Hill Farmstead Everett Clone

A shot of 2 of the 3 fermenters.......

Fermenting away happily today!

 

Taking inspiration from a beer a love (Jackie O's Oil of Aphrodite) my experimental addition to that 3 gallons will be a homemade tincture using these....

 

Yeah I had my suspicions about lactose and used it in my previous batch. Still not sure one way or another though. I have a feeling there is some mystery ingredient in there that is either not on the label or carefully hidden in the vague generality with which the label is worded. For example, the label says "roasted malts" so most of us assume roasted barley. But chocolate malt is a roasted malt. So who is to say that roasted barley is even in there? That aside, I've kicked around some other "mystery ingredient" ideas in my mind including: actual coffee, actual chocolate, lactose, oats, and/or chocolate rye malt.

 

And knowing what a chocolate bomb the actual beer is, I'm ready to completely nix the roast barley (I almost did this go around but had a tiny amount of it in inventory so I kicked it in more to get rid of it than anything else) and make 75% pale malt, 15% caramel malts, 10% chocolate malts my target grain bill next time.

 

Like a cold water extraction and late addition of the cap into the boil? Or like a late addition of them as grist into the mash? Neither would affect the mouthfeel though and it's the mouthfeel that makes me wonder about the lactose and/or oats possibility. More so lactose because of the creaminess than oats which would produce a smoothness. Others may assume lactose because of the under attenuation / high final gravity, but I think the grain bill and high mash temp makes that feasible without lactose. That aside, I tried cold water extraction and late addition of the cap into the boil kettle on my first go around (when I used even more roast malt) and found the resulting beer to not be as roasty / have as much bite as the real deal.

 

Well I kegged 10g of my beer today. 5g is being force carbonated and 5g keg primed with 147g of DME, which should hopefully bring it to about 2.3 volumes of CO2.

Since my OG was 2 point short (1.085 instead of 1.087) I was hoping my FG would be 2 points short (1.029 instead of 1.031) but I ran 5 points short hitting a FG of 1.024 giving me an 8.1% abv and 70% apparent attenuation. I think me spending the first 15 minutes of the mash at 150F and ramping up to 158F played a big role in that. Beer smelled and tasted very good though.

The other 3g got racked into a 3g carboy (co2 flushed first) on top of an 8" medium plus toasted american oak spiral that was boiled in water for 10 minutes, dried, and soaked in Sailor Jerry rum for a week first. I plan on letting the beer oak for 4 weeks while my toasted black walnuts / vanilla beans are extracting in Sailor Jerry rum. The extract will then be added to the 3g keg just prior to kegging the oaked beer.

I should be drinking the force carbonated keg by NYE, the DME keg primed keg by late January, and the oaked walnut vanilla rum keg by mid February. I'll update the thread with tasting notes when they are available.

If anybody has a fresh bottle of Everett they can donate or trade me so that I can do a side by side, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Lol just re-read the first post in this thread where I documented the ingredient list from the label and roasted barley is included!

 

I used a normal monster mill and added to the boil kettle in the last 15 minutes of the boil. While the idea of getting more aroma out of malt by whirlpooling with it (a la whirlpool hop addition) is interesting, it would lower the overall roast character and, when I did my cold water extraction, I found the resulting beer had less roast character than the real deal. Could have been that I just wasn't using enough roast malt to begin with though. I also agree that a commercial brewery would probably not be doing this though.