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.

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.

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.

English Bitter

This is my first run at a recipe for an English Bitter using the yeast cake in the Amber's fermenter. I'll play around with it more tonight, then finalize it before bed so I can start brewing after grocery shopping tomorrow.

English Strong Bitter/ESB:
-9lbs British Pale Malt
-1lb Mild Ale Malt
-1/2lb Toasted Malt
-1/4lb Crystal 60L
-1/4lb Crystal 120L

-1oz Challenger Hops (7%AA) 60 Minutes
-1/2oz Liberty Hops (4.1%AA) 30 Minutes
-1/2oz Liberty Hops (4.1%AA) 0 Minutes

Mash in 3.5 gallons of water at 152F for 75 minutes.