Salted Caramel Oatmeal Stout

Salted caramel is still hugely popular at the moment and we wondered whether it would work in a rich dark stout.

We hit a problem in that you can’t actually buy “caramel” in the shops. I thought you might be able to get it in a jar or something. All I found was Cadbury’s Caramel, which is caramelised condensed milk. We did have a discussion about whether this might work in our beer, but I was rather concerned about dumping that much milk fat into our beer.

No, a better approach was needed. So I researched how chefs make caramelised sugar for desserts and cake decorating. Naturally Delia came to our rescue. I followed these instructions to the letter and it worked like a dream – see my photos below.

http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/sauces-and-dressings/how-to-make-caramel 

Once made, we let the caramel down with some hot water (just to make sure none was left round the inside of the pan) and added it to the boil at the start.

As for the salt – well that was a bit of a stab in the dark. We didn’t want to overdo it, so went for something just over the amount of salts you might add to a regular beer for water profile treatment. We chose 22g of sea salt.

What did it taste like?

This was a hugely popular beer with our friends. It was soft, dark, rich and chocolatey. But there was also something else in there. I can’t say it tasted clearly of salted caramels. But there was definitely a subtle rich taste in there that would probably not have been there in a regular oatmeal stout.

When we do this again (for it was certainly good enough to re-brew next winter) I would probably increase both the caramel and salt by half – 450g caramel and 40g salt. I know now that this would not be over-doing it.

Recipe

Grain bill
Maris Otter       4260g  69.3%
Rolled Oats      450g    7.3%
Biscuit malt       340g   5.5%
Chocolate malt 340g   5.5%
Crystal 70         227g   3.7%
Roasted barley 227g   3.7%
Caramel            300g   4.9%

Hop schedule
WGV       5.5%AA  68g  60min  36 IBU

Water treatment: 22g sea salt
Yeast: Safale S-04
Batch size: 23l
Mash temp: 68C
Mash time: 60 min
Boil time: 60 min
OG: 1.056
IBU: 36 (Rager)
FG: 1.013
Fermentation Temp: Initially 16C, allowed to free rise to 19C after 3 days