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Taste Notes

Won a Bronze Medal at Coconut Cup 2018! Smooth coffee, chocolate, and graham cracker notes. Full-bodied and thick mouthfeel. Some residual sweetness, but still drinkable. Adding dark grains at vorlauf really did help with minimizing astringency and acidity. Coconut Cup 2018

Notes

Cold day, 40F when I started (01/14/2018). This affected the mash temparture I mashed in wiht the light grains (11.44 lb) with (3.25 gal of water) to get to a masht temp of 150 F (wanted 154 F) I added an additional 0.5 gal of water to get it up to 152 F Then, an additional 0.33 gal of water which pretty much just kept it at 152F Mash pH of light grains was 5.3 Mashed for a little over an hour Mash temperature dropped a little over that time period (around 148 F when I opened up the cooler) Added dark grain during vorlauf! I added a pinch of pickling lime to act as a "buffer" and not drop the mash pH too low. Stirred in grain and mash pH maintained a 5.3. Color was dark brown even though it was supposed to be very black. Maybe didn't vorlauf enough? Sparged with 5 gals of 175 F water (to bring up mash temp to 152 F) Sparge runnings pH was 5.3 Only had about 6.5 gal pre-boil (loss due to grain absorption?) Added hops in new floating hop spider with hops in musling bags inside spider, worked very well. Hops were added as FWH when kettle was about half way full. Pretty vigirous boil to try and develop color and gravity more. Yeast nutrient and whirfloc were added with 10 minutes left Wort chilling went a lot faster due to lower temperatures (got to ~75 F in ~ 30 minutes) Did ~ 10 min hand whirlpool/rest before transferring to fermenter Pitched WLP002 2L yeast starter (~249 billion cells) a few hours later when temp was ~62 F Checked fermenter next morning, young krausen formed, fermeter @ 61F, I raised it to 66 F. Did raising temp affect fermentation and create esters/stressed the yeast? Maybe pitch 2 degrees cooler and let it rise naturally next time. Added 1 lb debitterd black castle malt that steeped in 1 quart of spring water over night to darken beer. Boiled for 15 mins, a couple of drops of fermcap were used, added to a sanitized container (Starbucks cold brew coffee glass jar), and put into freezer. Slowly added to beer in fermenter to try and avoid oxidization. Fermented for 4 days (01/14/2018 to 01/18/2018) Raised temperature from fermentation temp to diacetyl rest (65 to 70) on 01/18/2018 @ 8:30 PM Took gravity reading on 01/22/2018. FG: 1.019. Temperature lowered from 70 to 65. Mash Water Profile Sparge Water Profile (RO Water) Calcium 53 Magnesuim 4 Sodium 23 Sulfate 40 Chloride 76 Bicarbonate 61