So when I made my first molasses based recipe it had a dominant molasses taste. On the second go at a Porter style I wanted to try some other flavors to balance out the molasses finish. I am going to ruin the rest of this post for you. This attempt did not accomplish anything, well maybe that is not true. There was a profound learning experience when my brother came out to help install recessed lighting.
So, i created the wort as follows:
2 grams of hops
1/2 cup molasses
3 quarts water
1.5 cup sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup almonds lightly crushed.
Boiled this down to 2 quarts
Once chilled I added 2 quarts of strained keifer
The ABV was between 6 - 8%. Not really exactly sure
Bottles after about 3 weeks. Added 4 ounces of strained keifer plus 1 tsp sugar.
Now, I could not taste the almonds or even the maple syrup. In hindsight I would think that I have to roast the ingredients to caramelize any sugars out of them. I think that is the trick to making malts for traditional beer making.
My brother came out to visit and after a long couple of days we cracked one of these open to share over a game of Stratego. We each had about 8 ounces and we were starting to feel the effects of a strong IPA. The flavor was still molasses but we were able to experiment with additives. Fresh lemon squeezed in made a big difference. We then went Mcguyver and Mr Wizard to take a room temperature bottle and make it cold. Grabbed a pot, some snow, and a boat load of salt to rapidly chill the bottle. Worked just as good as we remembered it from the episode in the 80s. By the time we finished this bottle we were feeling really good.
At this point I know i was onto something with fermented keifer.
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