Ingredients
The recipe in the book says this:
Take a small bunch of all, or part of the following: Sweet fern, sarsaparilla, winter-green, sassafras, prince's pine, and spice woode. Boil them with two or three ounces of hops to three or four gallons of water, and two or three raw potatoes, pared and cut in slices... and a quart of molasses put to three gallons of the beer.
We changed things up a bit. For one, we ommitted a few of the ingredients and added another. We also greatly bulked up the amount of molasses in order to achieve a high enough OG (and therefore potential alcohol content). Also, seeing as the hops are unspecified, we just used what we had leftover. So, here's what we got:
| Used |
| 8.62 lbs (3 qts) Molasses |
| 2oz Indian Sarasparilla |
| 2oz Heather tips |
| 1oz Wintergreen |
| 0.125oz dried Sage |
| 0.75oz Chinook (12.2%AA) |
| 0.625oz Target (10.0%AA) |
| 0.625oz Kent Goldings (5%AA) |
| 0.125oz Kent Goldings (6.3%AA) |
| WLP007 English Ale Yeast |
Brew Method
February 9, 2008We boiled up 6 gallons of water, and then added our molasses. It came in 8x12 fluid ounce bottles. After all were emptied, we rinsed them out with hot water and put that in the pot as well. This brought us to an 8 gallon boil.
After this came to a boil again, we added our herbs (everything minus the hops) and let it boil some more to bring the total volume down. After it boiled off about a gallon of water, we began our hop additions.
T=60min
Added .75oz Chinool (12.2%AA)
T=45min
Added 0.625oz Target (10.0%AA)
T=30min
Added 0.625oz UK Kent Goldings (5.0%AA)
T=15min
Added 0.125oz Kent GOldings (6.3%AA)
Started ice bath
Added one teaspoon of irish moss
Inserted the wort chiller for sanitization
T=0min
Turned off the heat, moved our pot next to the ice bath and hooked up the wort chiller. Turned it on, and once the wort was cooled to 100°, we put the pot into the ice bath. Once it then got to 65°, we removed it from the bath, removed the wort chiller, and strained out the hops. We whirlpooled the wort to get sediment to settle conically in the pot, and then racked from the side into the primary fermenter.
Fermentation
March 8, 2008
Pitched our yeast and put in the basement for storage. Our original gravity reading ended up being 1.062.
March 10, 2008
Witnessed a bubble escape the airlock, despite no krausen. But it looks like one is starting to form. There are white swirlies on the surface.
March 22, 2008
Racked to secondary. We actually racked off a full glass as well, because the secondary got full. We tried it and HOLY CRAP it's freaking sweet. And I mean that literally. Very very sweet. Overpowering almost. This is most definitely a sipping beer. Definitely one to have with a meal. The molasses is most prevalent, but the wintergreen stands out as well as the sarsaparilla. The sage and heather tips go unnoticed. Seeing as these have a few more weeks to go before we really taste them, we're gonna see how they are then.
Bottling
April 12. 2008
Bottled. Got 24x22oz bottles. FG reading was 1.022... really high, presumably due to unfermentables in the molasses. That gives us an abv of 5.16%. The plan is to let these sit just a long long time, because upon trying some more, they are overly sweet still. We'll see what a couple months of conditioning does to them.
Tasting
May 23, 2008
Cracked a bottle six weeks after bottling. Still entirely too rich. This may require another year of conditioning before tasting again.
Notes
- Next time we try this brew we're thinking of starting with 5 gallons instead of 6, so we don't have to spend an hour boiling off a gallon.
- Replace about half the molasses with pale malt.
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