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Recipe
Recipe
This is a nano brew I sized so I could do primary in a 1.75 L liquor bottle, and secondary in a 32 oz mason jar.
Primary
Primary
4 cups water
0.7 ounces honey
9 full-sized candy canes
Laffort Spark yeast
Gravity & ABV
Gravity & ABV
OG 1.042
Target FG 1.000
Target ABV 5.51%
Nutrients
Nutrients
1g Fermaid K
Front-loaded nutrients on this one because it's so small. Pretty sure the 1g each of FermK and FermO on the previous nano batch was more than necessary, so I tried just FermK on this one.
Timeline - Pitch to Bottle
Timeline - Pitch to Bottle
Pitched on 07/16/2020
Racked 07/25/2020
Stabilized 07/26/2020
Sweetened with 2 oz honey 07/29/2020
Adding cacao nibs 08/05/2020
12/02/2020 - I'm throwing in the towel on this one. It's thin and bitter, the cacao nibs should've been toasted first, and I'm personally finding I'm not a huge fan of minty alcoholic beverages. But that's OK with me - if I have to give up on a brew, I am actually quite pleased it is one of the nano batches. This is precisely why some of my batches are so small - it's not really a big deal if a 4-cup batch doesn't turn out!
Process
Process
Pour 2 cups filtered water into small pot and begin heating
Unwrap 9 candy canes and break them down to fit into the pot
Cover and continue to heat water until candy melts
Weigh 0.7 oz honey and use remaining 2 cups of water to mix it
Remove candy canes from heat once melted and let cool
Pour both candy cane and honey musts into primary fermenter
Pitch yeast and nutrients
Weighing out the honey
Filtering for wrappers
Checking gravity
Right after pitch
Retrospective
Retrospective
Process Improvement
Process Improvement
Gotta toast cacao nibs first!
Recipe Improvements
Recipe Improvements
I scaled the number of candy canes based on one of Man Made Mead's peppermint recipes, but I don't think it scales linearly (or perhaps, I did the math wrong). So much sugar was introduced by the candy that I used almost no honey.
Gravity also came in a tad higher than expected and I'm not sure why. Maybe the sugar content of the candy canes is higher than it says on the packaging or something?
This is thin and bitter. There's not enough honey or alcohol to build any body, and it seems the untoasted cacao nibs can introduce a lot of bitterness without any of the chocolate flavor they're desired for.
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