BeerSmith™ Recipes and Web Editor

Taste Notes

Appearance: This beer pours deep brown with a thick, frothy, creamy head of tan foam. Aroma: Many layers, starting off with chocolate and coffee from the chocolate malt, and vanilla notes from both the vanilla bean and French Oak. A balanced oak flavor comes through in the mix. As the beer warms, the influence of the Belgian yeast is more evident, as tropical fruit and spice flavors become more pronounced. Flavor: Begins with chocolate roast malt character and vanilla. The vanilla accentuates the chocolate nicely. Layered in are banana esters, and hints of clove, and then the finish is a bit stronger on the oak with hints of molasses and citrus from the tangerine peel. Palate: Medium body, very complex, and finishes very smooth. The 8.6% alcohol is not overly evident, and the flavors blend together nicely. Overall: A delicious, complex beer. It should age nicely over the next three years, and the flavors should continue to meld together wonderfully.

Notes

Here is the grain bill: Pale Malt 73.1% 75-80°L Crystal Malt 10.4% Chocolate Malt 5.4% Belgian Aromatic Malt 4.3% Dark Candi Sugar 3.4% (added to boil) Black Malt 1.7% Carafa Malt 1.7% Target OG: 20°P (1.080 SG). Mashing: Use a 45 minute conversion rest at 150°F. This helps provide a fairly fermentable wort. Lower temperatures and a longer conversion time rests help accentuate dryness of beer. With almost 15% crystal and aromatic malt, a conversion temperature in the normal porter range of 153-156°F might have made this beer too sweet. If you can, raise your mash temperature up to 165°F to stop the enzymatic conversion of starches to sugars before lautering. If you cannot do that, cut your conversion rest to 20-30 minutes. Lautering: “first wort” (unsparged wort) gravity, it should be about 22-23°P (1.088-1.092 SG). Boil: Here is the hop bill: 4.5 grams per gallon Magnum hop pellets (14% AA) 4.5 grams per gallon Perle hop pellets (10% alpha) Add hops at the start. This will help knock down foam and maximize bitterness extraction. Depending on your boil parameters, you may want or need to add some portion of the hops before the boil actually starts to keep the foaming under control. Keep the boil rolling at a good clip. Don’t simmer, or you won’t volatilize Dimethyl Sulfide, a malt compound formed at temperatures above 180°F. Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS) tastes exactly like canned creamed corn, you’ll know this flavor when you taste it! A good rolling boil also ensures proper color and flavor development, good hop extraction, and proper trub formation. The rolling boil also helps prevent scorching of the wort where the heat source is at its most intense. Add the dark candi sugar. Pour it in after the boil starts or the sugar can settle on the bottom of the kettle and scorch as the heat increases. Burnt sugar is not a desirable beer flavor. Whirlpool Spice additions: 6 grams per gallon dried tangerine peel 0.5 grams per gallon vanilla bean. We add the spices after the wort boil is complete to maximize flavor extraction. Adding them during the boil may result in many of the flavors being volatilized and lost with the steam. To prep the vanilla bean, slit the bean lengthwise, and scrape out the “meat” from the skin, and then chop the skins. Use all of the bean, skin included, to steep in the wort. For our brews we used a filter bag to hold the vanilla and the tangerine peel. During the whirlpool step, the wort needs to be circulated to create a whirlpool. This will cause the proteinaceous trub flocs formed during the kettle boil to be pushed to the side of the vessel. Gravity will then take hold, the flocs will slide down the side of the vessel, and once they reach bottom, will gather in the center to form the trub pile. This is called “the Interrupted Centrifuge Principle”. If you stir tea leaves in a cup of tea you will see the same effect. A good, cohesive trub pile is necessary to decant clear wort to your fermentor and avoid protein carryover, which otherwise could negatively impact flavor, or blind yeast cell walls and impair yeast growth and fermentation. Fermentation: Yeast Addition: Pitch a Belgian yeast strain, enough to get 20-25 million cells per milliliter (requires a starter) The beer should ferment down close to 4°P (1.016 SG). Aging: French Oak Chips: 4.5 grams per gallon During aging, chill the beer down to about 35°F or so, and let it sit until the beer clarifies. This is the step where the French Oak chips are added. Place the chips in a filter bag with a small piece of stainless to weigh it down and keep it from floating. Sterilize the entire bag and contents by pouring hot (over 185°F) water over the bag and letting it sit submerged for 15 minutes. Then hang the bag in your fermentor until the whole bag is submerged. Start tasting your beer after 3 days and age as long as needed after that to get the intensity of French oak flavor you want.