page_title: Stout
section_title: Oatmeal stout
hierarchical_section_title: Stout / Oatmeal stout
caption_attribution_description: English: D Mendocino Oatmeal Stout beer bottle 8286690116 o
context_page_description: Stout is a dark, top-fermented beer with a number of variations, including dry stout, oatmeal stout, milk stout, and imperial stout.
  The first known use of the word stout for beer was in a document dated 1677 found in the Egerton Manuscripts, the sense being that a "stout beer" was a strong beer, not a dark beer. The name porter was first used in 1721 to describe a dark brown beer that had been made with roasted malts. Because of the huge popularity of porters, brewers made them in a variety of strengths. The stronger beers, typically 7% or 8% alcohol by volume, were called "stout porters", so the history and development of stout and porter are intertwined, and the term stout has become firmly associated with dark beer, rather than just strong beer.
context_section_description: Oatmeal stout is a stout with a proportion of oats, normally a maximum of 30%, added during the brewing process. Even though a larger proportion of oats in beer can lead to a bitter or astringent taste, during the medieval period in Europe, oats were a common ingredient in ale, and proportions up to 35% were standard. Despite some areas of Europe, such as Norway, still clinging to the use of oats in brewing until the early part of the 20th century, the practice had largely died out by the 16th century, so much so that in 1513 Tudor sailors refused to drink oat beer offered to them because of the bitter flavour.
  There was a revival of interest in using oats during the end of the 19th century, when (supposedly) restorative, nourishing and invalid beers, such as the later milk stout, were popular, because of the association of porridge with health. Maclay of Alloa produced an Original Oatmalt Stout in 1895 which used 70% "oatmalt", and a 63/- Oatmeal Stout in 1909, which used 30% "flaked (porridge) oats".
  In the 20th century many oatmeal stouts contained only a minimal amount of oats. For example, in 1936 Barclay Perkins Oatmeal Stout used only 0.5% oats. As the oatmeal stout was parti-gyled with their porter and standard stout, these two also contained the same proportion of oats. (Parti-gyle brewing involves blending the worts drawn from multiple mashes or sparges after the boil to produces beers of different gravities.) The name seems to have been a marketing device more than anything else. In the 1920s and 1930s Whitbread's London Stout and Oatmeal Stout were identical, just packaged differently. The amount of oats Whitbread used was minimal, again around 0.5%. With such a small quantity of oats used, it could only have had little impact on the flavour or texture of these beers.
  Many breweries were still brewing oatmeal stouts in the 1950s, for example Brickwoods in Portsmouth, Matthew Brown in Blackburn and Ushers in Trowbridge. When Michael Jackson mentioned the defunct Eldrige Pope "Oat Malt Stout" in his 1977 book The World Guide to Beer, oatmeal stout was no longer being made anywhere, but Charles Finkel, founder of Merchant du Vin, was curious enough to commission Samuel Smith to produce a version. Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout then became the template for other breweries' versions.
  Oatmeal stouts do not usually taste specifically of oats. The smoothness of oatmeal stouts comes from the high content of proteins, lipids (includes fats and waxes), and gums imparted by the use of oats. The gums increase the viscosity and body adding to the sense of smoothness.
caption: An oatmeal stout from Mendocino Brewing Company, a craft brewery founded in 1983.
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