brew

Chile lurks within

The tastes like anything style! Coca Mole is an appropriately dark, dark brown with hints of red where light hits. The aroma is very mild with a little sweet vanilla setting up a porter-ish expectation. The body is lighter though still with roastiness, nuttiness and bits of chocolate. The spiciness from the chiles has died down substantially with time. They may be volatile in much the same way that hop oils are volatile. I don’t get any vegetable flavor of the actual peppers but only the lightly lingering burn of capsaicin. I wish it had a little more heat although certainly not a big painful wallop. The adjuncts worked nicely in not imparting any weird, off flavors but this is a brew best consumed fresh. The ABV keeps it from going bad with age but it’s still diminished.

We based are recipe on New Belgium’s Lips of Faith cocoa-chile beer. The base was fourteen and a half pounds of American two-row with twelve ounces of Caramel 80 and four ounces each of chocolate and pale chocolate malts. We added several ancho chiles to the mash for the first spice addition. The boil was sixty minutes with an ounce of Target hops at the outset strictly for balance. We also added some arbol chiles during the boil. At the five minute mark we added a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon and some cocoa powder (amount, unfortunately, not recorded). The 1.070 gravity was lowered than planned but sufficient. It still finished at 1.010 using standard WLP001 for a not exactly moderate 7.9% ABV.

Not Bacon-Brau, thankfully

A subtle, sweet nose with just a hint of smoke is how the rauch introduces itself. This is misleading as the taste reshuffles the flavors with a strong smokiness backed by mild malt sweetness. I really like how this turned out because smoked beers can so easily go wrong. There’s no sharp, peat related flavors nor is their anything suggesting barbequed meat. I don’t get any real hoppiness and the smoke creeps into the finish exactly where a mild bitterness would normally be. It’s not terribly complex but works wonderfully as something different. I like this as evidence that different beers can be quite distinct without relying on huge, over the top flavors.

The rauch started with four and a half pounds of Pilsner and a near equal amount of smoked malt: three pounds, ten ounces. I believe it was beechwood smoked. The recipe also included twenty-two ounces of Munich, ten of Caramunich II, three of Melanoidin, and an ounce and a half dash of black malt. The 90-minute Pilsner boil included Hallertauer additions of 1.5 ounces at sixty and 0.5 ounces at ten minutes. Starting gravity was low at 1.046 but the 1.013 finish was exactly right. White Labs #830 lager yeast was used for the whole fermentation.

Dark and lactosey

Our sweet stout is English in character with eight and a quarter pounds of Maris Otter for the base. A big thirteen ounce dose of black patent turns things dark. Ten ounces of Caramel 80 and six ounces of pale chocolate add a bit of character. Thirteen ounces of unfermentable lactose added directly to the boil shifts it into the sweet category. The only hop addition was an ounce and a half of East Kent Goldings at the beginning of a sixty minute boil. Gravity was right on target at 1.058. The recipe called for an odd yeast: Wyeast #1099 Whitbread but fermentation was nonetheless uneventful completing at 1.10.

Very, very roasty to the point of almost smelling smoky – the nose also includes sweetness that comes across as vanilla. The initial taste is definitely on the sweeter side although not overly so. The finish gives way to a slight bitterness but no big burnt or coffee flavors. If there’s a smokiness in the taste as well it’s definitely very mild. The texture is thinner than I would like. The milk sugar and unfermentables ought to result in a fuller body. A little coffee would not be unwelcome, but the general mix of sweetness and mildly bitter barley seems appropriate.

Way more than a dram

One of the behemoths mixed in at random. We started with a giant sixteen and a quarter pounds of Maris Otter malt and then a variety of supplementary specialty malts: thirteen ounces of Caramel 40, six ounces each of Munich and honey malts, and three ounces each of Caramel 120 and pale chocolate. Neither the mash nor the boil ran long, a bit to my surprise, since I expected kettle caramelization would be important. Hops were East Kent Goldings with an ounce at a half at the beginning of the boil and a half ounce at ten minutes to go. The gravity reached a borderline silly 1.104, and Wyeast #1728 (Scottish Ale) managed to get all the way down to 1.020 for 11.2% ABV.

You can smell this beer from a good distance with loads of toffee and molasses and vanilla and raisins. From up close there’s also a whiff of straight alcohol. It tastes very much like Scotch – as far as I’m concerned, the distinguishing characteristic of a good wee heavy. It’s sweet and a bit smoky as well as downright sneaky. There’s little to no heat or burn from the double-digit ABV.  Rich caramel flavors dominate with dark fruit filling in the background nicely. The finish is definitely sweet (probably unavoidable) but doesn’t range into syrupy. While the beer isn’t particularly thick bodied, the richness make for a challenging pint. It’s a sipper better suited for a ten ounce glass – in an excellent way.

Should’ve been a stein

A lovely autumn orange with mild fruity aroma, this brew has a sweet initial impression with mild yeast flavors followed by a dry, earthy finish. The body is a bit heavier than medium with a definite creaminess. The malt taste is tilted very much towards sweet rather than roasty, toasty, biscuit or bread flavors. The overall impression is brighter, for lack of a better word, than I’d imagine for an Oktoberfest. It reminds me a lot of lighter pilsner / Hallertaeur blends like a Kolsch or a Blonde ale. The mouthfeel is heavier but the beer itself doesn’t seem significantly maltier.

The marzen lacks a true base malt with a bit under four pounds of pilsner, a bit over three pounds of Munich malt, and about two and a half pounds of Vienna. Another twelve ounces of Caramunich II adds color and sweetness. Like many pilsner brews the boil was 90 minutes, and like many pilsner brews the hops were strictly Hallertauer: an ounce and a half at sixty with another half ounce at twenty. The gravity came in low but within style on both ends starting at 1.051 and finishing at 1.010.