Chocolate Porter
Ok, we’ve been slacking on posting udates. I’m back dating these posts to match when the events happened…but I’m going from memory. So I’m hoping others will chime in with comments to fill in the gaps!
This is one of the reasons I brew each year…a chance to try the same basic recipie in different ways. I’ve done a chocolate porter every year I brew and it’s usually very popular. Last year it wasn’t. So this year I’m determined to do it better than ever with our first partial mash.
The recipie was basicially Slanting Annies from Homebrewers companion, just the particulars of malts and yeast were customized. The order from northern brewer was:
- 2lbs. Rahr 2-Row Pale
- 3lbs. Briess Caramel 60L
- 3lbs. Durst Wheat
- 1lb. Simpsons Black Malt
- 1lb. Simpsons Chocolate
- 3lb. Lt Munton’s DME
- 2oz. Willamette Leaf Hops
- Wyeast British Ale II
In addition J provided 2-16oz boxes of Hersheys unsweetened bakers chocolate I kept forgetting to buy.
Quantities used…well that was based off the book recipie weighed to the best of our abilities. Which weren’t very good. So exactly how much of anything got used is always going to be a bit of a mystery.
So we’ve got an uncertain new process we’re going to try and teach ourselves this week. With a somewhat uncertain recipie. With uncertain unproven new equipment put togther on the spot because our just completed new equipment was simply too large for the size of this batch! Oh…and we got a late start.
Yeah, this beer is turning into an adventure. The new modified kegs were simply too large for the 6lbs or so of grain that went into this partial mash. We would barely have covered the bottom and had almost no grain bed. So we planned on using the new false bottom J bought in my old brew pot. It fit…but was too tall to make a good connection to the drain on that pot. With plan B now failed we were trying hard not to worry. Good thing we Still had a great selection of beers to taste and sample throughout the night to ward off the worries!
We did have a backup to the backup plan. I had the $5 stainless steel strainer bowls from Target that I picked up. We gently widened a hole through the mesh to pass the copper tube of the boil pot through - then J gave the mesh a bit of shoving to get it into a nice low open area around the drain.
While our strike water heated in the small boil pot I weighed out the grains…in <16oz increments because that was as high as our scale would go.
The mash went as far as I could tell...perfectally. It was a three step infusion mash and all three the water brought the grains right to the predicted temperature and they had enough mass to hold their heat the required time. Things were looking up for us even if it was getting late and most of our help was already starting to leave. Time for the sparge!
Again all seemed to go smoothly. The runoff got clear quickly and never got stuck. We sampled the run-off and it was sweet so we think we did it. After 3gallons of sparging we added an additional 2 gallons of water to bring up the boil...it was midnight by the time the boil started.
Then we started in with the new chiller. Chiller worked well. Problem was we forgot to put the screen on the outlet of the brew pot and ended up with hops clogging up the drain before it even got to the chiller. By 2AM we had it drained and Nick and I were the only two left to limp home...even Matt had passed out at that point.
I don't remember who all attended...we did have a new semi-regular Bart show up for his first brew along with most of the regulars. But It's been a few weeks now.
The Cream Ale from the week before was still fermenting pretty well so we left it in the Primary for an extra week.
In Primary: Chocolate Porter and Cream Ale
In Secondary: Scottish 80/-
Carbonating: Sweet Stout and Belgian Dubble
On Tap: Nicks American Wheat (but not by the end of the night!) J’s Oatmeal brown, Irish Draught I (good dent on it from St. Patty’s day) and Irish Draught II.