BeerSmith™ Recipe Cloud

Taste Notes

Description This beer is a breakfast / pastry imperial brown ale, brewed with cinnamon, vanilla, lactose, and almond extract to (hopefully) achieve the flavor profile of one of my favorite (pre-Celiac) breakfast items: cinnamon rolls. The grains are meant to equate a nice, toasted, bready base with some light dark fruit notes. The cinnamon, maple syrup, almond extract, and spice notes from the James Brown rice malt add to the flavor of the cinnamon roll filling. Vanilla and lactose top things off in an attempt to create the flavor profile for icing on top of the cinnamon roll. Brewday: - Aroma is intense cinnamon, with sweet vanilla, caramel, and bready notes. Taste, aside from the intense sweetness is more cinnamon and spicy toffees/caramels. A thick creaminess coats the entire tongue with strong vanilla following. Overall, this has the elements to be an awesome brown, we'll see where it goes. 7/27: - Very estery, lots of odd aromas and flavors, though I would call them more traditional Belgian in nature (clove, banana, etc). There is still a decent amount of sweet, creaminess behind the esters with some cinnamon there as well. Vanilla comes through after a bit of time. 8/5: - Still fairly estery, but more in line with a British strong ale ester profile. Cinnamon and vanilla subdued, maple is decently present, but not in your face. 8/18 - Rich caramel, cinnamon, some vanilla, a bit estery as well, the aroma is a bit Belgianesque. Taste has a decent amount of complexity beyond the obvious ones mentioned earlier. Hop notes are present and pleasant, pine, berries, cherry and subtle maple flavors. 8/25: - Esters are still fairly present, a bit of a mix between Belgian and English esters. However, the overall flavor is good, just not exactly what I was shooting for. This beer comes across as a Belgian Christmas ale precarbonation. Cinnamon is strong, but not in your face. There is a nice amount of nuttiness to the beer, with creaminess and vanilla in the background as well. Decent spice elements help bring things together with the underlying esters from the yeast adding Belgian notes across the beer. 9/8 - Flavor has cleaned a bit, but esters still present. Sampled this beer with both bourbon and apple brandy. Bourbon is perfect for this iteration of the beer. The apple brandy was pleasant, but the esters got in the way. The cinnamon and apple do play well together with a bit of spice.

Notes

Brewday: 7/22/2018 Prep: - Measured out grains the night before and prep water/treatment - Morning of brew, ground all grain twice - Added grains in the following order: o 9 oz of rice hulls on bottom o Ground rice at .095" and 063" o Ground buckwheat at 0.095" and 0.015" o Added 1lb of rice hulls between buckwheat and millet o Ground millet at 0.01" twice o Added another 4 ozs of rice hulls ontop of millet Mash: - Added 7.5 ml of HTL alpha enzyme to grains and stirred thoroughly - Heated 5 gallons of water to 190 deg F and added to mash to reach just above 170 deg F (though later readings showed to be in the low 160s), held for 60 minutes - Filled a second pot with 3 gallons of water, added 7.5 ml each of AMG-300 and TL beta glucanase - Added to mash after first step completed dropping temp to mid-120s, holding for 60 seconds (note, lots of foam this time around) - Stirring every 10-15 minutes - Voloughed a couple gallons until larger particles stopped appearing in the wort - At the end of the first running, I had 4 gallons of wort at 1.043 - Added another gallon to raise it to 5 gallons at 1.040 (note, this is 45% efficiency with another poosible 11% at this rate) ... :( - I decided that there are too potential causes, either the grains are bad or I didn't gelatinize the buckwheat properly o Based on the later since I have not control on the former, I am going to try to gelatinize the buckwheat further o I took the last 2.5 gallons of wort, boiled and returned it to the mash tun (raising the temp into the 150s) o I took another gallon from the brew pot and boiled that and retuned it to the mash tun o After sitting approximately 30 minutes, drained the wort into the smaller brew pot o Original SG was still around 1.025, but by the time the pot was done draining, SG had raised to 1.038 o Added a gallon back to the main brew pot, then recirculated one more time to reach 1.040 SG Boil: - Started boil with 4 gallons of wort, added 1 ml of hop shot just as boil was beginning - Added more wort to the brew pot to bring it up to 5 gallons at 1.044 - Started a second brew pot after doing several more recirculations on the wort o This pot sat at 2.25 gallons with approximately 1.040 SG o Boiled second pot down to about 1 gallon left with a SG of 1.090 before adding it back to the main brew pot o This occurred with about 45 minutes left in the boil - Added sugars, cinnamon, vanilla, and hops when reading 1.077-ish on refractometer - Boiled for 5 minutes longer before cutting heat and began cooling a few minutes later - Chilled to 80 deg F then transferred 4 gallons to fermenter - Refractometer reading 23.6 Brix or 1.098 SG Fermentation: - OG measured at 1.092 at 90 deg F, adjusted to 1.096 SG (after the maple syrup is added, that should increase SG to 1.103) - Aerated with pure O2 for 90 seconds - Pitched M42, New World Strong Ale yeast - Placed in a basin, covered with a shirt and added water to act as a cooler for fermentation 7/27 - Gravity is reading 1.035 now according to refractometer reading o Note: I am not a fan of of the New World Ale yeast (M42) - Added 6 oz of maple syrup (very dark color, very strong taste) 7/29 - Added remaining 10 oz of maple syrup - Gravity read at 1.036 after beer had nearly cleared. 8/5 - 3 smallish cinnamon stick chopped up and added to vanilla beans. Additional bourbon (~2-3 oz total) added to cover up cinnamon. 8/8 - Added 1 Tbsp of almond extract to the cinnamon/vanilla mixture. 8/18 - Dumped in cinnamon, vanilla, almond extract and bourbon to secondary vessel. Transferred beer on top of adjuncts. 8/25 - After aging for 1 week on adjuncts, transferred to keg. Refractometer read 14.4 Brix (1.031), though this may be influenced by the high alcohol bourbon and almond extract - SG measured at 1.026 (adjusted to 1.028 for FG) - After kegging, pressurized to 12 psi and moved back to cool location for further aging/waiting for space in kegerator...will hopefully bottle some