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Dark Lantern |
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("...When all was quite ready, the Badger took a lantern in one paw, grasped his great stick with the other, and said, 'Now then, follow me! Mole first, 'cos I'm very pleased with him, Rat next, Toad last. And look here Toady! Don't you chatter so much as usual, or you'll be sent back, as sure as fate!' ...) Kenneth Grahame, 'Wind In The Willows' |
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Dark Lantern NOTE: An Oatmeal Stout. Sounds disgusting? Try it - it's like you've died and gone to Heaven! Some folk reserve the drinking of stout for the winter months but this is so nice it would be criminal not to have this available all year round. As with Badger's Supper there is no Protafloc in this black beer and this recipe too calls for an overnight mash. Again, you'll be spending part of three consecutive days brewing this one. As you'll see the list of ingredients is quite long, and another departure is no late addition of hops. Ingredients: 5630 gms Maris Otter 250 gms Roasted Barley 250 gms Flaked Barley 493 gms Crystal Malt 500 gms Chocolate Malt 488 gms Rolled Oats 244 gms Black Malt 246 gms Melanoidin Malt 336 gms Wheat Malt Yeast: 2 sachets of Gervin English Ale yeast, rehydrated, obviously. Hop Schedule: Start of boil: 27 gms Whitbread Goldings @ 6.3 AA 46 gms Tettnang @ 7.4 AA Water Treatment: The Wheeler Method Mash and Sparge: Mash in 17 litres of water at 67°C. 2 crushed Campden tablets went in with the dry grain. Overnight mash. Sweet wort passed through grain twice. Sparge at 62°C. Boil: 90 minutes. 2 crushed Campden tablets added at start of boil along with hops. (One week in primary fermentation (violent fermentation for 48 hours, expect the lid to blow off!), two weeks in secondary, keg or bottle as you prefer.) Tasting Notes: After experiments over a two year period with various Oatmeal Stout recipes, this is the one as far as Mole is concerned. Sensible Mole Test Pilots have been known to argue about whether this is better than Badger's Supper! A large ingredients list means there is much going on, flavour wise, it's a complex dark rich beer the like of which won't be found in any pub. Lovely stuff that gets even better when left to mature for 2 or 3 months in the bottle. |
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Dark Lantern is a pleasing beer for me because it is the result of fairly intense experimentation. As with all 'big' beers, it really comes into its own when left to its own devices to mature for a while. To my mind a beer like this speaks volumes for the cause of homebrewing; it's comparatively expensive to make due to all those different ingredients, and it's quite strong - so if you're waiting for a beer like this to make an appearance at your local pub, you'll be waiting a lifetime. Commercial breweries have to have an eye towards economy and profit and the beers they brew reflect that - not too strong and not too extraordinary so as to appeal to the real ale pubgoers out there; whereas we homebrewers can do whatever we like and that includes brewing self indulgent 'Big Beasts' like this one! Right, off my soapbox and on now to the next page, to a different type of dark beer you may not have tasted before - a smoked beer in the German style - 'Weary Harvester'... |
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