I had a great time brewing yesterday with Nathaniel and Nicole. Initial results on the Oatmeal Nut Brown are very positive. The wort tasted great, you could definitely taste the oatmeal and the pecans. Obviously, the final product is going to be heavily influenced by the yeast and conditioning, but I’m very excited at this point.

For the first time in a few batches, the process was drama-free. No stuck sparges, no boilovers, no forgotten ingredients. It was surprisingly smooth, even though this was also my first batch brewed on my new system. I am totally stoked by this system. I was able to handle 26 pounds of grain in this batch with no trouble. Flippin’ sweet!

Nathaniel and I split up the yield into two batches. He took the British Ale I (1098) and I took the British Ale II (1335), so it will be interesting to see how they differ. The starting gravity on Nathaniel’s batch was 1.074, so it should be a full-bodied beer. That’s the highest SG I’ve ever had in one of my brews.

My math was not totally accurate when I tried to calculate the amount of sparge water I would need to end up with a yield of 10 gallons. After divvying up the wort, I was at about 4 gallons, so I was a gallon short in my calculations. I’ll chalk it up to working on that system for the first time.

So, in my quest for more beer, I got greedy and added a gallon of water to my carboy to get the volume up to 5 gallons. (Gasp! Oh the horror!) My gravity fell to 1.050. I’m still sure mine will be great as well. I figure I got the “session” brown and Nathaniel got the dessert brown.

So check back in a month and I’ll let you know how it turned out!