Recipe and Photos by Gabe Carlin
The weather is getting colder, and it only seems fit to brew a dark beer with a heartiness that will keep its drinker warm through the winter months. I’ve created an oatmeal stout with cinnamon and orange peel. Follow along to make a beverage to impress your friends, give as a gift, or enjoy all to yourself.
 
Grains:
9 lb                  Organic 2-row Pale
1 lb                   Flaked Oats
1 lb                   Caramel/Crystal Malt
0.6 lb               Chocolate Malt
0.5 lb               Cara-Pils
0.4 lb               Roasted Malt
Hops:
1.23 oz             Target – For 60 minute hop addition
0.53 oz             Pride of Ringwood – For 30 minute hop addition
Yeast:
1 Package        Dry English Ale (White Labs #WLP007)
 
1) Go to your local fermentation supply store for your ingredients. I’ve gotten great products and service from Falling Sky Fermentation.
2) Sanitize all the Equipment you are going to use and activate the yeast.
You can activate the yeast in two ways: put your brewing yeast in warm water to activate or use Wyeast, which you can get at any Fermentation store. It activates the yeast by introducing it to a very small amount of liquid malt.
I chose an all-grain beer, so I used about 12 pounds of grain to 7 gallons of water.
3) Bring your water (about 1.25 Qts. per pound of grain) to 170 degrees Fahrenheit, and throw your grains in. Make sure to stir it well or else you will get clumps of grain.
4) This process is called “mashing”, and you should keep your brew at 152 degrees Fahrenheit for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally. This process extracts all of the sugar from the grains.
 

 
5) After mashing, you will go into a process called “sparging”, in which you will filter the brew through the grains and extract the rest of the sugars from the grains.
 
6) This process should take 90 minutes as well, if you do it right. There are many ways of sparging. The photo shown above shows a method that I use called “fly sparging.” Make sure you collect more water then your target batch size to account for evaporation during the boil. Allow your sparge to continue about 1.5 – 2 gallons over your target amount to account for evaporation.
7) Next you will take all the liquid you just collected, called “wort” and put it in your boil pot, and boil it for 60 minutes. This is when you add all your hops to your beer.
8) Cool down your beer to below 90 degrees Fahrenheit so that you can add the yeast that you activated earlier.
9) Syphon your beer into your fermentor, and pitch your yeast.
10) Attach an airlock to your fermentor and let it ferment.
11) After about 1 week, or when fermentation slows, syphon your beer into a secondary fermentor for “Secondary Fermentation”
With my beer, I added 1/4 oz of both cinnamon sticks and dried orange peel in secondary fermentation.
12) After another week, when fermentation is finished, bottle your beer. To bottle, make sure you sanitize all of your bottles and caps. Add 3/4 cup of corn sugar for every 5 gallons of beer before bottling. The yeast left in your beer will take this sugar and turn it into carbonation.
13) After 1 or 2 weeks, your beer is ready to drink. Crack one open, and enjoy.
 
 

Gallery • 5 Photos

How-To: Homebrew