Oatmeal Stout

An oatmeal stout pours brown to black under a thick, creamy, tan head. It tastes of mild roasted coffee, milk chocolate or coffee with cream, with a toasty, nutty or grainy note from the oats and enough sweetness to carry them. The body is full and silky, the bitterness medium, and the finish ranges from medium-sweet to medium-dry.

Where it comes from

Brewers made it around 1900 as one of the “nourishing” or invalid stouts, adding oatmeal to the grist; the first Scottish version used a good deal of oat malt. Some English brewers later threw a handful of oats into an ordinary stout to sell it as healthy. Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout, brewed in Tadcaster and fermented in slate Yorkshire squares, is the classic example.

Brewers use pale, caramel and dark roasted malts with 5–20% or more of oatmeal or malted oats, and an English ale yeast.

How to serve it

Pour it at 10–13 °C into a nonic pint. It goes with chicken in mole sauce, an aged cheddar or sweet potato cheesecake.

Next to its neighbours

Most taste like a cross between a sweet stout and an Irish extra stout, with oats added. Against a dry stout it is fuller, softer and sweeter.

Oatmeal Stout in numbers

Classic examples

Samuel Smith, Young's

Original gravity

1.045–1.065

Final gravity

1.010–1.018

Food

Chicken in mole sauce; aged cheddar; sweet potato cheesecake

Classic examples

Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout; Young's London Stout; Broughton Stout Jock; St-Ambroise Oatmeal Stout; Anderson Valley Barney Flats

BJCP style

16B Oatmeal Stout

Sources

Checked October 30, 2026.

1. 16B. Oatmeal Stout, 2021 Beer Style Guidelines — Beer Judge Certification Program
2. English-Style Oatmeal Stout — CraftBeer.com, Brewers Association