I'm a big fan of porters and after seeing this brew-day and the enthusiastic tasting notes from one of the blog's that I follow, I was convinced to give it a go. I had tried to make a hoppy porter on a different occasion but that turned out to be a lot more 'choc' rather than 'hop'....probably due to lower than anticipated AA vales. Rather than make the same recipe again, which I don't like doing as I always try something new, I felt that this recipe would allow me to do something different. I bought 200g of foil packed EKG hops from the home brew store but noticed that they were 2011 harvest. I used the hop age tool in BeerSmith to make a (conservative) estimation that the AA values had degraded from the initial 5.5% to 4.5%. I erred on the side of caution as I would rather underestimate the bitterness than overestimate as there is always going to be plenty of flavour from the malt regardless.
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| Boiling the starter |
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| Dark Starter |
I made a 1L all grain starter with half the ingredients of my normal 2L starter with the yeast from a WLP005 slant. Initially I had decided on this yeast as it was a British Ale yeast and that seemed to be most appropriate given the historic style. On further investigation I noticed that this yeast is very highly rated for robust porter's and English brown ales which was a convenient coincidence.
I have also started to make minor adjustments to my water profile in the last couple of brews. As I am a complete novice with adding these chemicals, I tend to be conservative with the size additions and generally aim for either a 'hoppy' or 'malty' profile to keep things simple. I'm using the EZ Water Calculator to help make these adjustments and once you know your water profile the rest is just a matter of plugging in the numbers to get a desired profile.
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| Weighing out the mineral additions. |
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| New mash paddle! |
I weighed out everything using a cheap jeweller's scales which I got off ebay. Its able to weigh things with a 0.1g resolution which is accurate enough for this type of thing. The dominant addition was Calcium Chloride which generally enhances the perception of maltiness in a beer. Lidl were recently socking a range of Hurley's in an array of sizes from kids to adults and I thought that the smaller kids size hurl would make a perfect mash paddle! I drilled holes in it to make it easier to stir and the difference when mixing the mash with the paddle v the conventional plastic stirrer was huge. Not bad for €8.
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| 100g of EKG at 90min and another 100g later on! |
I don't think I recall ever adding so much hops so early in a boil as I did this morning with 100g at the start of the 90 min boil and another 100g over the remainder of the boil. The original recipe called for some of the hops to be dry hopped but given the comments from the tasting I didn't bother and chucked in the last 20g of hops at 0 min instead. Overall the beer tasted extremely bitter after the boil but I expect this to mellow out a bit over the next month of fermenting in the bucket and bottles. Looking forward to trying this.
BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: East India Porter
Style: Specialty Beer
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)
Recipe Specifications
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Boil Size: 27.96 l
Post Boil Volume: 22.71 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 19.00 l
Bottling Volume: 17.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.059 SG
Estimated Color: 105.2 EBC
Estimated IBU: 83.9 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 69.0 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Ingredients:
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Amt Name Type # %/IBU
30.00 l Ballymore Eustace (South Dublin) Water 1 -
4.00 g Calcium Chloride (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 2 -
1.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent 3 -
4000.00 g Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 4 64.5 %
1000.00 g Brown Malt (430.0 EBC) Grain 5 16.1 %
500.00 g Wheat Malt, Bel (3.9 EBC) Grain 6 8.1 %
300.00 g Amber Malt (56.0 EBC) Grain 7 4.8 %
200.00 g Black Malt (Stout) (1333.0 EBC) Grain 8 3.2 %
200.00 g Chocolate Malt (1050.5 EBC) Grain 9 3.2 %
100.00 g Goldings, East Kent [4.50 %] - Boil 90.0 Hop 10 57.8 IBUs
50.00 g Goldings, East Kent [4.50 %] - Boil 30.0 Hop 11 18.9 IBUs
30.00 g Goldings, East Kent [4.50 %] - Boil 15.0 Hop 12 7.3 IBUs
20.00 g Goldings, East Kent [4.50 %] - Boil 0.0 Hop 13 0.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg British Ale (White Labs #WLP005) [35.49 Yeast 14 -
Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Single Batch Sparge [Shanes AG]
Total Grain Weight: 6200.00 g
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Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
Mash Step Add 18.00 l of water at 166. 154.0 F 60 min
Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun, , 18.67l) of 168.1 F water
Notes:
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1 .5 year old EKG hops, reduced AA from 5.5 to 4.5%, a conservative reduction.
Gypsum into mash only.
Calcium Chloride to be split evenly between mash and sparge.
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