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.