Update: Brown Porter

The porter I brewed Saturday was put directly onto the yeast cake of the ESB, and was bubbling like crazy through the airlock after only an hour or two. It has tailed off significantly since then, but that's probably because the original gravity was fairly low. This batch is most likely almost done fermenting. I'll check the gravity next Monday when I get back from Connecticut.

Now I'm debating whether I should reuse the same yeast again for another batch next week, or if I should look to brew with some other yeast instead. I have a bottle of the dark Belgian candi syrup that I'm looking forward to using in a dubbel sometime, but I'm thinking I want to use this British ale yeast one more time. Considering that this yeast has fermented two batches already, it might be time to brew something stronger.... ;)

Brew Day: Brown Porter

The plan for my brown porter that I wanted to brew today was to pitch it on top of the yeast cake from the ESB I brewed a few weeks ago. The ESB has been done with its fermentation for a few days now, so it was time to finally get it into a keg and start the carbonation process. I took the opportunity to keg that beer today while also brewing the brown porter.

I posted a preliminary recipe for the brown porter last week, but that wound up being modified before I actually brewed it. The updated recipe is as follows:

Brown Porter
-7.00 lbs British 2-row
-1.00 lbs Brown Malt***
-0.50 lbs Crystal 120L
-0.25 lbs Roasted Barley
-0.75 oz Challenger Pellets (7%AA) 60 minutes
-0.25 oz Challenger Pellets (7%AA) 15 minutes
-Wyeast 1098 British Ale Yeast from the yeast cake in the ESB

The porter was mashed at 152F with a water/grain ratio of 1.25 qt/lb for one hour. There was a problem when I went to start sparging the mash: some grain apparently made its way under the false bottom in the mash tun and clogged it. I couldn't really do anything about this, so I went to the basement and retrieved the rectangular mash tun that I use for my ten gallon batches which uses a bazooka screen instead. The mash was dumped into this tun and sparged. I really did not want to use this mash tun because more wort gets left inside it because of deadspace under the valve. Sometimes you just have no choice.

As the wort was being chilled with my immersion chiller I racked the ESB into a keg and got it setup inside my chest freezer. The ESB came out to ~4.8% ABV and tastes delicious. Once that was all set, I was able to get the porter transferred into the fermenter that the ESB had been in. It was then that I realized that I had over half a gallon of wort more than I had planned on. This led to the gravity of the porter being 1.033 instead of the 1.043 that I had planned on. That irritates me, but it won't be a deal breaker on this one. We'll just have to see how it turns out.

*** The 'brown malt' listed as an ingredient is actually a pound of British 2-row malt that was toasted in my oven at 350F. 0.4lb was toasted for 10 minutes, 0.3lb for 20 minutes, and 0.3lb for 35 minutes. This should be an interesting experiment.

Holy Roasted Malts, Batman!

Last night I made the "brown malt" that will be used to brew my brown porter this week. The procedure is as follows:
Grain used: 1lb of British 2-row
-preheat oven to 350F
-spread 6.4oz of grain on a cookie sheet
-leave in oven for 10 minutes
-remove grain
-spread 4.8oz of grain on cookie sheet
-leave in oven for 20 minutes
-remove grain
-spread 4.8oz of grain on cookie sheet
-leave in oven for 35 minutes
-enjoy your apartment smelling like toast all day

I like experimenting with home roasted grains. The other times I've done this I have used a whole pound of grain and had it toasting for 30 minutes. That was for a bitter I made that came out awesome.

Update and Big Day Coming Up

The ESB now sits at 1.019 and is still bubbling ever so slightly. I'm leaving it until Thursday to keg, just to make sure it's done. It tastes delicious, even without carbonation or proper chilling. The hop bitterness nicely balances the toasted maltiness, with the balance leaning mildly to the hoppy side. There's a nice lightly sweet and nicely toasty malt flavor up front, with a solid, but muted hop bitterness at the back of the tongue. It has a mild earthy and toasty aroma to it. The color is a brown-ish orange and is really clear. This isn't the best bitter I've made so far, but it's making a serious challenge for that title. I have a few ideas for how to make the recipe better in the future, so that may be another brew I make down the road.

Now to talk about the big day. No, I'm not talking about the inauguration tomorrow, I'm talking about the three year anniversary of the first batch of beer I brewed! Next Thursday (the 29th) is the exactly three years after Dave and I brewed that first brown ale with all my equipment that I had pilfer... um, borrowed from my dad's lab at Cornell. Since I don't work on Fridays, that Thursday is a perfect time to brew a batch in celebration. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to brew for that, but it's going to be awesome (possibly a chocolate stout recipe based on our original recipe with some tweaks).

ESB Update

The ESB looks like it's finished fermenting. I'll check the airlock tonight along with the gravity, if there's still a little bit of activity I'll rack to secondary so I can have the primary free for later this week. If there's no activity in the airlock and the gravity looks good, I may just keg it tonight. There is a keg sitting in my kitchen right now soaking in B-Bright to get any beer residue out from the last batch, and I can sanitize it quickly if necessary. This beer tasted really good last time I took a reading, so I can't wait to have it in a keg.

Upcoming Recipe: Brown Porter

I've come to a decision on the recipe for the brown porter I plan on making this weekend.

6.00lb British pale malt
1.00lb Brown malt*
0.50lb Crystal 40L
0.25lb Chocolate malt

0.75oz Challenger pellet hops (7%AA) 60 minutes
0.25oz Challenger pellet hops (7%AA) 15 minutes
Wyeast 1098 British Ale yeast

* The 'brown malt' is going to be something made in my kitchen based loosely on instructions from a book on Mild Ale that I have. There's no commercial brown ale malt available around here, so I have to make it. This will consist of one pound of pale malt going into my oven at 350F.
0.40lb for 10 minutes
0.30lb for 20 minutes
0.30lb for 35 minutes
This will develop the different flavors that brown malt typically have, or at least it will come reasonably close, I guess. Either way, it'll be an interesting experiment.

Try Try Again

Having found a number of likely causes of the weird flavors in my previous batches of beer, and with the recent success of my most recent one, I have decided to brew another this weekend to make sure my system is alright before moving onto the bigger beers I'm looking at doing soon. I'm looking to make a batch that is fairly light on cost, so it will need to be lower in gravity and lower in hops, but I'm looking for another winter style. That leads me to a style I've never tried making before: Brown Porter. It just sounds like an interesting style to try if I'm going to stay light on the gravity while aiming to have a good amount of flavor. I'll try my hand at constructing a recipe tonight or tomorrow and post it.

Beer Updates

Tonight I took gravity readings for the ESB and the American Pale Ale I brewed recently. The APA came in at 1.010 for its gravity, which was lower than anticipated (probably due to low mash temps). This one has the same weird taste the Amber has, so now I'm starting to get worried. The gravity of the ESB came in at 1.022, but that just needs more time. The ESB tastes fantastic, contrary to the other two batches I have sitting there. I have no idea what happened to the other batches, but I guess I'll leave them both in secondary fermenters and monitor how they taste over time. Sigh, at least the most recent batch worked out well.

UPDATE: After discussing my flavor issue with another brewer, it would seem that age of my yeast may be a contributing factor. The yeast in the batches that are weird was really old, but the yeast in the ESB was brand new. I'm going to plan a brew for this weekend that doesn't include too much cost in ingredients as a test batch to see if I've removed the problem by using new yeast. I plan on continuing to look for other possibilities, so we'll see what I come up with by the weekend.

Brewday: After Action

Yesterday I brewed an ESB I had been planning. The plan was to reuse the yeast cake from the amber that was in one of my fermenters. As the ESB was boiling in the kettle, I took a gravity reading on the amber. I don't exactly know how to describe the flavor of the amber, but it definitely has some peculiarity to it. It definitely tastes like there was too much hoppiness in the boil, which is true considering the gravity of the beer was 2/3 of what I was hoping so the hops in the boil were over-utilized. I racked it to a secondary to sit for a few weeks to see if this flavor will condition out. It still tastes weird on top of the over-hoppiness, but I don't know how to describe it. I'm just trying to worry too much about it right now.

The problem with this is that I kinda got worried during the boil yesterday that the using the yeast cake from that amber might not be the best idea for the ESB. So, at the last second I dumped the yeast cake and cleaned and sanitized the fermenter and got the ESB wort transferred to it and capped. When I made the decision to dump the yeast cake I had to look through my fridge to see what yeast packs I had left. My yeast stock, according to my memory, was a Belgian saison yeast and an Irish Ale yeast. Turns out that I also had a Wyeast pack of British Ale yeast, which was perfect and seemed like a fucking miracle. I sat that next to the heater that was warming the fermenters in the kitchen, popped the nutrient pack when it was warm enough, then pitched the yeast a couple hours later when the package was bulging.

To avoid this type of trouble again, I will be checking the gravity on the American Pale Ale I have fermenting so I can know whether or not to get new yeast for the American IPA I'm brewing soon.

And for the record, the gory details of the yesterday's ESB:
-9.00lbs British pale malt
-1.00lbs mild malt
-0.50lbs toasted malt
-0.25lbs Crystal 120L
-0.25lbs wheat malt

-1.00oz Challenger pellet hops (7%AA) 60 min
-0.50oz Liberty pellet hops (4.1%AA) 30 min
-0.50oz Liberty pellet hops (4.1%AA) 0 min

-Wyeast (#1098) British Ale Yeast

Mash was 3.5G of water with a mash temp of 155F for 75 minutes.
Sparged with 4G of water at 170F.
Two more gallons were added to the kettle for the boil. I probably would have had slightly better extraction by using those two gallons for the sparge, but I don't have a large enough pot to heat six gallons of sparge water. Oh well, I'm running at a solid 70% extraction efficiency, which is respectable.

Brewday

I brewed my ESB today. It's a long story as to how it went, though, so I'll post more about it later. Let's just say that it wasn't a very good brew day, so I need a drink.