Batch 12 has, so far, been the best batch so far. It's tree-licking root-beery good, sweet enough without being too sickly sweet, and has enough wintergreen and anise flavor to not be over poweringly "SASSAFRAS!!!!!"
There are a few things I would like to change, if I can:
- It still has that damn astringency. Though it does seem mellower.
- Probably a bit too much wintergreen extract. Next batch, I would probably back it off a bit to 2tsp for a 3 gallon batch.
- The anise gets lost in the wintergreen now. Maybe kick the anise seeds up a bit. doubling to 1/2tsp seems a bit risky, but maybe a "heaping 1/4tsp" next time.
Those are the bits that are flavor based. However, there is one thing that is procedure based (though it also has an affect on flavor) that needs to get fixed: There was no fizz, no carbonation. For some reason, the keggerator didn't get any bubbles into the stuff. For the life of me, I don't know why. My best bet is that it wasn't cold enough in there, so I cranked the fridge up to max...
...and proceeded to turn the keg into a solid block of ice... Whoops.
Probably not such a good idea. I've cranked down the cooling now, so hopefully it'll defrost soon. I hope the pressure build-up from freezing didn't crack the keg anywhere; that would get messy.
So, anyway. To sum up: the flavor is really good, but I gotta get some fizz into the stuff before I'll call this batch a success. More later, after defrosting.
*mumble*mumble*Gotta get a thermometer*mumble*mumble*