Chocolate Mint Oatmeal Stout

Ah, back to the colder end of the year.  The leaves have finally started to come down off the trees en masse, and the mountains look incredible covered in snow.  Of course, my personal preference is for shorts weather.  But the chill does bring a marked change to the brewing schedule; it’s now entirely appropriate to make some of my favourite types of beer.  Those of the dark, malty, roasty, full-bodied variety.  And since I’ve started to more fully explore spices in my beer, I might as well bring along some of them for the season.  Ted Danyluk's Mint stout struck me as a tasty possibility when I read about it a couple years ago, and pretty much every year I try to add chocolate to at least one beer.  I felt a plan coming together.

For the base beer, I wanted a smooth, mouth-filling, not-too-roasty oatmeal stout.  I went easy on the heavily roasted grains and included some dark crystal to hopefully impart a little bit of  lasting sweetness and dark fruit character.  Since I’m looking to add mint to this batch, I went with Northdown hops, which reputedly have a woody, minty flavour; that probably won’t come through very much from the bittering addition, but they did give a solid, moderate bitterness.  I went with a significant portion of flaked oats to add a lot of slickness and mouthfeel.  For extra fun, I lightly toasted half of them; much like when I did the same thing with rye malt, the oats in the oven made the house smell incredible.

Brewday started off with a cereal mash for the oats, and moved forward in uncomplicated fashion from there.  Our new friends Craig and Cait came over for a bit while I ran around like an idiot trying to remember what needed to happen next for the brew (which anyone who’s brewed with me can attest is par for the course); the

four of us have a lot of fun hanging out, even when I’m making myself manic on a brewday.  When transferring to secondary, I really liked the muted roastiness the beer had.  It finished drier than I’d hoped, though I don’t think it’s a terribly big issue; if that’s my goal, though, perhaps next time I’ll wisely use a lower attenuating yeast.

Chocolate in beer, particularly stout, I’ve done before.  It’s never quite turned out how I wanted, though; I’ve ended up with much more roast and coffee than the cocoa flavour I wanted.  I’ve added cocoa powder to the boil and cacao nibs (unroasted, I believe, which may have been part of the problem there) to secondary; this time I’m going with cocoa powder, made into a paste with hot water and added to secondary.  Upon tasting the cocoa paste that wouldn’t get off the spoon at transfer time, I may add some vanilla extract at bottling to balance the roast.  Next time I may just try a high-quality commercial chocolate extract; if it works for Rogue, it’ll probably be all right for me.

Adding mint...that’s uncharted territory for me.  From my incredibly exhaustive research, it sounded like it could get overpowering quickly, so instead of adding anything to the boil or secondary, I made a tincture of fresh spearmint leaves (which I crushed by hand to encourage extraction) and dried peppermint that I’ll add to taste at bottling.  The concoction looks kind of hideous in the container, as the leaves are extremely wilted; the aroma, though is very intense, kind of like putting an entire pack of spearmint gum in your mouth.  I’m curious to see how this flavour and aroma will play with the roast.  I can taste the holidays already.

CMO Stout - chocolate, mint & oatmeal

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.057
Projected SRM: 26.1
Projected IBU: 25.3
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 78%

Grains
58.5% - 6 lb 2-row
29.3% - 3 lb Flaked oats, 1.5 lb lightly toasted
4.9% - 8 oz C120
4.9% - 8 oz Pale chocolate
2.4% - 4 oz Roasted barley

Hops
1 oz Northdown (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
WLP 007 Dry English Ale (slurry)

Extras
10 oz Ghirardelli cocoa powder paste (w/ hot water) (secondary)
Vanilla extract, to taste (bottling)
2/3 oz Fresh spearmint leaves, vodka soaked (bottling, to taste)
3 g Dried peppermint leaf, vodka soaked (bottling, to taste)

Water additions (mash)
7 qts RO water

Brewday: 28 October 2011
Cereal mash: 1 lb 2-row with oats @ 135F for 15 minutes; boil for 20 minutes
Mash-in: 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons

Fermented in swamp cooler at 60F once visible fermentation started; took a few days before the slurry took off

Secondary: 11 November 2011
FG: 1.012
ABV: 5.9%

Tasting: The cocoa powder and alcohol-free peppermint extract destroyed this batch; the beer is chunky and cloudy, and it smells like the sunflower oil has gone rancid in the bottles.  Dumped the batch.