Time passes and passes quickly, the summer days are gone and almost back and we still haven’t written about it. Sorry about that, life happens. Well, remember that kitchen sink Black Gose? This beer is the opposite. Like that Beatles song that when played backwards left an enigmatic message. Turn me on, dead man.
The only thing turned on here was our kettle, which, poor thing, has done so much for us. They should sell these kettles with microphones and cameras, it would be fun (and easier for us). Well kettle heating, an easy day ahead, simple grain bill, we let the Salted Caramel Malt shine, supported by a healthy dose of Wheat and Spelt to make the thing as velvety as possible.
We push the cassette forward, head to the fridge to get the lactobacillus and we find out that the fridge had turned off and the package that we had intended for today hydrated, already opened. Life as a homebrewer, something will always have to go wrong. One needs to have faith and move on. We get our pipette and proceed, to guarantee a pH around 4-something and let the wort acidify overnight, and see what will happen.
Night arrives after a busy day and the pH does not drop as we expected. Alarms are ringing. There is little to do now, keep the faith, hoping that the wort will acidify soon.
Monday comes, the first and worst day of the week they say, which gets even worse when, after a day at work, we have a boil ahead of us. This means that finally, the pH has reached a satisfactory value of 3.44.
At least it’s August and it’s a nice day outside. Temperature set to 100ºC and here we go. Thank god this is also a boil with little action in the kettle. A few hops, so no one will suspect that we are going to make a gruit, some nutrients for our yeast not to throw any tantrums during fermentation, and that’s it.
Even less work remains when we have a fermenter, aka a plastic bucket, the proud of all the homemade brewer, ready with yeast waiting for wort. You have to work smart, not work harder.
Now we let it ferment and, as usual, the funnier part soon follows.
A few weeks pass by, no one really knows how many. The beer has fully fermented, probably a long time ago, maybe too long. Perhaps because of the long acidification or the reuse of yeast (along with trub) it does not have a striking personality. It’s time to put on some makeup.
If a contrast of white elements with a dark base was invented with the kitchen sink black gose, here our proposal takes on the opposite contours. White beer base with “dark” adjuncts. Imagine a White Stout, but in a good way, in an acidic version. Sorry for the hatred on the White Stout, but we all know, it’s deserved.
If in the other adventure orange peels, coriander, hibiscus, licorice and molasses were stuffed in the beer, the minimum acceptable is to maintain or even raise the bar. Let’s see how the count goes hand in hand. Salted caramel, maple syrup (ok?), cocoa, coffee. On the one hand we have 5 deputies, here we have 4. Game over? No, wait, I know, what else goes well with this whole mix ?! Coconut. Unfortunately it was too late to incorporate the coconut into the beer. But…, it was not too late to incorporate the beer into the coconut. With creativity, and some John Guest pieces, anything is possible.
Coffee, Cocoa, Maple Syrup, Salted Caramel Gose
Batch: 19L
Cereal: 5,03 Kg.
Original Gravity: 1.048
IBU: 30
Boil Time: 90 minutes
Cereal
58.1% – 3,04 kg. Extra Pale Ale malt
14.3% – 0,75 kg. Salted Caramel malt
11.4% – 0,6 kg. Wheat
5.7% – 0,3 kg. Flaked Oats
5.7% – 0,3 kg. Spelt
4.8% – 0,25 kg. Lactose
Hops
5 gr. Columbus (pellet, 13% AA) @ 60 min.
Extras
5 ml. Maple Syrup extract
250 gr. Coffee (special roast by “Torra” specialty coffee shop)
250 gr. Cocoa nibs (half toasted, half not toasted)
And coconut. Sorry, coconuts, plural.
Yeast
Lallemand Voss Kveik
Water
Ca: 60
Mg: 12
Na: 21
Cl: 80
SO4: 40
SO4 to Cl Ratio: 0,5
Mash
Sacharification – 60 min. @ 67ºC
Mash Out – 10 min @ 76ºC
pH@30 min 5.23
Observation
It was super fun to stuff beer into coconuts, there’s no way it couldn’t be fun. Highly advisable.
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