiling wort recirculating, forming a whirlpool. Awesome.

At knockout, I immediately turned on the sump-pump chilling water recirculating system, which worked amazingly well because the chilling water was just above freezing. In fact, the plastic bin was filled mostly with ice. (It has generally been really cold around here for the last two months, though it's clearly getting warmer.) The entire volume of wort went from 212F to about 55F in.... 10 to 15 minutes. Wow! That's is super fast compared to my previous chilling times, and due to the combination of ice-cold chilling water and the recirculating pump.

One thing that didn't work so well, however, was that the weight of the wort in the output tube was kind of pulling the chiller and the recirculating arm to the side, so that it wasn't standing up straight and the output of the recirculating arm was nearly above the surface of the wort. So, I kind of had to stand there and hold it straight. So now I need to find a way to hold the chiller upright or reduce the pull exerted by the output hose.

Once the wort was at 55F, I simply detached the output of the pump from the recirculating arm and pumped the wort into my sanitized carboy. Awesome. However, I rather foolishly picked up the kettle once most of the wort was in the fermenter and tipped the kettle over so that almost all of the trub wound up in the fermenter. Probably not optimal, but it probably won't hurt the beer significantly to have all that trub in there.

Pitched most of the packet of S-04, and placed the fermenter in an area of the house where it was about 64F.

So far it appears that the March pump is a great tool that can significantly ease the brew day by making it less time-consuming. Obviously I'll need to use it a bit more to really get a sense of its strengths and weaknesses. However, one upgrade that will clearly be useful if not at some point necessary is a set of quick-disconnects. 

3/5/14
A smallish krausen was present.

3/9/14
The krausen is gone, and does not appear to have ever been big or super vigorous. Probably normal for a low-gravity beer. 

3/16/14
Bottled, going for 2.2 volumes of CO2. The gravity reading was 1.024 or so. That's 10 points higher than expected, but I don't see why that should be the case. But the yeast had had 2 weeks to do its thing in the right temp range. Not sure what's happening. I just hope I don't get bottle bombs! Maybe a problem with the hydrometer?