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Taste Notes

I don't always record tasting notes but will in this case as this has clearly produced a special ale - one of my favorites. The coconut flavor is very pronounced with a mild bittering and welcomed roastiness to balance the coconut. The flavor is smooth and the carbination moderate to light. This one should be duplicated again and again and I think it important to use the organic coconut flakes from Fiddler's Green. I bought a six of Kono Brewing's Koko Brown and my recipie won my admittedly biased taste test. I feel my Coconut Brown Ale provided the more balanced, natural and coconut forward ale to my tastes. Hoorah! 2014-03-10: I should have recorded date on that last Taste Notes entry. Time has stolen the coconut flavor. This is now just a good brown ale, maybe with an occasional hint of the coconut, but it is just the flimsiest of ghosts of what was there before. The bottle conditioning yeasts have consumed the coconut flavor component.

Notes

2013-12-17: Brew day. The web showed lots for choices for how to handle the coconut with no decisive "best way". I added my lightly toasted organic flaked coconut from Fiddler's Green for the last 10 minutes of boil. OG was 1.051 (1.050@67.3℉). I tasted the coconut during cleanup after the boil and I could really taste the hop bitterness. This worried me but it seems that, when I tasted the volume used for testing specific gravity, there was still clear bitterness remaining in the wort. On the other hand, there was not much coconut taste, although I suspect that it will come out as a fairly good Brown. The coconut also resulted in a lot of oil and particulate matter going into the primary. We will see. 2013-12-20: Racked to secondary after bubbling stopped. Strong bubbling up to this point. First impression upon opening lid was that it didn't smell right but that quickly went away. There is some coconut aroma but there is strong coconut taste at this point. Ale is very cloudy with lots of visible trub suspended. Possible oil still on surface but not sure of what I am seeing. Interesting, hopefully not like the Chinese proverb. SG is 1.022 (1.019 @ 66.6 ℉). 2014-01-04: Checked to see how we were doing. SG is 1.016 (1.016 @ 64.9 ℉). 2014-01-08: Bottled today. Tastes very good. Good coconut flavor. Little hop bitterness. We produced 49 bottles. As the gravity was potentially still high, and since this is a Brown after all, I only used 3.52 oz (by weight) of Corn Sugar. Specific gravity is a bit of a mystery. We measured 1.018 & 68.4 ℉. That would produce an FG of 1.019! I think we can be pretty certain that the SG did not go up from the prior reading. Not sure what the problem is and which one is wrong. Bubbling continued the whole time though it was now done to many tens of minutes between bubbles. I compromised at 1.018 but this should be understood to be suspect.