IPA Oats Technique applied to Wine

[Thex]

Hey, I'm new to the forum, but I've lurked here for a bit, since I first got interested in winemaking. I've made a few good batches of wine, all made from juice as a base, but with various additional ingredients, and I've also made mead, and thought it would be cool to try something new.
What do you guys think about adding flaked oats to the primary, to add a creamy flavour. Does it seem reasonable, if so what pitfalls might it have? I'm not versed enough in beer making to know what steps are done to prevent this from damaging beer or how to replicate those effects. What can I expect from this?

Thank you in advance for your replies.

 

[VinesnBines]

When making beer we mash the grains in hot (152 degree) water for a period of time to extract the sugars. With wine, we don't heat the fruit or the juice (most of the time) lest we release pectin which can cloud wine. The oats just in the primary may not provide the same benefits as in a beer. You can make fruit beers (beer with fruit in a secondary) or wines that are hopped (again in the secondary- dry hopping) which are more of a hybrid. You can also make high alcohol beers that are more like wine - barleywine for example.

Someone else may have another outlook on this.

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Thex - and welcome to the forum. Interesting question. I guess I would respond with - why not try it and see. For many (but not all (see below) wine makers I would think that our interest is in transforming fruits and flowers and honey into wines. The idea of adding a "creamy flavor" may not be anything we are looking for. But what we do look for is something we call mouthfeel and that is the idea that the better a wine is the longer it's flavors coat the mouth. And that means that the wine is more viscous. But viscosity in wine comes from a variety of elements - could be the residual sugars; tannins; could be from oaking the wine (in commercial wine making that means aging wines in barrels) for home wine makers that may mean simply adding oak staves or cubes to the wine.

That said, mead (honey wine) might sit nicely with oats, after all a braggot is a blend of grains and honey. And certainly, as a home wine maker there is absolutely nothing to prevent you from making wine from rice or barley or wheat ... or oats (or even whey). The thing is, as every brewer knows, grains (and whey) do not contain any simple sugars that yeast can easily ferment. They require that the brewer transforms complex sugars into simpler sugars through the action of enzymes either in the grains or added to them. Without this action on the part of the brewer there is no beer. BUT as a wine maker you could make wine from grains by adding simple sugars and using the inherent flavors of the grains (or the whey) as the flavor of the wine. Never tried to make an oat wine but I have made a wheat wine and a wine from barley (and as I also make cheese I often have whey from which I make an old Scottish drink called blaand.

So, go ahead and add some oats to your wine. In other words, I suggest that if you are looking for any added viscosity OR flavor from the oats I would add them to your secondary and that would allow you to rack off the oats after a week or two or longer rather than if you included the oats in the primary and you found for whatever reason that it took longer to ferment than the optimal length of time you would want the oats to be in the wine. More: adding oats to the primary means that you are basically using water to extract any key compounds from the oats. If you add the oats to the secondary you are using the alcohol in the wine to do the extraction and alcohol is a better solvent than water.

Good luck.

 

[Thex]

Hi Thex - and welcome to the forum. Interesting question. I guess I would respond with - why not try it and see. For many (but not all (see below) wine makers I would think that our interest is in transforming fruits and flowers and honey into wines. The idea of adding a "creamy flavor" may not be anything we are looking for. But what we do look for is something we call mouthfeel and that is the idea that the better a wine is the longer it's flavors coat the mouth. And that means that the wine is more viscous. But viscosity in wine comes from a variety of elements - could be the residual sugars; tannins; could be from oaking the wine (in commercial wine making that means aging wines in barrels) for home wine makers that may mean simply adding oak staves or cubes to the wine.

That said, mead (honey wine) might sit nicely with oats, after all a braggot is a blend of grains and honey. And certainly, as a home wine maker there is absolutely nothing to prevent you from making wine from rice or barley or wheat ... or oats (or even whey). The thing is, as every brewer knows, grains (and whey) do not contain any simple sugars that yeast can easily ferment. They require that the brewer transforms complex sugars into simpler sugars through the action of enzymes either in the grains or added to them. Without this action on the part of the brewer there is no beer. BUT as a wine maker you could make wine from grains by adding simple sugars and using the inherent flavors of the grains (or the whey) as the flavor of the wine. Never tried to make an oat wine but I have made a wheat wine and a wine from barley (and as I also make cheese I often have whey from which I make an old Scottish drink called blaand.

So, go ahead and add some oats to your wine. In other words, I suggest that if you are looking for any added viscosity OR flavor from the oats I would add them to your secondary and that would allow you to rack off the oats after a week or two or longer rather than if you included the oats in the primary and you found for whatever reason that it took longer to ferment than the optimal length of time you would want the oats to be in the wine. More: adding oats to the primary means that you are basically using water to extract any key compounds from the oats. If you add the oats to the secondary you are using the alcohol in the wine to do the extraction and alcohol is a better solvent than water.

Good luck.

Okay, I will give it a shot. I'll try adding it in the secondary, rather than the primary as you suggested.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions and help.

 

[Ty520]

I've actually got an interesting experiment using oats right now that I'll share with people if successful.

 

[G259]

I've actually got an interesting experiment using oats right now that I'll share with people if successful.

Share it even if it's not, No Harm, No Foul!
Hey, you might keep ME from doing it!

 

[Ty520]

Share it even if it's not, No Harm, No Foul!
Hey, you might keep ME from doing it!

I ended up fermenting oats straight up. As a little micro batch in a wide mouth quart mason jar. Boiled the oats with amylase for 30 minutes to extract as much sugars as possible.

Very vigorous fermentation. Went dry. A bit sour early on, but began to mellow out. I have decided to try to incorporate it for a future experimental braggot - can see it working with mead, but not a straight fruit wine. Will run another test batch first and document it if anyone's curious.May even try to age a straight batch to see what might come of it.

But returning to the OP , If "creaminess" is the goal for a fruit wine, I'd try something like lactose instead of oats.

 

[Rice_Guy]

CREAMYness
* oats contain beta-glucans which are a gum, (thickening agent). A guess on oats is that they would first of all create turbidity which will not settle out with time. Turbidity could be filtered, but readily plug a sterile filter.
* lactose is a two hexose sugar like table sugar. In solution it acts similar to sucrose but without the sweetness. The texture/ viscosity effect is related to the log of the solids concentration. If you are looking for the texture of a simple syrup without the sweet it is interesting.
* dextrans (short chain starch fragments) are used to provide viscosity and in a beer wort one naturally produces a variety of short chains depending on process time. Low flavor.
* there are a number of gums which have been mentioned on WMT. Of the choices gum arabic is sold to beverage manufacturers. The version I have is from Kitchen Creations and has been processed enough that it mixes in cold creating a transparent solution. Guar gum is found in chocolate milk to suspend the chocolate particles. Viscosity again should be related to the log of the solids.
* lots of folks will add glycerin to modify viscosity, it is a natural metabolite from yeast so we are only changing the concentration. Slight contribution to sweetness.
* some of this mouth feel gets into emulsifiers, especially if fat and protein are in the system

 

[Ty520]

CREAMYness

I guess that might need to be defined better - just creamy texture? or an actual creamy flavor?