Oatmeal Stout Racking to Secondary

This morning we racked the oatmeal stout into the two 1-gallon carboys. There didn't seem to be much activity in the airlock after the first few days, so I was nervous about what we'd find when we opened up the primary. Good sign #1: a nice rim of gunk above the beer, showing that the krausen was there at one point and had fallen back into the beer - both good things.

Before racking, we took the oak spiral that had been soaking in bourbon for the last week and dropped it into one of the carboys. When we first put the oak in the bourbon, it floated on top. By now, it was fully submerged in the bourbon so it must have really soaked up a lot!

Siphoning the beer into the secondaries was nice and straight forward. We had enough to fill both carboys and had a little left over to try a sample. It seems to be tasting nice so far. My brother wasn't here to rack with us, but we bottled a little bit of the leftover beer so he can try it when he's down for Thanksgiving.

Good sign #2 for the beer: the refractometer reading was 8.25 brix (equating to 1.017 specific gravity), down from 15 brix on brew day. That equates to an ABV of 5.4%. Right on target! I was worried with so little bubbling in the airlock that we'd have low attenuation, so it was a relief seeing the gravity drop to the right level.

If the beer sits for just shy of a couple weeks in the secondary, then we can bottle exactly three weeks prior to Christmas. Hopefully we'll have a carbonated tasty beer when we all get together for Christmas. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

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