Rasberry Oatmeal Stout

[Afterlab]

Nope not squeezed or anything just dropped in the fermenter unaltered. Apparently during the fermentation process the skin from the Raspberries disintegrates pretty easily. You just let the yeast do their thing and the flavor and aroma melds into the beer over those two weeks.

[DonMoleon]

Okay. Since i would be doing this with a stout beer would it matter that it was a lager yeast? I have no idea...

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

He put the whole raspberries (uncleaned, unpasteurized, etc...) into secondary and added some lager yeast in there and let it sit for 2 more weeks. So if you can't get a lambic, 5 pounds of frozen raspberries may be your best bet.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of rasberries. Were the rasberries squeezed or just left alone? As I mentioned previously, I will be skipping this experiment this time around, but I am already anxious to try it out later this year!

You can freeze the raspberries. The ice crystals will break the cell walls and free up more juice. And use an ale yeast for a stout.

[Afterlab]

Yeah like Dirk said for your initial fermentation of the Stout you will use whatever ale yeast. Your original gravity is probably going to be around 1.060 for your Stout so you shouldn't need to necessarily do what Steamworks did with their 1.080 original gravity beer.

Steamworks did their initial fermentation with a Belgian yeast blend that didn't flocculate out too well and when they racked onto the raspberries they added a lager yeast to make sure all the sugar from the raspberries fermented out and to make sure all the yeast in the beer fully dropped out. I wouldn't worry about all of this "advanced" stuff at this point. Just focus on more of the brewing basics and you will be on a quicker path to brewing better beers.

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

Yeah like Dirk said for your initial fermentation of the Stout you will use whatever ale yeast. Your original gravity is probably going to be around 1.060 for your Stout so you shouldn't need to necessarily do what Steamworks did with their 1.080 original gravity beer.

Steamworks did their initial fermentation with a Belgian yeast blend that didn't flocculate out too well and when they racked onto the raspberries they added a lager yeast to make sure all the sugar from the raspberries fermented out and to make sure all the yeast in the beer fully dropped out. I wouldn't worry about all of this "advanced" stuff at this point. Just focus on more of the brewing basics and you will be on a quicker path to brewing better beers.

I agree to an extent. I wouldn't be brewing if I could have purchased good craft beer locally. I started experimenting with my second batch. You want to brew a raspberry stout? Brew that MoFo. It's your beer. Share your results with us, and with everyone who follows after you. That's Brewers Code.

There ain't a better bunch of guys (and gals) here, and a bunch of them (not me) a great brewers. Always listen to what Bugeater says, and brew every recipe he posts. Ask questions. We'll answer. Sometimes we'll tell you to slow down, but always follow your taste buds. But never, ever let us discourage you.

[DonMoleon]

I agree to an extent. I wouldn't be brewing if I could have purchased good craft beer locally. I started experimenting with my second batch. You want to brew a raspberry stout? Brew that MoFo. It's your beer. Share your results with us, and with everyone who follows after you. That's Brewers Code.

There ain't a better bunch of guys (and gals) here, and a bunch of them (not me) a great brewers. Always listen to what Bugeater says, and brew every recipe he posts. Ask questions. We'll answer. Sometimes we'll tell you to slow down, but always follow your taste buds. But never, ever let us discourage you.

Thanks for the inspiration. You guys have all been such a big help in such a short period of time (this is only my third day here).

[BDawg]

Yes, when frozen, the ice crystals burst the cell walls and make all the goodies accessible. This goes for pretty much all small fruits, not just raspberries.

Keep it simple, and keep brewing. Any time you have a question, ask here. I guarantee it will be answered, and answered properly. The collective knowledge of the members of this board is huge.

HTH-

[spiderwrangler]

When brewing with fruit, I typically use pectic enzyme to digest pectin sugar complexes. It made a big difference in the clarity of my ciders, and while it is largely a cosmetic thing that would go unnoticed in a stout, it will also slightly increase your fermentables.

Not sure if you said in your OP, and I know you posted about this beer in the temp control thread, but are you going extract or all grain? If you are brewing with oatmeal, you really want to be doing at least a partial mash go get the goodness out of them. If you are planning on doing extract and just steeping the oats, they will mostly just contribute starch and will go largely un-noticed in your final beer.