I was amazed at how much better my home brews are getting from just leaving them be? Why is that? How exactly can the flavour of beer improve by just leaving it alone in a non-reactive container? I would love to learn the science behind this phenomenon.
I started with a kg of oats. I decided I wanted to know what coco powder would do in beer? I also thought I would like to know what a few coffee grains would do. So I added them.
I only did a 45 minute boil no hops. I usually do an hour but simply put the African heat got to me. I used an ice bath this time and after adding the yeast I left it over night.
The next day I tried some before I went to bottle but was somewhat disappointed. The coco made it extremely bitter. I also realised that the coco powder I used was a energy type of drink.
This meant it had a whole list of minerals in. This seemed to me to add a very harsh bitter taste to it. I was almost ready to consider the experiment a failure but to my surprise I tried some today and the harshness seemed to mellow out a great deal. Also the taste of the oats is now much more prominent.
It was amazing to me how big of a difference one day could make. I'm tempted to leave it for a week.