Oatmeal Stout

I hate having perfectly good winemaking gear to go waste, so this time of year I like to do some other type of fermenting: beer!

I've made 3 beers over the past 2 years - all from kits put together by our local wine/beer supply store, and all turned out surprisingly good. I'm a fan of Oatmeal Stouts, however, so had to concoct my own recipe.  The pressure!  

With a little help from the folks at the beer supply store, I took a hybrid approach and modified one of their kit recipes.  Here goes:

Steep for 30 minutes @ 160F:

1lb. Crystal Malt

1 lb. Pale Chocolate Malt

1 lb. Flaked Oats

1/4 lb. Roasted Barley

Strain and transfer to kettle, stir in

3 lbs Munich Malt Extract Syrup

At boil set time for 30 minutes and add:

2 oz Perle Hops (awesome floral smell)

Add 1/2 oz Cascade Hops (some floral, more earthy/mossy to my nose) and set timer for 20 more minutes

Add 1/2 oz Cascade Hops and a Whirfloc tablet and set timer for 10 more minutes

Turn off burner and stir in 

6 lbs. Pale Malt Extract

1/4 lb. Lactose

Cooled, added enough water to get just over 5 gallons.  SG = 1.067.

Pitched ale yeast (62-72 degree range), and will let ferment away until SG down to 1.02-ish.

UPDATE: turned out good not great; next time I'll eliminate the lactose and reduce the smoky grains.  This article from Beersmith provided some good specific insights.

Also happened upon this well organized pro-con list on various homebrew topics.

Farmer Lisa's back

Here we are, mid-January, vines dormant, and we're enjoying weather in the high 60s. With no end in sight (well, next 10 days.)

So I've gotten a good jump on soil amendments & mulching.   I'm continuing the plan of 1/2 c E.B.Stone organic fruit & citrus food per vine.  Not a good time to add fertilizer, but this blend seems to be more of a soil additive and very slow / long-term acting, so seems OK to add now.

In addition, I'm topping that off with:
- 1/3 c iron sulfate, to address mineral deficiency in soil
- as much steer manure as I can carry - about 2 cubic feet per row
- an extra layer of live oak mulch

I've completed rows 7 & 8, row 6 has everything but iron.  Will continue down the vineyard throughout the week, hope to be mostly done by our next rains.