I'm not going to waste a whole lot of time on a detailed review of this beer, because it's ridiculously overcarbonated. I had one explode in storage as it was carbonating, blowing out the bottom of the bottle. The others pour straight foam, then what's left in the bottle climbs right out to sit on the table next to you. I can let some of the beer sit until it starts to go flat--meaning normal--but there's the CO2 leaves a vicious carbonic bite that obscures further analysis.Why did this happen? Well there's always a chance I mis-measured the priming sugar, but I take good notes, and looking at them now I doubt that's what happened. A more likely scenario is that when the yeast woke up to go after the priming sugar, they went on to finish off some residual sugars left over from fermentation. In my fermentation notes, I wrote that the temperature dropped to 62F after 5 days and had appeared to stop fermentation at SG 1.020. It dropped a couple more points in secondary, but in all likelihood it could have used to shed another.
All that being said, here are a few notes from the gravity sample at bottling:
- This is super chocolaty, with a milk chocolate flavor that I like. Still a bit sweet though.
- I'm getting the same root beer flavor I remember from last year's oatmeal stout. Now that I've worked with the Guinness yeast a little bit more, that's definitely the source. It's cool to taste the alchemical transformation of yeast esters and roasted malts into root beer flavors.
- Lighter roast barley plus black patent does not equal dark roast barley. The dark roast barley in my dry stout last year was more along the lines of dark chocolate, while the lighter roast barley is more of a milk chocolate, with coffee notes from the black patent. I'm really impressed with the depth of flavor in the roast barleys though.
- I need to brew more stouts!
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