American Stout
The recipe
It has been roughly a week and a half since I carbonated my Wintergreen Chocolate Stout, but I have been drinking them like a madman, so I figured I better get the notes written about it before I wind up drinking them all. The concept I was going for with this batch was for a minty, chocolate stout. But my concept of wintergreen comes from artificial flavors contained in gum and chewing tobacco, a long time habit of mine that I had quit for roughly 3 years, and then had the bright idea of starting up again about 9 months ago.
Anyways, the wintergreen wasn't as minty as I had envisioned, but it definitely does impart a unique taste to the beer that I will attempt to describe below in the tasting notes. The other main aspect of this beer was the cacao nibs, which I hoped would give even more chocolaty flavors to the black and chocolate malts. I also included a bit of smoked malt, which (I'm writing this introduction pre-pour, so I'm not at the moment describing the taste, but going on memory) in my mind subliminally show up, but they aren't as prominent as I had hoped.
It pours out an opaque black color, with a small brown head that lasts for a minute or two before fading into a foam. Minimal lacing.
Malts form the majority of the scent, with some base malt supporting the black and chocolate malt. The wintergreen adds a bit of a unique scent as well.
The wintergreen does stand out a bit in the taste, not in an overpowering way, but just because its a new taste that isn't normally found in beer. The nibs also a bit of a woody taste. Other than that it is all malts. The mouth is full and pretty smooth.
My impression of this beer is that I do like it, and I do want to come back and play around with it at least a couple more times.
I believe that the nibs I used were Ghana variety, and there were two varieties to try out, so I would like to see what the other one does. These didn't seem to impart as much chocolate as I was envisioning, but I do like their contribution.
And the wintergreen didn't wind up being as minty as I had thought, but I do like how it works with a stout. Maybe if I try and shoot for the original idea again, I will try spearmint, but I also think I will come back to wintergreen again.
After I brewed this beer, I read some website that said smoked malts don't really work unless you're doing an all grain mash, and this beer definitely isn't as smokey as I had hoped. I feel like there are some subliminal smoke notes, but that could just be my mind searching for them.
The beer isn't majorly chocolaty, so I might bump up those malts next time as well.
So overall, it didn't really turn out how I was envisioning, but I do enjoy it and have been drinking them up.
This beer has convinced me to try and get the "dry hopped" ingredients in muslin bags in the future when possible, as I had a bit of a breakdown during bottling when the nibs got into the bottling wand and clogged it up. Luckily I contacted my Sensei and he told me to scrap the bottling wand and stick with bottling straight out of the spigot on the bottling bucket. That's a much easier way to go about it.
(EDIT) I'm going to update this. Last weekend my friends who know how to brew were razing me for drinking my beer too quickly. Alright, so I laid off this beer for another 4-5 days, and now the wintergreen is popping. I still think the malt profile could use some tweaking, but the wintergreen is performing as I hoped it would. Another lesson learned.
No comments:
Post a Comment