#29 - East India Porter [All Grain]

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.

Boiling the starter

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. 

Weighing out the mineral additions.

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.    

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
--------------------------
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:
------------
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
----------------------------
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:
------
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.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sanitising Oak Chips

As part of my Coffin Ship Survivor imperial stout, I was planning on adding 50g of oak chips for a week to add a subtle oak flavour to the beer. I learnt my lesson making Oak chips myself....do NOT whittle them manually with a knife. The next time I will just use a wood planer to get the shavings off the pieces of oak barrel I have at home. After reading a multitude of guides various forums and websites I decided to steam the oak chips to sanitise them. Soaking them in spirits seems to be one of the more popular methods but I didn't really want any of those flavours in this beer. I might steep them spirits for a future barley wine or something similar but not this brew.

I emptied the oak chips onto a sieve and then sieved them over the sink to get rid of any small pieces that were in the contents. I brought some water to the boil in a pot and put the sieve on top of the pot but not submerged in the water. I used a lid that was slightly smaller than the pot to allow some of the steam out the sides and to cover the oak chips fully. I left them steaming for 30 minutes to ensure that any nasties were annihilated. The kitchen started to smell like a sauna with the smell of the hot, wet wood chips.  

Oak chips added directly to the wort

The initial fermentation of the imperial stout had finished a couple of days ago and it was ready to take the oak chips directly after the steaming. I was considering a hop bag to keep all the oak chips together but I still don't have any means of weighing down hop bags so I just dumped all of them in. Assuming they are still floating in a weeks time I will just siphon underneath them to get the wort into the bottling bucket.

#27 - Sylvan Blonde Ale [All Grain]

My parents recently moved into a new home which is quite close to a lot of trees. Given that there are several neighbours with the same first and last names as my parents, they needed to give the house a name to  help the postman identify who is who. After a lot of brain storming and thesaurus overuse, they finally settled on the name "Sylvan Lodge". Given that they like light flavoured beers and would probably be expecting a lot of visitors for the coming months I thought it would be a good idea to brew them a blonde ale. This recipe is based on the original recipe from homebrewtalk forums. 

First hop addition

The hops I used for this brew were both fresh from the 2012 harvest but even at that they would still be nearly 6 months old. Due to poor vaccuming (on my part) I decided to use the hop age too in BeerSmith to take into account the fact that they are 6 months old and haven't been stored that well. That is why when you see the recipe the AA values wont be what you would expect, they are slightly lower than normal. I wont know whether this has had a positive effect or not until I try the brew.

Normally I would dry hop but given that the target audience for this beer is quite conservative, I wont be doing it for this batch. Depending on its popularity I may do it in future versions which would be brewed for the summer.

The recipe can be found below:

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 26.38 l
Post Boil Volume: 22.88 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 19.00 l   
Bottling Volume: 18.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.046 SG
Estimated Color: 11.8 EBC
Estimated IBU: 28.6 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 50.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 57.9 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                          Type          #        %/IBU         
34 l       Ballymore Eustace (South Dublin)         Water         1        -             
2tsp       Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent   2        -             
5000g      Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC)         Grain         3        88.9 %        
250g       Caramel/Crystal Malt - 15L (30.0 EBC)    Grain         4        4.4 %         
250g       Vienna Malt (6.9 EBC)                    Grain         5        4.4 %         
125g       Acid Malt (5.9 EBC)                      Grain         6        2.2 %         
15g        Centennial [7.48 %] - Boil 55.0 min      Hop           7        12.7 IBUs     
15g        Centennial [7.48 %] - Boil 35.0 min      Hop           8        10.8 IBUs     
15g        Cascade [3.70 %] - Boil 20.0 min         Hop           9        3.9 IBUs      
1tsp       Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins)              Fining        10       -             
15g        Cascade [3.70 %] - Boil 5.0 min          Hop           11       1.3 IBUs      
1pkg       Nottingham (Danstar #-) [23.66 ml]       Yeast         12       -             


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Single Batch Sparge [Shanes AG]
Total Grain Weight: 5625.00 g
----------------------------
Name              Description                  Step Temperature       Step Time       
Mash Step         Add 16.56 l of water at 165. 154.0 F                60 min          

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun, , 17.95l) of 168.1 F water

#20 - HopChoc Porter [All Grain]

After making (and drinking) quite a lot of pale ales I was starting to get a bit sick of them and wanted to try something with a completely different flavour profile. I decided I would try to make a Porter with a chocolatey flavour and hoppy aroma. The freezer already had Warrior, Amarillo hops leftover and WLP007 yeast which I had harvested from the previous batch (#19). Normally I attempt to find recipes that are tried and trusted but for various reasons such as left over hops and lack of availability of ingredients in the home-brew store,  I made a unique brew this time. Due to my unfamiliarity with combinations of different dark malts I had to consult some brewing forums to make sure I wasn't making nasty additions. After a few suggestions and subsequent tweaks I settled on the final recipe (added at end of this article). 

I had ordered the grain from the home-brew store the previous week and unfortunately forgot to buy some DME for making the yeast starter. I had a quick look in my local store, as I had seen discussions before about some stores stocking malt extract for cooking, no luck unfortunately. I decided that I would try my hand at making an all grain starter for the first time. I had seen this video a while ago and it seemed fairly straightforward. I was making this starter to fit into a 1 litre conical flask for using on a stir plate so I halved all the ingredients he was using and followed the same technique. 

Mash In

In the oven for 60m

I put a thermometer in the oven to keep an eye on the temperature and needless to say it was fluctuating wildly! I checked it once and the temperature had dropped to 135deg F and later it had risen as hight as 170F! While this was the 'ambient' temperature of the oven, I didn't really know what was happening to the grain in the pot. I didn't wait to find out and took it out of the oven and put it on the cooker at a low heat. I spent the next stressful 50 minutes turning on and off the heat to try and maintain a temperature of 152deg F. I don't know if I needed to be that accurate but I made a decision at the end of that mash and hour of cleaning up the kitchen. Never again will I make an all grain starter unless it is an emergency. It is NOT worth the hassle. I pitched the yeast and put it on the stir plate. It must have been nearly all dead as it took nearly 48hours to really get going. 

I made an additional mistake when ordering from the home brew store, I accidentally ordered whole chocolate malt and the crystal malt I got didn't look crushed either. I don't have a grain mill so that left me with 3 methods of grinding the grain; rolling pin, hand blender and adjustable coffee grinder. There was no way I was going to the trouble of using the rolling pin so I tried a small portion of chocolate malt in both the hand grinder and the coffee grinder at its coarsest setting. I got the following result:

Chocolate Malt - (Hand blender and coffee grinder)

The coffee grinder pulverised the grain (with surprising ease) no matter what setting I had it at. If I wanted a stuck mash, this would be one way to achieve it. The hand blender gave a much coarser blend with 2 or 3 pules being enough per half cup of grain. I figured that the chocolate and crystal malt were only contributing around 25% to the total amount of grains so it should be OK if they are ground finer than usual. I finished off the rest of the grains with the blender. 

Ingredients weighed out and ready for mashing

This was an impromptu brewday so I hadn't filled the kettle with water the night before to let the chlorine seep out. I decided to use water from the hot tap which some people use to save money but I am using as the chlorine has already seeped out. From what I understand the water from my cold storage tank feeds into the hot water tank and the cold water tank would have been sitting for several days thus the chlorine will have already seeped out. This is particularly noticeable when brushing my teeth, I can't taste any chlorine when brushing in the bathroom(tank fed) but it reeks of chlorine when brushing in the kitchen(mains fed). Our hot water tank is boiled every night with electricity at the night rate so I'm assuming it is a hostile environment for any nasties to survive in. It would be boiled again in the kettle anyway.   

Mash after 60m

First Runnings

I undershot my mash temperature as I think the grain was cold and I hadn't put that into Beersmith. In future I will always assume it is cold and stir for a few minutes if I overshoot rather than have to add boiling water which is a pain. I subtracted all the boiling water I added from my sparge volume but somehow still ended up with a much higher pre-boil volume than expected. I should have had only 26L but I ended up with more like 29Litres which was very close to the top! 

Watching for a boil-over 

11 Brix (1044) pre-boil gravity

Nothing much to talk about during the boil other than I didn't know what to do with myself as it was only 3 additions compared to the 90+ additions I had in the previous (#19) batch. I also had a massive volume at the end of the boil with nearly 25Litres going into the fermenter. I pitched the starter and it took off about 6 hours later.  I will add the hops for dry hopping once the Krausen has fallen. 

Recipe: HopChoc Porter TYPE: All Grain
Style: Robust Porter
---RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS-----------------------------------------------
SRM: 69.8 EBC SRM RANGE: 43.3-69.0 EBC
IBU: 48.4 IBUs Tinseth IBU RANGE: 25.0-50.0 IBUs
OG: 1.055 SG OG RANGE: 1.048-1.065 SG
FG: 1.012 SG FG RANGE: 1.012-1.016 SG
BU:GU: 0.883 Calories: 427.1 kCal/12 oz Est ABV: 5.6 %
EE%: 70.00 % Batch: 19.00 l      Boil: 26.21 l BT: 60 Mins
---WATER CHEMISTRY ADDITIONS----------------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
3000.00 g             Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC)         Grain         1        61.2 %        
500.00 g              Amber Malt (43.3 EBC)                    Grain         2        10.2 %        
500.00 g              Oats, Flaked (2.0 EBC)                   Grain         4        10.2 %        
500.00 g              Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC)    Grain         3        10.2 %        
200.00 g              Black (Patent) Malt (985.0 EBC)          Grain         5        4.1 %         
200.00 g              Chocolate Malt (886.5 EBC)               Grain         6        4.1 %         
Total Grain Weight: 4900.00 g Total Hops: 95.00 g oz.
---MASH PROCESS------MASH PH:5.40 ------
>>>>>>>>>>-ADD WATER CHEMICALS BEFORE GRAINS!!<<<<<<<
Name              Description                  Step Temperature  Step Time       
Mash In           Add 9.75 l of water at 171.5 152.0 F           60 min          
---SPARGE PROCESS---
>>>>>>>>>>-RECYCLE FIRST RUNNINGS & VERIFY GRAIN/MLT TEMPS: 50.0 F/140.0 F
>>>>>>>>>>-ADD BOIL CHEMICALS BEFORE FWH
Drain mash tun, Batch sparge with 1 steps (23.87l) of 168.1 F water
---BOIL PROCESS-----------------------------
Est Pre_Boil Gravity: 1.046 SG Est OG: 1.055 SG
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
10.00 g               Warrior [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min        Hop           7        16.4 IBUs     
20.00 g               Warrior [15.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min        Hop           8        25.2 IBUs     
15.00 g               Warrior [15.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min         Hop           9        4.9 IBUs      
10.00 g               Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min    Hop           10       1.9 IBUs      
---FERM PROCESS-----------------------------
Primary Start: 01/04/2012 - 4.00 Days at 67.0 F
Secondary Start: 05/04/2012 - 10.00 Days at 67.0 F
Style Carb Range: 1.80-2.50 Vols