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Summary

• Recipe: AHS Black Ale + modifications
• Brew date: 11/1/2009
• Bottle date: 11/22/2009
• Original Gravity: 1.060
• Final Gravity: 1.018
• ABV: 5.5% ABV
• SRM: unknown

Details

This was a fun one.  I took the AHS Black Ale recipe and brewed it as instructed.  Towards the end of primary fermentation I went to the grocery store and picked up a vanilla bean.  I sanitized the bean, cut it open, scraped out the seeds and then added both the seeds and husk of the bean to 2 cups of Famous Grouse scotch whiskey.  I let this all sit in the whiskey for about 2 days.  I then transferred the beer from my primary fermenter to a secondary and dumped in the 2 cups of whiskey with the vanilla bean seeds and husk.

The beer turned out pretty good.  I enjoyed it personally, and my brother seemed really impressed with it when I brought it up for the holidays.  Though if I decide to try this one again in the future I think I will drop the vanilla flavor a notch or so and either use half a bean instead of a whole one or maybe just toss the full bean in the whiskey without splitting it open to expose the seeds.  The vanilla wasn’t really overwhelming but I think it was slightly stronger than I would have preferred.  It might also be fun to play with different whiskeys next time…maybe try an American or Canadian whiskey instead of Scotch or something.