Topic: Oat Beer

We drank most of the liter of oat beer tonight. It tasted great when I tried it earlier in the day, and I wondered whether to keep it for 3 weeks like the instructions had said for bottle conditioning, or whether to go with "If it tastes great, drink it now". Finally, the fact that I will need the extra soda pop bottles when I bottle the malt extract beer either tomorrow or the day after made the decision. I kept a small amount of the oat beer in a small plastic bottle. In two weeks, I'll taste it and see how it would be if I'd waited longer. It was only a week in the primary fermentation and 3 days in the bottle conditioning (soda pop bottles with screw-on top). I have no way of measuring the alcohol, but it seems more than the same amount of commercial beer would have. It is also very filling, especially when we got down to the bottom of the bottle.

Topic: Oat Beer
Bottled the liter of oat beer.

Topic: Oat Beer
I looked at the oat beer and it is completely flat, with no promise of fizzing yet to come. And it's still too thick and too sweet. So I decided to chalk that one up to experience and bottle it for wine -- it should make an excellent wine -- and start another batch of oat beer.

For Oat Beer batch #2, I used:

] 1 liter water
] 200 mls (on the liter measuring jug) of sugar
] 200 mls (on the liter measuring jug) of oatmeal flakes
] handful of raisins
] generous splash of sediment (several ounces) of yeast and beer from the last batch of malt beer.

I mixed half the water with the sugar and put it in a saucepan to boil.

(You don't have to boil the sugar with the water, but it keeps it in solution better so you don't have to stir it as much to keep the sugar from settling.)

I put the oatmeal flakes into a blender and turned them to powder, then added some of the rest of the water and a handful or raisins and blended that into a puree. Mixed the sugar water with the oats and raisins water, checked to make sure it wasn't too hot, and added the yeast from a previous batch, stirred it up and covered it with an airlock of plastic sheet held securely by a thick rubber band.

Topic: Oat Beer

It occurs to me that caramel is toasted sugar, so, instead of buying a caramel bar to add to the oat beer currently brewing, I toasted a couple tablespoons of sugar under the grill. (Btw, this stuff looks and tastes *exactly* like butterscotch, so I suspect that butterscotch is just toasted sugar. Be careful not to over-toast it if you want it for candy. For beer, the burnt/bitter taste that overcooking adds would be OK.)



I put the caramel into the bottom of a jar and added a pint of oat beer. The oat beer is still quite thick ("gummy"), flattish (it has a little fizziness) and sweet, so pouring it over the caramelized sugar is going to make it sweeter and possibly thicker.

Topic: Oat Beer
The oat beer seems rather thick -- "gummy", as it is called. So I decided to filter it through a flannel jelly bag in the hopes of making thinner. Then I learned that, of all the sins I have committed against "proper" beer making, this is probably the worst. By filtering it through the bag, letting it drip out through the air, I am re-introducing oxygen to it, thus stopping the fermentation. So I've decided I am going to look for a chocolate caramel bar and melt it down and add it to the wort and then I'm going to call it "double chocolate caramel oatmeal stout" instead of "oat beer", since I'm sort of starting over again with it.

I also found out that in making oat beer it is much better to use flaked or processed oatmeal rather than whole-grain or cut oats, and instant or quick oats would be best. Which is good, because I used flaked oatmeal because that is all I had.

Topic: Oat Beer
I strained the mash to remove the lumps of oats, so now it is a brown liquid. It doesn't appeal to me, but that may be just because I expect it to smell like fermenting barley. It looked dead, so I added a little sugar to it. That brought it back to life with lots of fizzing and bubbles throughout, so it looks a little more appealing.

Later, when I finally summoned up the courage to actually taste it, rather than merely sniff it, it tasted acceptable. Flat, bland and sweet, but OK. Also, it felt a bit too thick and viscous (like the raspberry ale). I'm going to let it set down its sediment and then I will bottle it as I did the beer, trying to avoid pulling up the sediment. It's not going to taste like barley malt beer, but no doubt it will probably be quite strong, what with all the sugar I added.

I just have to accept and expect that it's not going to taste like beer made from barley, and I'm used to beer made from barley, and I prefer it.

Topic: Oat Beer
I re-boiled the oats and 1200 mls of water and then added: 200 mls brown sugar, 1400 mls water, 600 mls sugar, 1 Tablespoon cocoa. When it had cooled, I added the yeast and sediment from some of the brewing ginger ale, along with about 100 mls of the liquid. Stirred well, covered and now will leave it to brew for about 2 weeks.

Topic: Oat Beer
I took the liter of oats and water that had been soaking overnight, mixed in another liter of water and put it in a slow cooker to simmer for a day. I've decided to make 2100 mls of oat beer in three of the empty liter jars and use the fourth empty jar to make ginger ale.

Topic: Oat Beer
I put 300 mls of oats into a 1-liter measuring jug, and then filled it with water. I put that in a saucepan and brought it to a boil. That left me something pretty thick and viscous. I poured it back in the jar and covered it to let it set overnight. I'll come up with a recipe for how I want to make beer out of it tomorrow.