viewtopic.php?f=5&t=73105
I decided to get all my stuff prepped for tomorrow's brew day on my lunch hour, as I was weighing out my grains I remembered I hadn't yet tasted the Special B, so, popped a bit in my mouth...wowsers, it really is quite an intense caramel, but it's not sweet caramel, it reminds me of when I used to stuff a whole carton of raisins in my mouth at once!
I'm starting to grow on this recipe now as I think it will be well suited to the Endeavour hops and dark rum.
I also think 5% of it is a good benchmark to expand from.
I may also run a few bottles of this and enter it into the L.A.B Black Friday competition, until then, a couple of pictures:
Grain Shot:
Kit All Ready:
Quick Spruce Up:
Start of the 4 step mash:
My yeast harvest warming up:
Coming up to the boil:
All tucked up at 21°C:
Hydrometer @ 1.045 for 22.5L:
Oak chunks infusing:
Quick sample glass:
Starting to dial in some numbers now and getting good results, nice chocolate and raisin flavours, soft bitterness from the Endeavour and colour is spot on black.
Will be good to see how it's gonna turn out, slight recipe change, remove the Styrian Goldings from the last 15 minutes to a 30 min 80°C steep and upped the Endeavour to 26g to keep the bitterness level.
Looking forward to it.
