Have you finalized your NEIPA recipe yet or are you like us – continually tweaking the grain bill or the hop additions in attempts to improve what is already “pretty good”? If you are trying to learn more about the style or want an input into building your recipe, this post is for you. We decided to examine one part of the grain bill, specifically the flaked grain portion, to better understand the effects of some of these adjuncts bring to the final beer. Take in this video as we compare 3 flaked grains (Oats, Wheat, and Barley) in beers brewed the same way to get a better feel of their contributions to NEIPAs.

Flaked Grains Comparison Video

Flaked Oats vs. Flaked Wheat vs. Flaked Barley

To have a fair comparison, I had to brew 3 beers the same way except for the flaked grain that I used. Here’s the recipe and the instructions I followed to brew these beers.

Batch Size: 1 US Gallon

Boil Size: 1.75 US Gallons

Grain Bill

75% Great Western Pale Malt

25% Flaked Grain (Beer 1 = Flaked Oats, Beer 2 = Flaked Wheat, Beer 3 = Flaked Barley)

Hops

Columbus Hops – 7 grams added with 60 minutes left to go in the boil

Mosaic Hops – 9 grams added at flameout

Yeast

Safale US-05 American Ale Yeast – 3 grams for each batch

Instructions

Brew In A Bag using 2 gallons of water heated to 160°F/71°C to hit mash temperature of 150°F/66°C for 60 minutes

Fermentation lasted for 2 weeks at 68°F/20°C

At the end of fermentation, each batch was forced carbonated

Our Notes On These Flaked Grains Beers

Beer #1 – This beer was brewed with Flaked Oats. Mike felt this beer had the sharpest hop flavors. In comparison to the others, he felt it was the most robust and the base malt character was more present in this beer. In terms of mouthfeel, it was the most full of the three beers.

Beer #2 – This beer was brewed with Flaked Wheat. Mike thought this beer had the softest mouthfeel. He liked this beer the most. It was the smoothest in terms of its overall impression.

Beer #3 – This beer was brewed with Flaked Barley. Mike thought this beer showcased the malt “sweetness” the most. He also thought the hop aroma came through more with this beer.

He felt all three of these beers had medium-low body so keep this point in mind if you are looking to have a beer with a full mouthfeel. You’ll probably need to do more to add more body.

Mike said that he wouldn’t be adding Flaked Barley to his next NEIPA. He wasn’t impressed with beer #3.

Hope you got something out of this comparison. We learned something from it. If you have questions or comments, please leave them on this post.

BREW ON!