📝 Stout with lactose and vanilla that turned out lighter and sour.
Label: SSA (stout sans alcool)
- 7 lb pale malt
- 1 lb Munich malt type 1
- 1 lb crystal caramel malt (120)
- 1 lb chocolate wheat
- 1 lb toasted barley flakes
- 1 lb roasted barley
- 1 lb flaked oats
- 1 oz Williamette
- 1 oz Challenger
- Omega Yeast Jovaru Lithuanian Farmhouse Ale (OYL033)
- Lactose
- Natural vanilla extract
- Mash 10 L of water at 170 °F (should go down to 152 °F when adding the grains) for 1 hour
- Mash out at 160 °F (in practice ended up 190 °F for this batch)
- Sparge 19 L of water at 170 °F for 15 minutes
- Boil for 1 hour
- Near end of boil, add 0.75 lb of lactose
- At 60 minutes, add all hops
- Cool down to 25 °C
- Syphon into carboy
- Add yeast and vanilla extract and gently mix
- Add more lactose and vanilla extract to taste
- Brewing: 2020-07-03
- Bottling: 2020-09-18
- Tasting: 2020-10-07
It barely had any active fermentation, no idea why. Maybe the malt selection that we did custom for the first time instead of following a recipe was bad? Maybe we didn't cool it enough or maybe the yeast didn't like the addition of lactose and vanilla extract?
It's weirdly sour, but it's not unpleasant, just unexpected. Maybe some Brett yeast were still present in the carboy and gave that extra funkiness?
It is carbonated. I was worried with the way it fermented so little that the yeast would just be dead and adding bottling sugar wouldn't trigger any refermenting and the beer would be flat. It's not, which makes a huge difference; we tasted it before bottling and it was pretty disappointing, but now it's carbonated it's pretty damn good.
It does taste slightly milky, the vanilla is barely present though, we could have added more extract. It's somewhat bitter as well, maybe not black IPA bitter but more bitter than I would have expected. Not unpleasant either.
We didn't measure the alcohol level, but it is definitely lighter than expected, at least a session if not close to a nonalcoholic beer? You do get the kick of a proper beer when you drink it so I would think there's at least 3 or 4%.
I had very little hope for this beer after seeing the way it fermented (or mostly, didn't ferment), I had mixed feelings when tasting it flat when bottling, like it wasn't undrinkable garbage that we would need to dump down the sink but wasn't good either, but was really surprised after it carbonated, it's actually fucking good.
The taste is not common which is actually something I like when drinking beer, but sometimes can be a bit off-putting (e.g. some very smoky beers I love to drink a taster of but would definitely not appreciate a full pint). This one though is pleasing enough that I wanted more after drinking just one glass, which is a very good sign.