I have recently been gifted a couple of 5 gallon buckets of whole oats. These are feed grade oats, not steamed or crimped. I'm thinking about using them in a batch of HBB. I usually use Quaker rolled oats from Costco in my HBB mashes and don't have a lot of positive experience with whole oats. I have couple of questions about using them in this recipe:
I plan to mill them enough to open the hulls, will the hulls add a bitterness to the mash? I use SCD's large batch method for this recipe so I don't sparge the mash and ferment on the grain which has me a little concerned about leaving the hulls in there.
Do I need to worry about step mashing these? My past experiments with oats have yielded a gross slimy mess when I didn't step mash the oats.
Those experiments were oat based whiskey. Given the nominal amount of oats in this recipe, I would think that it is probably not material. But thought I'd ask the experts here before I screw up a good recipe.
Any input is appreciated.
I've stopped fighting my inner demons. We are on the same side now.
Generally, hulls make it easy to sparge after the mash and don't influence flavor. But I think you are asking about fermenting on the grain. I think usually the concern about hulls is more about astringency than bitterness. And astringency is most typically only an issue if you allow the pH to rise above 5.5 or so and then sparge with hot water. I may have exposed my ignorance in stating all this, but that's my understanding. You should be fine
I saw an article about oat processing. Typically 25% of the mass of oats are hulls, and mills have to get rid of a lot. They're usually ground up finely and included in animal feeds.
If you are using these in a Honey Bear Bourbon in the ratios the recipe suggest, it is not going to make much difference with respect to increasing overall sliminess. If you have an easy protocol for step mashing in large batch mashing it certainly won't hurt, but I doubt it's needed.
🎱 The struggle is real and this rabbit hole just got interesting. Per a conversation I had with Mr. Jay Gibbs regarding white oak barrel staves: “…you gotta get it burning good.”
The astringency, at least in barley hulls, is extracted at over 170 F. A quick google shows the gelatinization of oat starch starts at 140 F. so you should be able to gelatinize the starch by holding below 170, just a bit of research for the amount of time. Also for grinding the oats if you have a roller mill to crush the grain rather than a burr mill that will tear the hulls up, you will have less chance of any astringency being extracted.
That’s a good point! I can add the oats between the corn and the malt and should still get decent gelatinization. It should hold temp plenty long enough with a 40 gallon volume.
My mill is a burr mill. I did a test run to see how bad it would shred the hulls. I set the rollers a little wide and ran it through twice. It was not as good as a roller mill but I think I can be ok with the crack I’m getting. It’s a bit of a compromise but it seems to open most of the hulls w/o shredding it too much.
I've stopped fighting my inner demons. We are on the same side now.
