When Life gives you lemons.... (All grain back to extracts)

[WFox93]

.... No I did not make lemon beer. And this really isn't a lemon scenario but I wanted something click batey lol.

Got some "Classic American Light" Extract with the 3 gallon fast ferment and decided that wouldn't do. Looked around the house and found some molasses (always wanted to brew with that), some maple syrup and started brain storming. That's when I decided I needed to make a black lager. Picked up some black malt and cara munich, crushed about 5oz of the black and 2 or 3 or the munich, steeped them for about an hour, grabbed some cluster hops and boiled for about 20 minutes before adding 8oz or so of the molasses and a little less than 8oz of maple syrup, then the extract and I pitched some white labs pilsner lager yeast. It's fermenting in my mud room now which over the course of the next few weeks, I expect to be around 50 degrees.

 

[seatazzz]

Wow. I don't know how much flavor you'll get from the syrup and the molasses but that is bound to be something dark with some bready & roasty notes from the Munich and Black malt. Let us know how it turns out. How did it taste going into the fermenter?

 

[WFox93]

going into the fermenter it tasted exactly how I expected: Roasty and slightly bready, strong molasses flavor with a slight maple finish. I'm nervous about how it will ferment out though. This is my first conical, my first lager, and things are not going as planned in the temperature department. It's happily bubbling away and there was a nice thick krausen on it yesterday, but I'm about 5 degrees higher than I anticipated when selecting my yeast.