The yeast was willing, but the brew was weak

As I mentioned earlier I've been experimenting with something I'm calling a New York Noble - now it gets its own section.

I've been remiss about publishing the results of my first experiment on the Noble Stout. I feel it was a successful failure - the results were good but the beer was weak.

There were two problems:

First I didn't have a recipe so much as I used whatever I had available. It had a pound of wheat malt, chocolate malt instead of black malt, and 12 oz of Quaker Oatmeal added to the mash - and I used Saaz hops to finish. Not exactly a traditional recipe.

Second, for some reason I really under primed the batch. I'm not sure what I was thinking here, but I used 0.6 cups of DME as my priming sugar - so the beer was flat.

As a result I ended up with more of a flat porter than a highly carbonated oatmeal stout. But that's a side issue from the more interesting side of the results - what happens when you brew an ale with lager yeast at ale temperatures.

In this case the yeast was White Labs Pilsner and it worked very well.

The beer came out fairly dry with little esters, full flavor, and a very light body - about as much as a light Pilsner. If you love stouts/porters but hate the fact that its not a beer you can really slug down on hot days, you will love this (if you're a purist then you probably consider me a heathen). I think I will try again in late spring and see just how well this does as a summer beer, but I think it may be a winner.

As for the flat bottles - now that I've got an IPA I've been making black and tans to 'fix' the carbonation issue. The Noble is good for that as well.

To summarize: This batch of New York Noble Oatmeal Stout was a failure as an Oatmeal Stout, but it proved the idea, so it's a success.