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Anyone done a Black Rock Oatmeal Stout kit recently

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  • 12-05-2020 12:57am
    #1
    TomOnBoard
    Registered Users Posts: 5,109 ✭✭✭


    I started a Stout/Porter project last week that I'm using to get close to the best qualities of the Guinness West Indies Porter (6% ABV).

    My plan was to use a hopped kit for the underlying foundation, with appropriate (relatively subdued hopping) additional components designed to get me as close as possible to my target profile.

    I decided to use a single Black Rock Oatmeal Stout hopped extract kit along with 1kg light DME.(I had previously had great (albeit more simple) success using a Coopers kit that I was very happy with. This time, I went for an initial profile using the kit yeasties to kick off the process, with a view to developing into a bigger medium term build later.

    In order to get to the West Indies profile, I held back on using my intended Caribbean inputs because I was afraid I might create a wort that would frighten the ****e out of the yeast...

    Just as well! Initial fermentation was poor and needed some help from an additional and more robust and active starter injection along with some yeastie food including tomato puree...With the initial 1,7Kg kit and the 1Kg DME, the OG was adequate but not terribly exciting, at 1.042 that wudda given me an ABV between 5 and 5.5%.

    So, today, I got to open things up as I wanted to inject some exciting additional profiles. The wort was doing nicely at 1.015. Taste and nose were entirely as hoped for... I was sipping a 200 ml glass and had to stop myself from going back for more. It really tasted massive for 10 days in...

    So, then in goes a secondary made-up wort comprising a single 454g tin of Lyle black treacle (basically molasses which is aimed at my West Indian target profile) along with 50g of 74% dark chocolate from Lidl ....

    A gentle swirly stir as the the additional wort was added, it smelled simply awesome. I need to compute the exact wort volume addition, but I do know that the treacle and chocolate additions massively improved un-fermented flavour and nose. The additions may provide the yeasties the food to create an extra 0.9-1% ABV when all that lovely additional food is metabolised by them. Within 2 hours. the fermenter has gone asolutely craaaazy..

    I'm really looking forward to a 6.45% session with my buddies, talking ****e, aided and abetted by my Caribbean Oatmeal Stout towards the end of the month..

    BTW, I'm going to bottle this out using this profile. I do intend to test a glass or 10 of it later on with some espresso to assess whether that would enhance the overall profile for the next batch... But for now, that's it... Moving on to finishing a lovely Merlot Rose so the wife has something to enthuse over while I go mental about my Caribbean creation...


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