poor head retention.....oatmeal?

[Brew Chef]

Our oatmeal stout has terrible head retention. When brewing it we noticed a weird small mass of "scum" on top of the boil, and a noticable thin glossy "oil slick" later on after it cooled. All the other recipes call for similar base malts and specialties so we've ruled out everything but the flaked oats. We got them from Crosby and Baker. Anyone else have this problem?

[brewbonghm]

Fairly common, reduce the % oats or just omit them. If your customers ask why is there no oatmeal in your oatmeal stout just say it is the perfect beer to serve w/oatmeal.

[Brew Chef]

the recipe called for 13% flaked oats, I will try reducing this to 10% and adding a bit of wheat. Also, I may try skimming the funky scum that forms on the boil, and trying to leave the "oil slick" in the boiling kettle

[grassrootsvt]

Or perhaps you could brew the beer with Malted Oats instead. We are currently serving a beer made with 35% malted oats and the heat retention is lovely... I have never had issues with head retention and Oats before...

[Moonlight]

I would certainly skim your kettle before the first hop addition. I think you find the beer will taste better and less hop components will be lost into the goo. You may find a cooler sparge will not extract as much goo from the mash. It is not about dirty, it is the natural fats/oils in the oats, and to a lesser extent in wheat and rye, even less in barley.

[ABCDAVE]

Funky scum??? Could this have transferred from lauter tun to kettle through dirty lines? Does the beer taste right?

[Jephro]

Malted Oats

Or perhaps you could brew the beer with Malted Oats instead. We are currently serving a beer made with 35% malted oats and the heat retention is lovely... I have never had issues with head retention and Oats before...

I give a big second on the Malted Oats!!
I have one on tap right now made with 7.5% (Simpson's) Golden Naked Oats and it has an amazing head retention too. Good to hear you have used them successfully @ 35% of grist... Yummy, i see some recipe tweaking in my future.

Watch your mill setting when you add them, from my experience they tend to be longer and more narrow than other malts and require closing your mill gap a bit when they start to go through. I, personally, would not even consider a beer made only with flaked oats an Oatmeal Beer. My 2 cents...Go with Malted, or at least rolled instead of or in addition to flakes.

[BMOOR]

Funky scum??? Could this have transferred from lauter tun to kettle through dirty lines? Does the beer taste right?

If I could offer a guess, I might think your funky scum is protein, no? As our brewery gets older and our mash screens get more and more bent/crooked/warped we seem to have more protein headed to the kettle and less staying behind with the spent grains(perhaps a vorlauff problem, tho). Of course when we make a wheat beer it is even more. It ends up making our boil take longer and we skim it prior to first hop addition.
Perhaps the protein is coagulating in the kettle when oyu make this beer???

[Ted Briggs]

Oats contain OILS ---oils kill head retention. You saw a oil slick in your kettle- probably combined with proteins. A small addition will give a smoothness from proteins and non-fermentable carbs since the product is not malted. I would suggest 10% as a MAX value. BTW- I have always used Flaked products, both oats but mostly flaked barley.