Background

Zymurgy's Nov 2005 issue had an article on brewing barleywines with non-barley grains. The oat one sounded most interesting and so we tried it.

We couldn't get amylase enzyme powder so we did a 33% barley, 66% oat mash instead of a 100% oat mash.

Malt

Oat Malt	12lbs
Pale Malt	6lbs

We ran the Oat Malt through BobsHomebrew mill 3 times to get a decent crush.

Mash

We doughed in at about 130F

12:45	130F	dough in
13:15	148F
13:25	150F
13:55	148F	pump clogged, had to disconnect and clean it and resiphon, did a iodine test and it didn't turn purple
14:20	150F	turned on pump and stove to start increasing mash temp for mash out
14:35	158F	turned off burner to stay at 158F for 20 minutes

Mash went from very cloudy to clear sometime around 14:10 to 14:20.

Hops

Horizon (2005)	11.3% AA	2 oz	60 minutes
Mt Hood (2004)	4.0% AA	4 oz	1 minute

95 IBU according to ProMash

Yeast

Planned

WhiteLabs

English Ale Yeast, 4th generation, from The Ram in U Village

Reality

Safale

S-04

English Ale Yeast

The WhiteLabs yeast had gone bad (terrible taste and smell), so we dumped it and used an emergency packet of SafAle

Fermentation

Heavily aerated using a stainless steel stone and aquarium pump. OG was around 1.085.
Pitched around 7pm on Sunday. At 7am on Monday it fermentation was very slow, but appeared to be active.
High Krausen on Tuesday, 64F
Dropped by Wed night, 62F
Racked to secondary on 12/11 (following Sunday). SG is now 1.016. We collected about 3 gallons (exactly filled a 3 gallon Better Bottle)
Racked to 3 gallon keg on 12/21. SG is now 1.011. This puts us at 7.7% ABW, 9.8% ABV. It has cleared up a lot and now has a similar color to a hefeweizen.

Random Notes from the Internet on Oat Malt

3) Oat malt laboratory worts are normally slightly hazy rather than clear. Oats are not normally low in protein and are quite difficult to modify from a protein viewpoint, which could well explain this. Our current stock gives values of 11.8 % total protein with an index of modification of 27.8%. 4) As far as mash schedules are concerned we would suggest you ensure temperatures are between 63 degrees C and 68 degrees C during mashing in with a one hour minimum stand after mashing in a grist composed of 50% oat malt and 50% lager malt. 5) You should aim at a liquor/grist ratio of between 2.5:1and 3:1. 6) Oat malt needs very close mill settings to achieve an acceptable grist. For normal malts our standard mill setting is 62 thou top and 58 thou bottom- for oat malt we drastically reduce these settings to 48 thou top and 42 thou bottom. Certainly a point to watch to produce an optimal grist for mashing. I hope some of all this is useful. We are delighted that you are using our malts and hope that you have every success with your future brews. Yours sincerely James Fawcett

63C-68C is 145F to 154F (so about 5F lower than barley).

I decided to go for broke and make an oat wine (I call it Old Quaker) 1.095 OG beer with 100% oat malt. (Recipe for three gallons: 18 lb oat malt, 0.75 lb 35L crystal malt) Mashed around 150F for 90 minutes. Sparge was quite slow, and super cloudy. Would probably use rice hulls next time.