Procrastination Oatmeal Porter

I brewed my oatmeal stout porter today while watching the Seahawks lose rather impressively to the Colts. It ended up being the strongest beer I've yet brewed, at least in terms of initial gravity. More on that later.

The Recipe:

9 lb 2-row pale malt
1 lb flaked oats
8 oz chocolate malt
8 oz crystal 60°
4 oz roated barley

5.5 AAU (39g @ 4% AA) Fuggles @ 60
3.5 AAU (20g @ 4.9% AA) East Kent Goldings @ 60

1 Irish Moss tablet @ 15 min

Wyeast 1084 - Irish Ale

Single infusion mash for 60 minutes at about 147° using 14 quarts; sparged with ~170-180° water until I had about 25.5 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.064
Est. IBU: 38

My pre-boil gravity was 1.052, which means I hit 79% efficiency, which, after the disappointing efficiency of Djibouti Smoked Porter, was quite heartening. Here's the deal: after milling my grain at my LHBS, the store guy looked at it and said "it's barely milled!" Well, it turns out, the nut holding the setting of the grain mill there is broken and the mill goes out of whack. He readjusted it and I milled again at the better setting and ... voilà! A huge increase in mash efficiency!

I also ended up mashing at 147° because I did not get my water hot enough for dough-in and thus could not reach my target of 151°. It will be interesting to see what kind of attenuation I get out of it; if my yeast aren't killed by all the sugars I expect to hit the 6.5-7% range. It will be a mega porter.

Speaking of porter, this recipe was originally designed as an oatmeal stout. It was based on some Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout clone recipes I found online. I tweaked it by upping the pale malt but not the specialty grains, mostly because of my historically weak mash efficiencies (I wanted to get at least 5% ABV ... looks like efficiency caught up with a vengeance). At the end of the boil, however, it was not that dark a beer, so I decided to rename it an oatmeal porter. Of course, I've been burned before by naming my beers before they are done (e.g. Mulligan ESB is really an APA), but hey, I'm just a lowly homebrewer with a measley 8 batches under his belt. I will do things wrong on occasion.