Smokiness in Oatmeal Stout

[Guest]

I have recently been told by numerous people (customers and brewers) that our latest batch of Oatmeal stout has a hint of smokiness flavor and they ask if we used any smoked malt in the maltbill. Of course we did not and it is pretty straight forward with specialty malts, all Pauls Caramel, chocolate and roasted barley and oats of course. Anyone else have these comments made from imported dark malts? This is not a complaint, the stout is wonderful, but I am curious about the smoke flavors and aromas?

Michael Uhrich
Carter's Brewing
Billings, Montana

[kugeman]

Michael - Any chance it's phenols from fermentation that these folks are picking up rather than the malt itself?

[Guest]

Smokiness IN Oatmeal Stout

What's up Hutch! Fermentation profile was normal so I doubt it. It smells like a lightly smoked malt.

Michael

[Vendetta]

I'm guessing you're using individually bagged malts, but if not, I've known premixed supersacks to occasionally contain a slightly off grain bill.

[gdebisschop]

Hi Michael- who are the maltsters? Way back I used Muntons and their crystal malt was really smoky/phenolic- though I've heard that issue has been resolved. More recently (like in the last couple weeks) we've had some bags of Baird's pale malt (which I love and isn't our main base malt but we use it alot) with a distinct, faint smoke note. We found it was only in one lot that we received. I suspect that Vendetta is on the mark, that the individually bagged malts are more prone to co-mingling with other malts.

cheers
geoff

[liammckenna]

At about 10% roast barley, a decent stout will usually present a little smokiness to me. Depends on the grist make-up and mashing temps.'s.

How much roast are you using and also, what your fermentation temp?

Certain maltsters versions of roast (as other have alluded to) can also be more smoky than others.

Pax.

Liam

[Guest]

Smokiness in Oatmeal Stout

My grainbill is the following:
9 bbl batch at 11.5 plato SG
57.5% 2row
6.9% carastan
12.6% Pauls chocolate
11.5% Oats
5.7% c-pils
5.7% Pauls roasted barley

Fermentation is always at 68F with my house yeast( London ESB) Fermented out to 75%.

Michael Uhrich
Carter's Brewing

[drewseslu]

As usual, yeast strain can come into play. I have tasted Scottish yeast which has thrown off some smokiness in beers with no smoked malt (an American Barleywine, in this case).

[kugeman]

Michael,
Sorry I had to cut our conversation short. I'm willing to bet that it's a subtle difference in the paul's specialty malt.

Have fun in Denver

[tarmadilo]

About fifteen years ago I brewed a Scotch Ale that had a relatively small amount of chocolate malt (Briess, I'm pretty sure) that had a definite hint of smoke to it.

It was actually very nice!

Tim