So, I am thinking of brewing a french toast brown ale. This is what I have this far... Eff ~75% O.G. 1.067 F.G. 1.019 SRM 22L Grains: 5.5 lbs 2 Row 36% 5.5 lbs Maris otter 36% 1.5lb light munich 10% 1lbs crystal 60L 6.6% 12 oz brown malt 5% 8 oz Crystal 40L 3.3% 6oz Chocolate 2.5% Hops: 1 oz Galena Yeast WL001 Adjuncts: 1 teaspoon cinnamon @ 5 mins 3-4 vanilla beans after fermentation (1-2 weeks) benilla maple syrup extract to taste at bottling
Are you looking for advice or simply announcing to the world that this is your master plan? If it's just a recipe post, you may want to move it over to the recipe area of the forum.
If you skip the cinnamon, the vanilla beans, and the maple syrup, you might have something fairly tasty.
Do you have any past experience with vanilla beans? I used two vanilla beans for a 5 gallon batch of bourbon vanilla porter and thought it was too much.
Sure. Base recipe looks like a nice backdrop. A little vanilla goes a long way. You might want to soak it as well. Might as well be bourbon.
Two thing from my experience: Two vanilla beans in a porter I made was not noticeable when I cracked the first bottle except for the faintest of whiffs on the nose. I left them in for 1 week and soaked mine in vodka to try and prevent the different flavor of other hard liqueurs. I have not used that maple extract, but be careful with it. I bought something off amazon that was a small bottle, opened it up and thought it smelled a little like maple, but not too much and it barely tasted like maple. End result was a very chemically tasting and smelling beer. Otherwise looks good to me.
So . . . cinnamon, vanilla, and maple extract are ADDITIVES not adjuncts. Try adding cinnamon to your mash. You'll have to add more, but I find that it lessens the "bark" character than it can give. I'd advise using organic vanilla extract and adding it at bottling as well. This stuff is awesome:
Does anyone else detect the aroma and flavor of bitter "poison" in vanilla extract? I like the fake Molina Mexican stuff MUCH better, it tastes even more vanilla-y to me than real vanilla! If that makes any sense (probably not). Cheers all.
I don't know about poison, but I don't care for the flavor of any vanilla extracts I've tasted. I dry bean with real vanilla beans.
