BrewBrain Sports Investing

I tasted my Spiced Holiday Ale last night while taking a gravity reading.  I could have barfed.  I knew when I put the recipe together that it was going to be very bad, but I tried anyway just to make sure.  I have always thought my vanilla chai beer would be either a stout or a porter, but I decided to see what would happen with a relatively light malt backbone.  Result:  Not good.  Not good at all.  Part of the problem is I put a bit of pale chocolate malt in at the last second.  That was a bad idea, but it wouldn’t have worked anyway.  I even tried adding a bit of vanilla extract just to make sure and it got worse.  Brutally bad flavor.

I’ll try again, but I’ll first develop a very tasty milk stout recipe that can stand on its own.  Then I’ll tweak it for the chai and vanilla additions.  It will take a malty and very sweet beer to handle the chai flavors.  Ever try to drink chai without a good rationing of sugar?  It just doesn’t taste very good.  I don’t know what I was thinking throwing that stuff in what was basically a pale ale grain bill.  Yuck!

On the bright side, I don’t have to bottle this weekend!