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Taste Notes

Color is spot-on compared with a bottle of Track #8. Aroma is cinnamon up front, and sweet malt. Flavor is dark & sweet with cinnamon and a subtle peppery finish.

Notes

There is not much available information about this beer. The bottle says 13.7% abv., brewed with raisins, aged in bourbon barrels with cinnamon and dried chilies. That’s it. Water is Westminster municipal water, charcoal-filtered, and 10 gallons of distilled water. Recipe as originally built has 2.5 lbs of light dry malt extract. Due to circumstances during the boil which involved alcohol, I forgot to add the dry malt extract. Also, our final volume was a little high, because the boil was not as vigorous as it should have been. So overall the beer has a lower gravity than planned. Raisins chopped, then flamed with torch to caramelize, and added to kettle at flameout. While flaming, keep turning them to keep from burning/scorching. This is a job for two people. Dextrose was added to primary fermenter after 4 days of vigorous activity; spread out in even amounts over days 4-6-8. Cinnamon and chilis in seconary. Oak spirals soaked in Woodford Reserve whiskey in hydrometer jars for over 4 weeks. Guessing on quantities. I plan to use the oak spirals in secondary, and reserve the left-over liquid for possible taste adjustments. On 10/7/16, my half of the beer was racked off yeast, and received: 2 - oak spirals which had been soaked in Woodford Reserve bourbon; 3 - whole cinnamon sticks 12 - dried chili peppers broken into halve After 24 hours, a distinct cinnamon aroma and flavor were already detectable. There is also a faint pepper hint on the back of my tongue a few minutes after tasting, but I can’t tell whether that is from the cinnamon or the chilies. Not getting any of the oak or bourbon character but it’s only been a day. Removed the cinnamon, and left the chilies in for another 2 days. I decided against adding any of the left-over spirits from soaking the oak spirals. There isn’t a distinct wood or bourbon character to the beer’s flavor, as the spirals were only in for 9 days. But I think it’s there in the composite flavor profile. Kegged on 10/16/16.