Black Dragon's Blood

Recipe

Primary

• 7 lbs clover honey

• 7 lbs caramelized clover honey

• 8 lbs triple berry blend

• Water to 3.625 gallons

• 1 lb sugar was added on day 4

Secondary

• Chocolate Coffee

  • 8 ounce coffee hand-ground

  • 6 ounce cacao nibs hand-ground

    • Roasted at 350 F for 15 min

  • 2 qts water

• The amount of chocolate coffee I had left after removing the grounds and nibs was almost perfectly the right amount to top off to 2 qts again using Everclear, for a blend ABV of 17%

• I added as much of the 2 qts as I could to the brew until the headspace was full up all the way. There was probably less than 1 cup leftover.

Finishing

• 2.24g Laffort Autolees (a tannin powder)

Gravity & ABV

• Calculated OG 1.147

• Target FG 1.020 - 1.040

• Projected ABV: 14%-16%

Nutrients

• Go-ferm: 12.5g

• Fermaid O: 6.1g

• Fermaid K: 6.8g

• DAP: 7.9g

Timeline - Pitch to Bottle

• Pitched on 10/19/2020

• Added 1 lb sugar 10/23/2020 since SG was already down to 1.040, much lower than I anticipated this early on, which suggested the brew was likely to ferment well beyond the anticipated ABV range.

• Rough racked 11/05/2020

  • Also back sweetened with about 1/2 pound of sugar up to about 1.016, since SG was down to about 1.010, lower than desired.

• Lab measurements 11/09/2020

  • ABV: 15.91%

  • SG: 1.01534

  • I suspected that the ABV was not almost 20% as my chart says - I think maybe there is something wrong with my step fed ABV formula.

  • Alternatively, it's possible that the estimations made about fruit are incorrect, and the OG is not as high as was anticipated.

• Re-racked onto ~15 cups fortified cacao coffee blend 11/09/2020

  • "Mocha" coffee blend was fortified to ~17%

  • I'd guess this pushed our ABV up to about 16%, maybe a little over

• In taste-testing somewhere around 11/09/2020, the wife said she would drink it as-is! That's less than a month from pitch to drinkable.

• Tannin adjustment of 2.24g Laffort Autolees went 11/24/2020

  • I've been told these usually need 6-8 weeks to meld properly, so I intend to wait at least 6 weeks (01/05/2021) before tasting to see if this is sufficient. It's slightly less than I used on the second Black Dragon's Blood blend variant, and that brew had less volume than this one, so it's possible we'll need more. But I figured, I can always add more if it's still too acidic! Can't really take it out, though.

• I added 12 oz of brown sugar 05/06/2021. I've already got quite a bit of this bottled between the other two batches and I wanted to see how it balanced with higher gravity while I'm working on the fruit bomb version. It's more drinkable, and less like working on a coffee or bourbon and feeling like you really gotta sip carefully. I'm not sure it's better per my palate since I like both coffee and bourbon, but it's probably better by most people's palates - if that makes any sense.

• Mead still in progress!