Vital Statistics:
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Recipe: 13 lb 2-row pale malt 1.5 lb Carafa II malt 1 lb crystal 60°L 1 lb flaked oats 10 AAU (22g @ 13% AA) Nugget @ 60 4 AAU (35g @ 3.2% AA) Tettnanger @ 15 Wyeast 2112 - California Lager | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General Notes: Used yeast cake from batch #29. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Tasting Notes: Reviewed 5 February 2011. Poured from tap into a pint glass. Appearance: body has a rich, black hue which doesn't let much light through. Head poured two inches of creamy tan foam; in a couple minutes this subsided into a single finger of foam. Pretty good, overall. (4) Smell: roasty aroma with subtle notes of coffee and chocolate. There's a fair bit of tartness here; it smells a lot more like an English porter than a Baltic-style porter. There's also a little bit of vegetal hoppiness here which doesn't really work. Overall, it's not bad, but it could use a bit of work. (3.5) Taste: very smooth flavor hits you at first with the vegetal hoppiness which fades quickly into the better roasty characteristics. There's a hint of fruitiness complemented by a hint of alcohol; the finish is drier and shows, again, more of a roasty element. This beer has a good dynamism, and there are aspects that I like, but there are also some flavor imperfections which need to be addressed. What I really want to do is capture that sweetish fruitiness in the middle of the flavor and stretch it out across the board. (3.5) Mouthfeel: creamy, silky and pretty much awesome. Between the mash temp, the recipe and my now quite successful kegerator, this beer has everything I want in a porter mouthfeel. It could potentially use more body, but that is a mere trifle compared to the silky smoothness I'm now experiencing. (4.5) Drinkability: this is a smooth, mostly good-tasting porter. Frankly, some of the flavor imperfections are not deal-breakers at all for me, and I feel like I could quaff plenty of this stuff despite its ABV. (4) Overall score 3.75 (B). I feel like this is a good first attempt at a Baltic porter. Perhaps I will use a more traditional lager yeast next time, and hop with an earthier English-type hop like Fuggles or Willamette. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hops Table
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