Creamy

It's been a long time since I brewed a porter - dark and chocolatey, but not as roasty as a stout. Thought I'd go with the Fuller's yeast to give it some nice fruity aromas and a little lactose to drive home the chocolate milkshake impression. If only I had a stout faucet - a good porter on nitro is really wonderful... Some of the grain amounts are weird because I was cleaning out my inventory. The hops are set up so that it totals 2oz of pellets.

Batch #48
Beer Flavored Milkshake
Porter
--7lbs 2-Row (RAHR)
--2.25lb Ger. Pils
--8.25oz Crystal 75L
--6.25oz Brit Pale Chocolate
--6oz Brit Black Malt
--4oz Brit Roast Barley
--4oz Lactose
--8.4AAU Kent Goldings (60m)
--1.5AAU Kent Goldings (15m)
--.25oz Kent Goldings 6.1% AA (5m)
--.125oz Kent Goldings 6.1% AA (flameout)
--1/4 tsp supermoss (15min)
--1/8 tsp gypsum (mash water)
--WLP002, 1.5L starter
OG: 1.056
FG: 1.014
ABV: 5.5%
IBU: ~30

Mash in 20qts water at 156F, hold for 60m. Batch sparge with 3.6gal water at 170F ro collect 7.25gal wort. Boil for 90m (pilsner malt), ferment at 68-70F. I went with the larger infusion to try a thinner mash and see what it does.

Take 20 or so down, pass them around...still lots of bottles of beer in the closet

The first of the porters that I tried tasted absolutely awful. Somewhere between pennies and ash. In hopes that it was maybe just a bad bottle, I tried another the next night. Not bad. This one actually tasted like a porter, so I had no problem bringing a dozen or so to a party last night. Everyone had positive things to say about it, which is good. I think I got another dud, but it may have been the food I was eating. One guy said it smelled like burning tires but tasted pretty good. I think that's fair, although I'm pretty sure that's just what hops and black patent smell like.

In the end, I'm happy with it but might tweak the recipe some if I make it again...push it a little closer to a stout and rack to a secondary fermenter, perhaps.

Water Dog, bottled

After three weeks in the fermenter (no secondary), the porter is bottled. While sanitizing, I soaked the filter on the starter for my siphon and improvised with a paper towel instead. As with the red, I put aside the first bottle for posterity's sake. We managed just over 4 gallons this time. I attribute the lower volume to spilling some on the floor during the transfer to the fermenter, as well as leaving behind the bulk of the trub. Most of the beer found its way in to 10oz Pop Shoppe "Stubby" bottles we found at an antique store in San Juan Bautista, CA, and the rest into pint or larger bottles.

I highly recommend a bottle tree for those that don't have a lot of space.

Numbers updated in the recipe post. FG and ABV: 1.012, and ~5%, respectively.

Smells good, I'll let you know how it tastes in a couple weeks. We have big plans for the next brew. It's time to make our own recipe. No mashing yet, though.

Water Dog

The specialty malts smelled fantastic while steeping and I suspect it's going to a be a long few weeks waiting for this brew. The Fonz had his first real workout today and did a pretty good job, cooling the hot wort in about 20 minutes.

Batch #2
Porter (extract kit), American Ale Yeast (Wyeast)
--7 lbs Ultralight Malt Extract
--4 oz Maltodextrin
--1 lb Crystal 40L
--8 oz Black Patent
--4 oz Chocolate
--1 oz Northern Brewer 6.8%AA (60min)
--1 oz Cascade (1min)
OG: 1.050-1.051 (temp corrected from 1.048)
FG: 1.010-1.012
ABV: ~5%
Calc. IBUs: 28.6

Porters always remind me of a Portuguese water dog named 'Porter' and his curly mop of hair. His person was a friend of mine in high school, but I haven't seen much of either of them since then.