Oatmeal 'Raisin' Stout

Remember the purple brew? This is it. I bottled two different ways and evaluated both to see which I wanted to send to the KC Irishfest competition. I bottled five beers over a mixture of heated and blended raisins with some vanilla extract. I decided to send those to competition. As I was at the brew shop I noticed most of the field was oatmeal stouts. Damn.

The beer is 4.3% abv and packs a TON of taste for just that. The brew-in-a-bag process only yielded a 57% efficiency. In layman's terms, there could have been more alcohol, but the bag I used was not suited for the process and the grains were not crushed fine enough. That's okay though.

Ingredients:

.5 lb flaked oats

.25 lb toasted rolled oats

.75 lb roasted barley

1.75 lb chocolate malt

9 lb American 2 row

1 oz of Fuggle @60 17.2 IBU

Whirlfloc @15

Here is how I would rate this beer.

A (appearance), S (smell), T (taste), M (mouthfeel), D (drinkability)

A - Pours very black with a dark tan head about 1-1/2 finger width that stays for about 5 minutes. Black, but in the brightest light you can see an orange on the edges. No lacing.

S - Smells thick, roasted malts coming out. A hint of coffee and chocolate.

T - Big bold roasted malts that finishes creamy with chocolate. The aftertaste is like chocolate coffee but in good way. The taste suffers slightly from the lack of alcohol for such a big flavor. I would expect this to be at least double the abv. The aftertaste is a bit more sharp and almost more bitter in the raisin/vanilla version.

M - More carbonation than I had originally planned but this is because it was going for competition and it works quite nicely to bring out all of those flavors.

D - While this is low in alcohol and quite tasty, I'd say a bomber (22 oz) is perfect for a chilly evening, but not much more.

Overall I'd give it about a B with the main drawback of the alcohol content.