First of 3 extract kits I’ve had sitting around…

Recipe

This was a cobbled-together extract brew as I thought I had an oatmeal stout kit but didn’t. I grabbed a couple cans of light LME I had on hand, added some specialty grains and oatmeal and went to town.

In secondary, I’ve added Coloma banana concentrate and some rum barrel chips (…which may be long past their peak). We’ll see how it all goes; it went from 1.019 to 1.029 so hopefully the yeast will wake up and go to town on some of the sugars, but also hopefully they won’t wreck the fruit flavor…

Characteristics

ExpectedActual
OG1.045-1.0491.037
FG1.011-1.015
ABV4.25-4.75%

Fermentation Notes

  • 12/29/24 kickoff @ 1.50
  • 1/12/25 secondary: 1.019 -> 1.029 after adding banana concentrate

Notes

  • Brewed on 2024-09-04

As usual with extract kits, I came in lower than expected for the OG. After reading up on it, it might’ve been that I didn’t mix the top-off water well enough. The heavier, colder wort might’ve sunk to the bottom and the lighter, warmer top-off water might’ve stayed on top.

Reading that, I sanitized a whisk and stirred for a bit which wound up equalizing the temperature a bit (some of the top-off water was hot to try and bring things up from the mid-50s from sitting outside all night). The gravity improved a couple of points, but only about that much (1.035 -> 1.037).

I’ll see how it settles out after fermentation.