Tastes a lot like molasses (almost a little burnt flavor) but with a much smoother mouth feel, not nearly so thick.
wikipedia tells me
In China, sorghum is fermented and distilled to produce maotai, which is regarded as one of the country’s most famous liquors.
and
Sorghum is in the subfamily Panicoideae and the tribe Andropogoneae (the tribe of big bluestem and sugar cane).
witch I’m guessing is why it was chosen as a fermentable material to replace wheat, barley, rye and oats. Though I wonder if that would make this not beer but maotai. Also I’m gonna say the relation to sugar cane would explain the molasses flavour.
While hops are on the ingredient list they are almost non existent in the flavour profile leaving a very sweet sweet beer.
need to make a rating system for my reviews …. rating coming soon.
So while transferring from the primary to the bottling bucket I forgot to close the spout on the bottling bucket so I lost almost a gallon of beer to the floor. Not fun but not the end of the world. Cleaned up pretty easy with a big towel… that I put in the laundry and forgot about, encouraging the growth of lots and lots of mold. It washed out so it’s all ok but Jackie will make fun of me for the rest of time.
After the spill it all went into bottles without incident and was given this label:
Not much to report, the brew went pretty smoothly. Scott and Sarah K came over to lend a hand. Ended up taking a while to clean the kitchen so we didn’t start the brew until almost 1AM. They had to go not long after the grains finished steeping so I ended up maintaining the boil alone for most of it. After the brew was over I woke up Jackie to hold the the brew pot in the bathtub while I finished preparing the fermenting bucket.
Note: Buy a good manual can opener. The cheep one from 7-11 was worse than the electric that I ended up using again.
1.072 original measured gravity at 75F + .0015 to compinsate temp = original gravity of 1.0735
I did all the big preliminary work to do my next brew last night. My fermenting bucket still had the smell of my last beer in it but it’s all clean now. All that’s left for tonight is cleaning the brew pot and sterilizing everything.
I think I may switch the roles of my buckets this time around just to keep the wear on them even. They both have spigots but only one has a thermometer stuck to it, we’ll see how it goes.
Jackie’s boss loved my first beer and ordered a full batch. I got the last of the kit I used at my local shop (Thanks for the assist Andy) and may brew as soon as this weekend.
So, having done a bit of math according to my hydrometer and my best remembrances of temperatures my beer is roughly 6.5% alcohol but the way it goes straight to your head I’m pretty sure it’s a decent amount higher. The recipe says it should be 8-9%.
My thoughts:
Beginning at the end, An extremely mild bitterness in the after taste. Preceded by a deep leafy herbal flavor. As it hit’s the tongue it is very lite and with a lot of carbonation that brings the aroma right up your nose. Jackie can describe this better than I can, check out what she thinks.
Jackie’s thoughts/ review:
Hey all. So I just tried Stacey’s first beer. I poured it into a fancy 13 oz glass, super gentle because Stace mentioned it had a lot of carbonation – turns out he just shook his. : ) The head on mine is very thin, mostly white with yellow hints, visible bubbles. Very strong aroma of molasses with a hint of licorice. Taste is at first almost minty, a bit like cola. Moxie, maybe? Mouthfeel is not as heavy as I expected – the color is so dark I was expecting a stout-type heaviness, but it’s actually pretty light in texture. Really sparkly carbonation. Lingering aftertaste of orange zest, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Overall it’s really pretty good, very complex. Not the type of beer I generally go for, but definately well done, especially for a first brew! : )
The beer has been in bottles for about a week, which is apparently enough to carbonate it. I cracked one open last night (it’s early I know) and it was pretty good. I’ll write up a full description in a week or so when my beer is the first of the evening and not the 4th.
