Batch #12 – Thick Mint

Date	Brew:1/8/2014	Rack:1/28/2014	Bottle:2/12/2014
Days	0	20	35

Recipe:

Brewer’s Best Porter Kit, with added ingredients

Goals:

Try to make a “thin mint in a glass.” This was a basic porter extract recipe with cocoa-nib infused schnapps added at bottling.

Brew Notes:

We brewed per the recipe with very little deviation. No boilovers.

Cooled wort with cold water bath in sink and 1 gallon frozen water added to wort. Pitched two packets of Nottingham dry yeast. Low OG, undetermined cause. Possibly bad reading due to incomplete mixing of wort and top-off water.

	OG	FG	ABV
Recipe	1.053	1.014	5.11%
Recorded	1.044	1.013	4.06%

There is also some extra alcohol from the schnapps. We didn’t get a reliable OG for this one, so it’s all a crapshoot anyways…

Fermentation notes:

Nothing of note

Bottling notes:

Added an estimated 690 ml of pepp schnapps into the bottling bucket, giving us ~141g of sugar for priming.
Some of the schnapps had been soaked in cacao nibs for 2 weeks. Nibs were not added into beer. The Gravity was 1.015 after adding peppermint. Not that useful of a number, probably. The use of the schnapps as carb sugar worked surprisingly well, but involved a lot of math.

Tasting notes:

The mint is surprisingly restrained, considering it was a shot in the dark. The level seems right, but could be backed off a little bit to make it more sessionable.

Conclusion:

Surprisingly good. I’d like to try for a more natural mint flavor next time because it tastes a bit “schnappy” but it’s still good. Separating the mint flavor from the carb level next time will allow for more control over both aspects.