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Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Post #1 made 11 years ago
by gmhowell
I took inspiration from a brew discussed on HBT for my first BIAB. Did it two weeks ago, and the process was distressingly easy :thumbs:

Except for a few things. :scratch:

Recipe report is below. It's what I used to generate my shopping list. The actual grains used were off slightly. No more than 1/4 lb. (115g) difference. Used a different yeast, etc.

I got a bit lazy towards the end (or trusted apprentice brewer too much) and don't have good numbers for GAW or VAP. This is also because... I didn't know what to put in there.

I was spot on with the amount of water I heated up. But the mash volume was off by a couple of liters. Which cascaded through the process. I wasn't able to recover much from draining/squeezing the spent grains (for obvious reasons, will fix in future). I think I was able to get more boiloff than indicated. Which contributes a few more liters difference. And by the time things were done and we got it cooled down, I wasn't in a great mood. Wound up just chucking the whole mess into the fermenter, figuring I've got plenty more batches in the future to figure out where I've gone wrong.

Questions:
  • This is 'Batch 0'. How can I create a 'batch 1'? To indicate the mistakes, the variations in recipe, etc?
    Any idea why my mash volume might be low?
    Are the post-mash volumes predicated on a good drain/squeeze?

Thanks!

[center]BIABacus Pre-Release 1.3T RECIPE REPORT[/center]
[center]BIAB Recipe Designer, Calculator and Scaler.[/center]
[center](Please visit http://www.biabrewer.info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for the latest version.)[/center]
[center]Recipe Batch Number and Dates[/center]

Recipe Overview

Brewer:
Style:
Source Recipe Link:
ABV: 6.8% (assumes any priming sugar used is diluted.)

Original Gravity (OG): 1.07
IBU's (Tinseth): 28.6
Bitterness to Gravity Ratio: 0.41
Colour: 63.3 EBC = 32.1 SRM

Kettle Efficiency (as in EIB and EAW): 77.8 %
Efficiency into Fermentor (EIF): 70.1 %

Note: This is a Pure BIAB (Full Volume Mash)

Times and Temperatures

Mash: 90 mins at 67 C = 152.6 F
Boil: 90 min
Ferment:

Volumes & Gravities
(Note that VAW below is the Volume at Flame-Out (VFO) less shrinkage.)
The, "Clear Brewing Terminology," thread at http://www.biabrewer.info/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Total Water Needed (TWN): 38.25 L = 10.1 G
Volume into Boil (VIB): 33.82 L = 8.93 G @ 1.05
Volume of Ambient Wort (VAW): 23.09 L = 6.1 G @ 1.07
Volume into Fermentor (VIF): 20.8 L = 5.49 G @ 1.07
Volume into Packaging (VIP): 19.26 L = 5.09 G @ 1.018 assuming apparent attenuation of 75 %

The Grain Bill (Also includes extracts, sugars and adjuncts)

Note: If extracts, sugars or adjuncts are not followed by an exclamation mark, go to http://www.biabrewer.info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (needs link)

73.7% Pale Malt (2 row) (6 EBC = 3 SRM) 5168 grams = 11.39 pounds
6% Crystal 60 (60 EBC = 30.5 SRM) 424 grams = 0.93 pounds
5.5% Chocolate Malt (690 EBC = 350.3 SRM) 387 grams = 0.85 pounds
3.7% Roasted Barley (591 EBC = 300 SRM) 259 grams = 0.57 pounds
11% Flaked Oats (2 EBC = 1 SRM) 775 grams = 1.71 pounds

The Hop Bill (Based on Tinseth Formula)

28.6 IBU Fuggles Pellets (5.3%AA) 58.8 grams = 2.074 ounces at 60 mins

Mash Steps

Mash Type: Pure BIAB (Full-Volume Mash): for 90 mins at 67 C = 152.6 F

Strike Water Needed (SWN): 39.01 L = 10.3 G 67.6 C = 153.8 F

Miscellaneous Ingredients

Chilling & Hop Management Methods

Hopsock Used: y

Chilling Method: Immersion

Fermentation & Conditioning

Fermentation: Safale S-04

Special Instructions/Notes on this Beer
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Last edited by gmhowell on 27 Jul 2014, 10:12, edited 1 time in total.
-George
"I ride for the same reason dogs stick their heads out of car windows."

Post #2 made 11 years ago
by PistolPatch
Sorry you've had to wait over a day for an answer gmh. Sometimes the site gets a bit slow and misses the goal to have questions answered within 24 hours :dunno:.

I'm confused on you saying the process was distressingly easy but that you weren't in a great mood at the end of the day :). What was the go there :scratch:.

As for saving your recipes, just quickly, most brewing software has no way of handling this. Beersmith allows you to create a version but no software allows you to see the actuals of several batches/versions of a recipe in a single view which is pretty silly. This is something we also can't do while the BIABacus is in a spreadsheet format.

It's actually a very tricky area, especially if you want to make your recipe public. Follow any recipe thread on another forum and you'll see that thirty posts later, the recipe may have no resemblance at all to the original. For now though, let's just look at what you should do.

Save your first recipe as 'BIABAcus 1.3T - Oatmeal Stout (BJCP 13 C) - Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout - Batch A1'. (If you fill out Batch number on the BIABacus and the fields in Section A, you will see most of this appear in the header. Don't be lazy! Take the time to fill in Section A and find the style number if there is one etc ;)).

If you make a major change to the recipe, then you would call that Batch B1. You must have a logical system of storing your files and this requires at least doing the above. There is certainly no way around that.

...

As for what we can learn from your numbers, we can't learn much as not enough actual measurements have been taken to corroborate anything. For example, you wrote above, "I was spot on with the amount of water I heated up." If you only measured it once then you can't know you were spot on ;).

I had a member (here I think), ages ago, who swore to me black and blue that he had measured his grain properly and, later on, after a lot of correspondence, wrote to me saying, "Whoops! The bags of grain I used that I thought were 2 kilos were actually one kilo." I measure stuff every day and am pretty good/careful about it but I'll make an error now and again and wonder how I did it.

Next thing is Volume into Boil in very hard to measure well. I've written on this before. At best, it is just a rough check. The same goes for Volume at Flame-Out. You have used an immersion chiller which makes VFO pretty much impossible to measure.

But the main problem is that we have no gravity measurements. Volume measurements without gravity mean nothing and vice versa. When you take both volume and gravity measurements, at several times through the brew, they can tell a story. Here we have a beginning but no middle or end :).

Before the next brew, plan what measurements to take. There's a thread on that somewhere but I doubt even I could find it so start a new one.

Gotta race,
PP

[TS60]
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Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Post #3 made 11 years ago
by Contrarian
I would add that while you're trying to figure out your system it can be easier to brew lower gravity beers around 1.040-1.050 original gravities. Bigger beers bring in a range of confounding variables that complicate things.

Reading between the lines it sounds like you ended up with less wort into the fermenter and maybe missed you OG but at the end of the day you still made beer and it'll probably taste great. Enjoy

Post #4 made 11 years ago
by gmhowell
PP:

No problem about the delay. It's sitting in primary, waiting for me to not be lazy and put it in secondary. You do more than enough for this site and I'm appreciative of any response you (or anyone) can give.

I'll look into your suggestions later about saving batches (reading at work while some reports run in the background).

How was it 'easy but messed up'? Well, the process is easy. Heat water, dump grain in bag, stir, check temps. I wasn't in a great mood because I was tired and I was bored with trying to cool wort, not to mention 88F is past my comfort level.

Not sure what you mean when you say "If you only measured it once then you can't know you were spot on." Seems pretty straightforward to me, and I would be interested in how any errors there could grow to being off by 1.5+ gallons at the end.

I actually took the measurements, but was rushing around to get ready for work the following day and didn't write them down. :whistle:

I'll dig around on some of your posts on volumes.

Contrarian:

I thought about a 1.040-1.050 beer, but apprentice brewer wanted a stout. Maybe a kolsch or a summer ale or something soon.

You are correct that I wound up with less into the fermenter than anticipated. IIRC (Like I said to PP, I measured but didn't record), my OG was 'ok'. Just how 'ok', I can't recall. What came out of the brewpot was ~1.090. I diluted and was at around 1.070. So, it was close enough and as far as I can tell, it will be beer. Last time I looked, the blowoff tube was bubbling furiously. Glad I got that tube rather than trying to use an airlock.

Again, thank you both for the replies.
-George
"I ride for the same reason dogs stick their heads out of car windows."

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Post #5 made 11 years ago
by Contrarian
The three main places you can lose water volume in the process are through grain absorption, boil off and trub loss (whatever stays in the kettle after transfer).

Some bags might make it harder to retrieve water absorbed by the grain so that might be something to look at, boil off can be estimated but does vary depending on how hard you boil, ambient temperature etc so can be quite hard to control precisely but over a few brews you will get a feel for how hard you need to boil.

Trub loss, or kettle to fermenter loss, is fairly unique to each system depending on the transfer method used but is also reasonably easy to measure and plug into BIABacus.

If you got 3.5 gallons of 1.090 out of the kettle then my guess would be the loss is to evaporation. This is because you seem to have collected a good amount of the sugars from the grain and ended up with less wort at a higher gravity.

How hard did you boil the wort? Was it a gentle rolling boil or a vigorous bubbly boil? Both are fine but the harder you boil the more water you will lose in the process and you will either need to adjust your starting water or top up along the way both of which are fine.

I love a chocolate stout so hope this one turns out well for you!

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Post #6 made 11 years ago
by gmhowell
I had an issue with draining all of the grain. Probably only recovered half of what was there. I know the boil off was crazy. New burner and I had a heck of a time getting it to run low enough. I really need to find a video of what the 'correct' boil strength is.
-George
"I ride for the same reason dogs stick their heads out of car windows."

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Post #7 made 11 years ago
by Contrarian
What kind of bag are you using? If it is draining slowly you can put it into a separate bucket or container to drain more slowly and then add the liquid into the boil.

With the boil, it doesn't need I be a hard boil, a gentle rolling boil is fine but with some burners it can be hard to he them low enough. You can either find a way to get it lower or set it as low as you can and too up the boil as you go, it won't make a huge difference to the finished product. I'm sure there are videos to use as a guide out there somewhere!

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Post #8 made 11 years ago
by gmhowell
Big standard voile curtain liner. Trick is I had gathered it (gf hasn't felt like sewing it yet). So while it was draining and I went to adjust some stuff, there was an 'incident'. Grain slid out into pot I was using to catch runoff. Rather than gather it up and figure it out, I chalked it up to something to be mindful of in the future and moved on.

Next time, I'll boil softer. I gotta admit, I just thought it was awesome boiling over ten gallons (in a 16G pot) and wanted to see how hard a boil I could do. So I was erring on the hot side this time.
-George
"I ride for the same reason dogs stick their heads out of car windows."

Post #9 made 11 years ago
by PistolPatch
gmhowell wrote:Next time, I'll boil softer.
Why?

Re-read everything above and anything else you can find on BIABrewer re boiling.

There are a heap of problems in the deductions that are being made here by you gmh. You cannot determine anything, at all, from this brew because you did not take enough measurements. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn.

This 1.090 and 1.070 stuff is nonsense.

Now, gmh, before you brew again, make sure you are in control of the brew, no apprentice brewers, and you take responsibility. Allow enough time and run your plan through here first.

There is absolutely nothing you can learn from your first brew apart from making sure you have a fun attitude heading into it.

:drink:
PP

[TS22]
Last edited by PistolPatch on 30 Jul 2014, 20:22, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #12 made 11 years ago
by PistolPatch
I ended up deleting my last post I had written here as it was pretty crap and the one of mine before, which I have left, is not much better. One thing I did have written that did make sense was that I felt we weren't really getting anywhere in this thread which is always a shame.

I just wrote in another thread, "Short on time so I can't really afford to write detailed answers atm as the sort of time/concentration required for these type of answers is time that is taken directly away from BIABacus work unfortunately." The same applies here.

gmh, I'll leave this thread up to you and the others. My only advice would be to make sure you let contributor's here know when you have followed up on their advice and whether it has helped. For example, your last reply here made me think that you probably hadn't followed up on the boiling bit. If so, you will have stumbled across a great link to a Bavarian brewery site (advanced search for 'boil' in topic titles.)

Anyway, don't boil softer. Reduce your batch size or add water during the boil.

Gotta race,
PP

[TS20]
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Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Post #14 made 11 years ago
by gmhowell
Note to self: search later (no luck searching via tapatalk).

Oh, and just an FYI: moved this beer to secondary earlier this evening. Sample tasted decent. GF even liked it which is a shock. She hates all 'in progress' beers. So we may brew another batch this year rather than next.
-George
"I ride for the same reason dogs stick their heads out of car windows."

Post #15 made 11 years ago
by gmhowell
PP:

I found this article from the search on biabrewer that you suggested. I think this is the one you were referring to, correct?

I understand what they are saying in the article, but I'm left with a few questions. I think I'll have better questions after another session. (During which I hope to get some video to help with my questions).
Last edited by gmhowell on 04 Aug 2014, 06:47, edited 1 time in total.
-George
"I ride for the same reason dogs stick their heads out of car windows."
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