Czech-Baltic Porter

There are some brewers who see almost all of the possible drinkable beers neatly fenced in by established styles. Most on a continuum like mild, to brown ale, to porter, to stout with no spaces between. The only places not bounded by styles being the willful targeting of gaps, for example a Pilsner dyed black (and even then that’s just a schwarzbier...). I see much more fertile ground where new styles and recipes are waiting to spring forth!

One of my favorite ways to come up with unique beers is to imagine what sort of recipe the brewers from one country might brew if they wanted to make their own version of a style from another country. A few examples have been my Scottish Stout, New Zealand Saison, and India (American) Wit. This isn’t as silly as it might sound because Flemish red, Munich helles, schwarzbier, and American pale ale each grew from brewers taking a style from somewhere else and adapting it to their local ingredients, equipment, and tastes!

This batch is the big brother to tmavé pivo. It was from the same mash, but had a higher proportion of first runnings, a longer boil, higher bittering rate, and a cool rather than cold lager-yeast fermentation. It is my re-imagining of a Baltic porter brewed by a Czech brewery!

Czech-tic Porter

Appearance – Not as pretty as the tmavé, head retention and chill haze are worse. Luckily it’s a dark beer which means it's still pleasant on the eyes, but I’m not sure how two beers from the same mash and fermented with the same yeast could differ so much.

Smell – Clean malty aroma. Fresh spent coffee grounds, whole wheat toast, and some caramel especially as it warms. No hop aroma. Yeast comes across clean despite a mid-60s F fermentation temperature peak, in line with the baffling Brulosophy experiments (the third of which I participated in).

Taste – Flavor is similar to the aroma, that Munich-like (Weyermann Bohemian Dark) breadiness comes through, but a little less rounded than the classic flavor of bock and dunkel. The roast is subdued even for a Baltic porter, coffee ice cream, milk chocolate, and subtle dark fruit - more plum than raisin. Drier than I expected it to be, maybe thanks to the good attenuation and the more substantial bittering charge. Again, a clean fermentation behind all of that malty goodness.

Mouthfeel – Medium-full body, medium carbonation. Feels substantially wintery, without being sticky.

Drinkability & Notes – A pleasantly substantial speciální tmavé-porter 18°! I will say it doesn’t exhibit the depth and complexity of my favorite Baltic porter (Les Trois Mousquetaires Porter Baltique), but it also isn’t nearly that strong at 6.8% ABV compared to 10%. The Czech influence comes in in the softer palate, less assertive roast, and firmer bitterness.

Czech-tic Porter Recipe

Recipe Specifics
--------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.34
OG: 1.075
SRM: 33.1
IBU: 49.1
Brewhouse Efficiency: 73 %
Wort Boil Time: 110 Minutes

Grain
-------
51.9% - 8.00 lbs. Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian Pilsner
29.6% - 4.50 lbs. Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian Dark
13.0% - 2.00 lbs. Weyermann CaraMunich II
3.7% - 0.56 lbs. Weyermann Carafa II
1.9% - 0.28 lbs. Weyermann Carafa Special II

Hops
------
2.00 oz. Sterling (Pellet, 7.50% AA) @ 55 min.

Extras
--------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 5 min
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 5 min

Yeast
-------
White Labs WLP800 Pilsner Lager

Water Profile
-----------------
Profile: Washington, DC

Mash Schedule
-------------------
Protein Rest - 15 min @ 126F
Sacch I - 30 min @ 145F (direct)
Sacch II - 20 min @ 158F (direct)

Notes
-------
Two stage starter made a week in advance (1.25 L to 3.5 L). Second stage was mini-mash of Bohemian Dark. Crashed in fridge prior to brew day.

Brewed 10/25/15

Note: adjusted the amounts above so that this recipe could be brewed as a single batch.

5 g CaCl added to the filtered DC tap water for the mash. Started with only Bohemian grains. Added specialty malts as I heated to the second Sacch rest to ensure conversion, but reduce intensity/astringency.

Collected 8 gallons of first runnings at 1.055 for the Baltic Porter. Chilled to 58 F. OG 1.075. Shook to aerate. Pitched 1/2 starter. Left at 60F to ferment.

11/2/15 Up to 65F.

11/3/15 Gravity down to 1.028 (63% AA). Hoping for a bit closer to 1.022.

11/6/15 Down to 1.024 (68%, 6.8% ABV). Solid, malty, sweetish, coffee. Likely won't fall much more.

11/7/15 Into a flushed keg and into the fridge at 60F for the slow ramp-down. Looked pretty yeasty and there was a dense persistent krausen. 1 extra liter into a growler with 1.25 tsp of sugar.

2/22/16 Tasting notes above.

Post-Fermentation Malt-Infused Porter

Why can’t beer just taste like beer anymore? Maple beer, passion fruit beer, elderflower beer... even new hop varieties are marketed as smelling like "coffee" and "garlic." What about a beer flavored with malt? Sure the Reinheitsgebot was an artificial constraint on the ingredients available to German brewers, but it focused their creativity on process (think: decoction, acidulated malt, first wort hopping).

With the ever increasing prevalence of weird-ingredient beers, American brewers (both craft and home) are overlooking the possibilities that weird process provides! Whether that is dry hopping before fermentation, concentrated Maillard-intensifying boil, or adding malt after fermentation (which is what I'm investigating with this post)!

The concept for this porter was to age it for six months (while the other half was on tap), and then add cold-extracted dark grain to refresh the dark malt flavor and aroma. I've used cold-extracted dark grains before, but only before fermentation (like Dark Saison IV). Over the years I've drank a few stouts and porters (fresh Deschutes Abyss comes to mind) that have exhibited a hint of dough-in: that wonderful combination of fresh coffee and bready malt. That's what I wanted to accentuate. While not as sensitive as hop compounds, malt aromatics are driven off by the boil and fermentation and muted and muddled by age and oxidation. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it can be boring when that is what all malt goes through on the way to the glass!

The base for this experiment was the “plain” half of the chocolate-butternut squash porter that I brewed in early August. It had some roastiness, but after five months in the keg it was beginning to show its age, too dark-fruit forward. Dosing into a glass let me play with different rates and malt combinations without risking the whole batch. After testing a variety of dark malts in small scale infusion I settled on equal parts Weyermann Carafa Special II and Chocolate Rye. Both are husk-free, and provide a softer flavor contribution than black malt and roasted barley.

To make the extract for the full-batch infusion I ran the grains (2.5 oz each) through my Barley Crusher. While you can use a blade-style coffee grinder for dark malts, the fine particulate makes the spent grain sludge difficult to separate from the liquid. I combined the grain with 48 oz of filtered water in a sanitized growler, shaking occasionally to aid extraction. After 10 hours I decanted the liquid through a mesh coffee filter to remove large pieces of grain that hadn't settled. I then passed it through a paper filter to remove any dust (stouts and porters often taste better after roasted particulate is allowed to drop). Despite being a second pass this still took about 30 minutes.

I pasteurized the resulting inky black concentrate at 170F for a few minutes. While I doubt it would have caused a microbial issue going into cold/fermented beer, the extra effort was worth the peace of mind. Heating the extract also helps to reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen, although not as much as boiling would have. After cooling, I did another taste test to dial in my ideal ratio, and then dosed 23 oz directly into the depressurized mostly-full keg. This technique might also benefit from combination with water adjustments, but I didn't find that necessary flavor-wise (beers on nitro often benefit from slightly lower pH to replace the absent carbonic acid).

ReMalted Porter

Appearance – Doesn’t look much darker than it was prior to the cold extraction, but when held at an angle to the light it is less translucent (still transparent, but brown rather than red right at the edge). Nice big tan head, a bit voluminous though, needed to settle and top-off to get a full pour.

Smell – Not quite brew-day morning, but much fresher grainy-roasty flavor than the beer was prior to the transfusion. Still has some dark fruit behind the coffee and roasted grain. On the upper-end of mocha for a porter. No hop aroma.

Taste – Roast is mellower on the palate than it was in the nose. Smooth cold brewed coffee, minimal roasted bitterness. Hops were never prominent, but by now they add just a slight bitter edge. Smooth, although a bit dry for my tastes. Fermentation seems clean, no noticeable off-flavors.

Mouthfeel – Not quite as full as I prefer for a cold-weather rye porter, although the creamy head helps with that body while it lasts. Low carbonation after running through the stout faucet. Amazing how much mouthfeel the butternut squash added to the other half!

Drinkability & Notes – This method breathes malty freshness into an aged beer, the malt equivalent of a hop tea. Adding more dark malt after fermentation certainly improved this beer, but at this rate it doesn’t provide a showcase character. It would be interesting to taste a dark beer with all of the roasted grain added like this! It could also be an easy way to make a split batch without having to divide the wort pre-boil. You could even try a shorter/hotter extraction if you wanted to see how that changes the roast impression. Lots of options, and certainly not the last of my attempts to use traditional ingredients in new ways!

Chocolate Butternut Squash Porter Recipe

Like my annual slice of pumpkin pie, I think I'm going to enjoy pumpkin ales more than I usually do. I never really love the standard formula: caramel-sweet amber/orange ale, overbearing spicing (sometimes augmented with ingredients like gram cracker flavoring), and no pumpkin flavor. Skilled brewers can make it work, one of my favorites is Selin's Grove's Pumpkin Ale, served only on nitro at the small central-Pennsylvania brewpub. The creamy head and subdued spice aroma combine to make it one of my favorites of the classic formulation.

As far as clean pumpkin ales go, stouts and porters provide a better base. As pumpkin-spice-latte devotees have discovered, restrained roast is an easy pairing for warming fall spices (cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, clove, and vanilla). For beer, rather than add coffee to an amber base, I prefer chocolate and roasted malts. I brewed a small batch of Chocolate Pumpkin Porter seven years ago inspired by the description of Midnight Sun's TREAT (never having had it). Luckily I wasn't disappointed when I finally bought a bottle five years later!

For this batch, I originally intended to add canned pumpkin, but two local supermarkets weren't carrying it in early August. Instead I purchased two butternut squashes totaling 6.5 pounds. They are easier to dispatch than sugar/pie pumpkins thanks to smaller internal cavities, and their flavor is somewhat more characterful. Rather than roast the chunks of flesh, I steamed them, in the hopes of bringing out more of their squashiness.

With the flesh broken down enough to mash, I stirred in the Dutch-process cocoa powder, custom pumpkin pie spice mix, vanilla bean, and a half tin of black treacle (the English cousin of molasses - light molasses would be an acceptable substitute) and continued to cook the mixture a few more minutes. This took the place of the standard "blooming" process I usually execute with cocoa powder (rehydrating it with hot water). Unrefined sugar and vanilla compliment chocolate, they help to make it taste more deeply chocolaty. In this case I didn't want the treacle to be strong enough to identify, but something you'd miss if it was taken away.

I dumped the resulting "vegan brownie batter" into the fermentor and pumped the cooled wort on top of it. Squash has relatively little starch, so it isn't necessary to convert it in the mash. You could add it to the boil, but I find it imparts more flavor during extended contact in the fermentor (it settles out pretty well if given enough time). In the past I've added a spice tea at bottling/kegging when I want to taste the "true" spice flavor (as opposed to Belgian-style late-boil addition for spice complexity), but I wanted to try this method. At packaging I tasted the beer and decided it didn't need a spice boost.

This was only half of the batch, I left the rest as a plain porter - although I have a twist planned for it before it goes on tap... I'll talk about the base recipe (including stout malt) when I post the tasting notes for it.

Chocolate Butternut Porter Tasting

Appearance – As chocolate brown as a beer can be without being black. You get the feeling this would be a pretty ugly (muddy) beer if it weren’t so dark. Between the cocoa powder and the squash, there is plenty of haze when viewed at the margins. The head is creamy, but not as long-lasting as some of my other nitrogenated beers.

Smell – Rounded cocoa-roast leads, followed up by cinnamon (and other more nebulous fall spices). Like a spiced chocolate muffin, it doesn’t smell too sweet, with fresh bready maltiness filling out the background. Lots of different spice notes as it warms (nutmeg especially), luckily the clove is subdued. The squash comes through in the same way it does in pumpkin bread, as a pleasant sweet vegetable note.

Taste – Spices are saturated through the palate without overwhelming the other flavors. They aren’t as bright and distinct as when I’ve used a spice tea, but with such a complex beer this technique worked well. The chocolate is behind the spice, mixing with the roast. The treacle and vanilla are faint. Sweet enough to support the autumnal flavors, without being sticky. The squash flavor is subtle at best, but it adds a slightly fruity-savory flavor in the mid-palate. The flavors of the base beer itself are a bit lost with so much else going on, the hops and yeast are all but absent.

Mouthfeel – Really silky, one of the most viscous, unctuous, full bodied beers I’ve brewed! Especially considering the moderate alcohol. I’m sure the flaked rye and high FG helped, but I have to imagine the starches and fiber in the squash played a role as well. Carbonation is low, but the dense head only adds to the luxuriousness.

Drinkability & Notes – It’s a fun beer. Balanced, expressive, and drinkable for what it is. However, it’s such a rich/full beer that it isn’t exactly a second or third pint sort of beer. Glad I got it on early in the season so I can slowly enjoy it through the fall!

Chocolate Butternut Porter Recipe

Recipe Specifics
--------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 6.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.00
OG: 1.066
SRM: 43.0
IBU: 24.2
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Grain
-------
66.7% - 10.00 lbs. Malting Company of Ireland Stout Malt
13.3% - 2.00 lbs. Flaked Rye
6.7% - 1.00 lbs. Weyermann CaraMunich III
3.3% - 0.50 lbs. Weyermann Carafa II
3.3% - 0.50 lbs. Simpsons Chocolate Malt
3.3% - 0.50 lbs. Simpsons Medium Crystal
3.3% - 0.50 lbs. Briess Midnight Wheat

Hops
-------
1.13 oz. Crystal (Pellet, 3.25% AA) @ 60 min.
0.50 oz. Sterling (Pellet, 8.00% AA) @ 60 min.

Extras
--------
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 6 min. (boil)
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 6 min. (boil)
6.50 lbs Butternut Squash
1 Vanilla Bean
5 oz Dutch Process Cocoa Powder
2.75 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice
0.50 lbs Tate & Lyle's Black Treacle

Yeast
-------
WYeast 1318 London Ale III

Water Profile
----------------
Profile: Scandinavian RIS

Mash Schedule
------------------
Sacch Rest - 45 min @ 158F

Notes
-------
Brewed 8/9/15

Made a 4L starter 24 hours in advance. Good activity quickly on the stir-plate.

2.25 g of chalk to the mash (dissolved in carbonated water first). Mash pH 5.34

Spice: 1.5 tsp cinnamon, .5 tsp grated nutmeg, plus .25 tsp allspice berries, and .5 tsp cracked ginger ground in a coffee grinder with 5 cloves.

6.5 lbs butternut squash peeled and diced, steamed with 1 cup water. Uncovered after 30 minutes, mixed in spices, 5 oz of Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa, 8 oz of Tate & Lyle's black treacle, and 1 split vanilla bean. Cooked 5 minutes uncovered. Then pulled off heat to cool, covered.

Collected 7 gallons with 1.5 gallon cold sparge. First runnings 1.059.

Added 4.5 g of sea salt to the boil. Chilled to 64 F with recirculated ice water.

Racked 5.5 gallons to each fermentor, one had the cooled chocolate-squash-spice paste. Shook to combine, pitched decanted starter, left at 64F to ferment.

8/15/15 Upped to 68 F to finish.

8/30/15 Kegged both halves with 2.35 oz of cane sugar each.

9/13/15 Hooked Butternut half up to beer gas in the kegerator. FG 1.026 (61% AA, 5.3% ABV). Likely a little higher alcohol and attenuation considering I didn't take an OG reading after mixing in the squash mixture.

9/23/15 Tasting notes above.

2/9/16 Tasting notes and process for the "plain" half, revived with cold-steep dark malts in the keg.

Rum Vanilla Cinnamon Porter Tasting

No brewer, no matter how skilled or experienced, is able to avoid off batches completely. The hope is that when you do make the rare mistake, you are able to learn from it, and avoid the same mistake on subsequent beers. Hopefully this batch will turn out to be a good example of that for me. After aging my Belgian Quad in a Balcones Rumble barrel for three weeks, I bottled it. That same day, I rinsed out the 20L barrel aggressively with three changes of just-off-the-boil water. I assumed that would be enough to ensure the Belgian yeast strain would be dead, and the barrel would be fine to age my somewhat sticky Spiced Imperial Porter...

Rumble Barrel Vanilla Cinnamon Porter

Appearance – Pours with a massive tan head (that occupies about 4/5 of the glass), way too much carbonation obviously and that’s pouring the beer right out of the fridge and into a wet glass. Once and the pitch black body regains its proper proportions, it’s an attractive beer.

Smell – Cinnamon and charred oak lead with some biscuity malt, like a slightly over-cooked cinnamon bun. There may be a slight fruitiness from the yeast, but it is hard to put my finger on it, maybe just my imagination. There is some clean ethanol as it warms, but not unexpected for a beer with this strength. Smells very fresh, no sign of oxidation despite the time spent in the small barrel.

Taste – The flavor is similar to the aroma, although the cinnamon waits until the finish to peak. The body has the flavors of a big sweet beer, but not the sweetness. The vanilla helps to cover-up for the dryness. Not terrifically complex. I don’t get a varietal barrel character, but there is certainly some American oak.

Mouthfeel – Carbonation is still too high despite my waiting for the head to sink and a photo session that combined for about 10 minutes of waiting. Body isn’t entirely thinned out, but it doesn’t sell the beer as a thick sipper.

Drinkability & Notes – The nose is a hint at what this beer should have been. What is amazing to me is that while sitting in the barrel for two months the residual Belgian yeast didn't give any indication of what it was waiting to do in the bottle. I’d usually suspect Brett, but other than the lack of sweetness and high carbonation there isn’t any evidence of the responsible microbe. I poured most of the rest of the batch into a CO2 purged keg, maybe I’ll dose it with some maltodextrin or lactose before I tap it next fall. In the future, if I want to age multiple clean beers in the same barrel, I'll ferment them with the same yeast strain!

Rumble-Barrel Cinnamon/Vanilla Imperial Porter

The series of four clean barrel–aged beers I’m working on has been a lot of fun so far, but it has also been slightly stressful. Considering their extended aging, trying to keep these beers squeaky clean with all of the wild beers I brew has been my top priority. So I bought a fresh round of post-fermentation gear, passing down the old plastic to my sours. I bought two new buckets, one for bottling and one for storing/sanitizing gear. My dual use buckets always seemed to end up with a ring of scratches around the bottom from the sharp plastic on the tips of bottling wands, auto-siphons etc, creating good places for microbes to hide. I’ll also be bottle-conditioning all of these beers (who wants a five gallon keg of Whisky Barrel Trippelbock?), a challenge as they are all pushing 10% ABV.

This Imperial Porter was loosely based on and inspired by Birth of Tragedy, which I drank a glass of during my visit to Hill Farmstead over the summer. Both are strong dark beer subtly spiced with cinnamon, and vanilla. Shaun aged his in bourbon barrels, while mine is currently resting in a second use barrel that held Rumble (distilled from figs, demerara, and honey).

The base beer for my batch is essentially a scaled up version of the Coffee-Oatmeal Stout I’ve been dialing in for Modern Times. It relies on lower color dark malts than those used by most brewers, so I was able to load them in without too much concern about creating a harsh/burnt flavor. I’d grown bored of pitching American ale yeast for so many batches, so I made the switch to Irish Ale (which I really liked in the Scandinavian Imperial Porter I brewed a few years ago).

When I tried to pull my first sample of the Quad that was sitting in the Rumble barrel originally, I discovered the bunghole on the 20L Balcones barrels are just barely wide enough to accommodate a standard auto-siphon. It takes some tilting and pressure, but it pops in eventually. However, it is easy to knock-off the cap while pulling it back out through the hole. So when drawing a sample it may be best to leave the cap off.

The Quad was oaky enough for my tastes after just 22 days, so I bottled it yesterday. Before refilling, I rinsed the barrel with three changes of just-off-the-boil filtered water. If you attempt this, be careful as filling the barrel with hot water, bunging, and shaking generates a decent amount of pressure, so crack the stopper slowly and away from yourself. A hot rinse will remove most of the spent yeast from the barrel, hopefully enough that any Belgian yeast will not affect the cleaner yeast character of the porter. I allowed the barrel to sit for a few hours to cool before refilling to minimize foaming.

Being the second fill, the Imperial Porter should benefit from a bit more time in the barrel; I’m guessing it will take four to six weeks. When the oak character approaches where I want it, I’ll split a vanilla bean and add it along with a few grams of cinnamon. I’m still debating whether or not to add coffee (which Birth of Tragedy had); if I do, it will be whole beans for a couple days right before bottling. I want to taste the character of the barrel-aged and spiced beer before making a decision, there will already be so many flavors flying around that I don’t want to disrupt the balance.

Rumble Winter Porter

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 6.30
Total Grain (Lbs): 23.50
Anticipated OG: 1.086
Anticipated SRM: 50.2
Anticipated IBU: 65.1
Brewhouse Efficiency: 67 %
Wort Boil Time: 110 Minutes

Grain
-----
68.1% 16.00 lbs. Pale 2-Row Malt
12.8% 3.00 lbs. Rolled Oats
6.9% 1.63 lbs. American Roasted Barley (300 L)
4.8% 1.13 lbs. American Chocolate Malt (350 L)
3.7% 0.88 lbs. CaraMunich
3.7% 0.88 lbs. Crystal 90L

Hops
----
10 ml HopShot (Extract) @ 60 min.

Extras
------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
1.00 Vanilla Bean for 14 days
2.00 gm Cinnamon Spice for 14 days
1.00 oz Coffee Beans Coffee for 1 day

Yeast
-----
White Labs WLP004 Irish Stout

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington, DC

Mash Schedule
-------------
Sacch Rest - 65 min @ 154 F

Notes
-----
10/7/12 Made a 1.6 L starter on the stir-plate.

Used Bob's Red Mill Extra-Thick Rolled Oats

10/8/12 Brewed with Josh H

Added 3 g baking soda, 2 g CaCl, and 2 g Chalk.

Collected 8.25 gallons of 1.070 runnings.

Chilled to 66 F, 50 seconds of pure O2, pitched the starter, left at 64 F to begin fermenting.

10/21/12 Racked to the triple washed (just-off boiling water) Rumble barrel. Filled to the brim, no vanilla or cinnamon yet.

11/25/12 Added 2 grams of ground Penzey's cinnamon and one split vanilla bean, soaked in half a cup of just off the boil water for five minutes.

12/6/12 Bottled with 2.5 oz of boiled table sugar. Aiming for just under 2 volumes of CO2. FG 1.024.

5/1/13 The residual Belgian yeast ended up drying out the beer to 1.016 in the bottle, resulting in it being considerably over-carbonated. Otherwise pretty pleasant.

English Porter Parti-Gyle Double Tasting

One of the things I hate most about bottling, is bottle conditioning. Having to pick a target volume of CO2 at bottling and then rely on the yeast to get there. I’ve had a handful of over-carbonated batches during the last few years. A couple were the result of Brettanomyces (or other) contamination, a couple my fault for adding too much priming sugar, and one batch I did a poor job mixing the beer with the priming solution.

In the case of this parti-gyle (combined grist brewing) English ale I have no idea what caused the excess carbonation. The beer tastes clean after four months in the bottle at cellar temp, so maybe 15 days was too quick to crash chill the beer (although White Labs Yorkshire Square, is supposed to be quick to reach its attenuation limit and then flocculate). The gravity on the small portion dropped from 1.009 (80% AA) at bottling in February to 1.006 (87% AA) today, a good illustration of how little fermentation it takes to over-carbonate a batch (and surprisingly high attenuation given the strain's usually low attenuation). It could be that somehow another brewer’s yeast strain got into the culture, who knows?

Second Runnings Brownish Ale

Appearance – Right out of the fridge this brown-amber ale has significant chill haze. As a result of excess carbonation I’ve had to keep and pour both of these beers much colder than I usually would for English ales. The moderate white head stays for a few minutes, but falls apart relatively quickly.

Smell – The most prominent aroma is the distinct slightly burnt-toast character of brown malt. A bit of English yeasty-fruit character comes out as the beer slowly warms in the glass. English yeast fruitiness tends to not be as distinct as say the banana in a hefe weizen, but in this case it is somewhere around fresh red apple. Not much going on, but what is there is pleasant enough.

Taste – Like the nose, the flavor is relatively straightforward. English yeast, along with toasty and bready malt. Minimal hop bitterness, but there is hardly any sweetness to be balanced. The finish is long and slightly minerally, a nice boost to the complexity. From the malt bill I was expecting more caramel.

Mouthfeel – Starts with too much carbonation, but given 15 minutes to warm up and degas it isn’t annoyingly high. Still tastes a bit thin despite the oats, which is probably a result of the high attenuation and the fact that it is mostly second runnings.

Drinkability & Notes – Overall a relatively clean session-y ale. Pleasant enough, but the excessive carbonation does detract from my overall enjoyment. I do enjoy the flavor of brown malt, but I might back down on it slightly if I brewed it again.

First Runnings Strong Porter

Appearance – Pours with a dense light-tan head about four fingers thick… that proceeds to grow to six fingers thick, protruding in a mound above the rim of the glass. The opaque brown body hides the haze better than the smaller beer.

Smell – Big nose of brown sugar, caramel, baked figs, vanilla, and a bit of alcohol heat. It almost smells like it spent a month or two in a rum barrel. It is amazing to think that these two beers, with such different aromatic profiles, came from the same mash and were fermented with the same yeast.

Taste – Sadly the flavor no longer has the sweetness to support the intensely complex aroma. The dryness leads it to almost taste more like a Belgian dubbel, intense malt-fruitiness, but without the sweetness of a strong English ale. Like the lower gravity portion of the batch there is nothing seriously off about it, but the high attenuation has disrupted the balance.

Mouthfeel – Similarly over-carbonated (if that massive head wasn’t enough of a clue). The beer comes across as thin and a bit seltzer-like.

Drinkability & Notes – I like this half more than the small beer, but the excessive carbonation means I won’t get to hang onto it to see how it changes over the next few years. I may have to brew something similar again to see the result with proper carbonation.

English Oatmeal Porter Recipe - Big and Small

Despite its rich brewing tradition, beers from England often seem to be overlooked with all of the frenzy surrounding Belgian and American breweries. Even German and Czech lagers seem to be regaining some cachet after the initial backlash against lagers. I think part of the problem is that some of England's best beer styles are low alcohol and best at their freshest (unlike many other beers that are shelf stable for at least a few months). Most of the American craft beer movement was built on English styles (adapted to American tastes and ingredients) IPAs, Brown Ales, Porters, and Imperial Stouts are all rooted in the British tradition. Maybe that is the problem, are we overly familiar with the flavors, always looking for what's next?

I have the same problem, while I love drinking a great mild or bitter when it is put in front of me, they aren’t the sort of beers that I tend to get really excited about. The ideal English session ale has a relatively simple flavor that doesn’t fatigue the palate (unlike my low-alcohol IPA). Brewers strive to use a light hand with assertive specialty malts and hops, letting the base malt and yeast strain play lead roles. I’m the sort of person who tends to order samples when I'm at a bar, and I almost never orders a second glass of the same beer (what’s next?).

However, there are some English breweries deviating from tradition and brewing really interesting beers. I think Thornbridge is producing some of the best beers of this young group. Jaipur IPA is crisp, minerally, and bright (on tap and the fresher the better), and unlike many other English "IPAs" it is not just a bitter. Thornbridge Bracia is an almost gruit-like imperial stout with peat smoked malt, chestnut honey, and licorice. I wish they were getting the sort of hype that BrewDog does because their beers are certainly better. Williams Brothers is also sending some interesting casks to America. I thoroughly enjoyed a glass of New Beginnings, which is a golden bitter lightly hopped with Amarillo Nelson Sauvin on cask.

To straddle the line between these two divergent English brewing identities, my friend Nate and I decided to employ a traditional English technique, parti-gyle mashing. I’ve mentioned it before, but parti-gyle simply refers to running off multiple beers from a single mash. In this case, the mash was composed of traditional enough ingredients: bready Maris Otter, light-coffee brown malt, slightly burnt chocolate malt, a variety of caramel toned crystal malts, and a healthy dose of chewy oats.

After conversion was complete, we took the bulk of the first runnings were used to produce an English-inspired beer Imperial Oatmeal Brown Porter (although I’m not sure an English brewery has ever brewed one). The second runnings (with a scoop of the first to boost the gravity ) were converted into a moderate gravity beer on the big side of Dark Mild at 4.5% ABV. Both worts were modestly bittered with hops, and then fermented with White Labs Yorkshire Square. Nate and I are planning to bottle in a few days so the batches are carbonated in time for a pre-trip to England party that he has been brewing for.

Chewy Brown Porters

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 21.50
Big OG: 1.078   
Small OG: 1.045
SRM: 32.6
Big IBUs:  21.0
Small IBUs: 17.9
Brewhouse Efficiency: 83% (total)
Wort Boil Time: 105 minutes

Grain
------
69.8% - 15.00 lbs. Maris Otter                
9.3% - 2.00 lbs. Brown Malt    
9.3% - 2.00 lbs. Quick Oats      
4.7% - 1.00 lbs. Crystal 80L
4.7% - 1.00 lbs. CaraMunich Malt
2.3% - 0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt 

Hops
------
Big: 1.25 oz. Styrian Goldings (Pellet, 5.00% AA) @ 75 min.
Small .75 oz Crystal (Whole, 6.00% AA) @ 60 min

Extras
-------
.5 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
.5 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.

Yeast
-----
White Labs WLP037 Yorkshire Square Ale

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
---------------
Sacch Rest I - 60 min @ 154 F
Sacch Rest II - 15 min @ 160 F

Notes
------
Brewed 1/28/12 with Nate

Quick oats from Whole Foods. Two kinds of brown malt, 1.5 lbs were the darker variety.

Filtered DC water, no adjustments.

7.25 gallons of first runnings @ 1.066

Sparged with 7 gallons of 170 F water, collected the same back @1.030

Took 3 qrts of the first runnings a put them into the second runnings, 2 qrts back the other way.

Boiled first runnings for 30 min, then added 1.25 oz of Styrian Golding pellets.

Small beer got .75 oz of Crystal @ 6% AA @ 60 min for ~18 IBUs.

Chilled both beers to ~67 F, strained, shook to aerate. Yeast cake from 3.5% Vienna IPA thing. 4 oz for the big half, 3 oz for the small half.

Good fermentation on both by 18 hours.

2/13/12 Moved downstairs ~55 F to help clear the beers before bottling.

2/18/12 Bottled the 4.5 gallons of smaller beer (1.009) with 3 1/8 oz of table sugar, and the 5 gallons of the big beer (1.015) with 3 1/2 oz of table sugar. Aiming for about 2.3 volumes of CO2 for both.

6/9/12 Despite the reasonable target carbonation target the beer quickly became over-carbonated, with both halves drying out a few more points after bottling. Not sure what caused it. Full tasting notes, pretty happy with how the beer turned out otherwise.

Bourbon Barrel Sour Cherry Porter Tasting

A strong dark beer isn't most people's ideal summer beverage, but tasting a dark sour seemed like a good excuse to drink down in my (now temperature controlled) barrel/bottle/fermentation room.  When I bought my house in 2009 I was hoping the basement would stay at a relatively moderate temperature during the summer, sadly now (well into my second summer here) I've come to accept that it needs a bit of help a few months of the year. So I installed a small A/C unit in the one window the room has.  I'll do a more complete post about it once I install additional insulation.

I posted a tasting of the straight version of our group's second bourbon barrel beer a month ago.  This portion of the batch sat on just under 1 lb of sour cherries per gallon for two months before bottling.  Audrey used the other bag of sour cherries I froze last summer to make a delicious cherry pie (great pairing).  I need to get down to the farmer's market before the sour cherries are gone for another year (or get serious and go to a pick-your-own orchard).

Bourbon Barrel Sour Cherry Porter

Appearance – Beautiful dark brown beer (the sad thing about adding cherries to a dark beer is that you don't see their color contribution). Pours with a two-finger tan head, which recedes slowly leaving some lacing behind.

Smell – Cherries, chocolate, slight oaky/bourbon, leather, touch of sourness. Complex, potent, really captivating aroma.

Taste – The sour cherries have a slightly cooked, but mainly fresh character. The sourness is well balanced, tart, not sharp or aggressive. The bourbon barrel porter flavors comes through in the finish, mocha roast, with well integrated barrel character.  The funk is minimal, but I wouldn't call it clean, just restrained.

Mouthfeel – Medium body, the sourness keeps it from seeming thick or stodgy. Moderate-low carbonation, just enough.

Drinkability & Notes – Couldn't be happier with the way this beer came out, the cherries lift the beer up adding complexity without getting in the way of the other flavors. Despite the heat the sourness keeps this drinkable.

Bourbon Barrel Sour Porter Tasting

I'm still shocked at how successful our group barrel project beers have all been.  We've made some delicious beers even without the benefit of having multiple barrels for blending, or the temperature control that many breweries employ.  In the the first round of the National Homebrew Contest this year (Tennessee region) the Bourbon Barrel Wee Heavy (an Imperial Oud Bruin as I dubbed it) scored a 40.5 while the Red Wine Barrel Flanders Red scored a 38 (both made it to their mini-best-of-show rounds, but sadly neither advanced).

After the wee heavy was bottled in March 2010 we refilled the bourbon barrel with a big dark beer.  I'd place the base beer somewhere between the indistinct meta-categories of porter and stout.  With a second use barrel, the wood had already given up most of its bourbon flavor lending a more neutral contribution to the beer.  We did not rinse the barrel until after we bottled the porter, so it will be interesting to see how the intensity of the wood flavor in the third beer compares. The Bruery is releasing a soured stout (Tart of Darkness) of their own soon, I think we'll see more soured dark beers of over the next few years as people realize how good the combination of vinous tartness and roast can be.

Sour Bourbon Barrel Porter

Appearance – Pours pitch black, even when tilted to the light no photons get through. The dense tan head has great retention and trails coating lace down the sides of the tulip. Nice to see this beer have a good head, there is something about a stout that makes it seem essential.

Smell – Smells like a Flemish stout (if such a thing existed): cherries, vinous, coffee, hints of vinegar, musty basement wood. Wonderfully aromatic and complex. It is surprising how little barrel character it has compared to the first beer the barrel saw, which was saturated in vanilla and coconut notes.

Taste – The firm acidity is countered by a moderate residual sweetness. The coffee-like roast is there as well, but more subdued than it was in the nose. The sourness is assertive, but neither harsh nor sharp. The finish has some of that damp oak. There is a gentle alcohol warming, but as funk/sourness often do it is hidden well.

Mouthfeel – There is enough body to support the disparate flavors of sourness and roast. Carbonation is moderate-light, about right for a beer with this much going on. Either less body or more carbonation and this could have been harsh (we're lucky it stopped at the gravity it did).

Drinkability & Notes – The character is pretty close to mixing a Flanders Red with a Foreign Export Stout. I wish it had gotten a bit more barrel character, although as it stands it is pretty close to what I would imagine a porter made by Rodenbach (which is ironic because Alexander Rodenbach studied English porter before opening the brewery that bares his name).

Smoked Rye Baltic Porter Tasting

A Baltic porter with some smoked malt and flaked rye was the last in my series of four beers with Wyeast's Kolsch strain. I drew inspiration from a alder wood smoked porter I brewed a couple years back, and a Scandinavian Imperial porter I brewed four years ago.

The plan was to brew something that had a big smoke character; the aroma is there but despite 6 lbs of Weyermann smoked malt the flavor isn't as strong as I was aiming for.  One of the big problems with using commercial smoked malt is that the flavor it imparts fades as it ages (and there is no easy way to know how fresh it is).  Now that I have a smoker, once the weather gets nicer, I'll find the time to put it to use on a few pounds of malt .

RauchRoggenPorter

Appearance – Deep brown, bordering on black. Held at a angle some amber light shines through. The big tan head exhibits good retention, lasting almost till the bottom of the glass. Nice looking porter.

Smell – Woodsy smoke, hints of bacon/sausage (but not nearly as strong as something like a Schlenkerla). There is a freshness to the aroma, it has a hint of herbal hops, and lacks those dark fruit flavors that I've come to expect in a big dark beer. Some dark chocolate comes through, but it isn't what I would call roasty.

Taste – Smooth mellow coffee/cocoa roast. No harsh or acrid roasted notes, the dehusked Carafa really did a nice job. The smoke seems less intense in the flavor than it was in the aroma. Sort of a bitter-sweet balance, it may not stay that way as it ages and the bitterness drops off (we'll see). The kolsch yeast did a good job keeping clean and out of the way, not as fruity as it was in the lower gravity beers.

Mouthfeel – Full body without being syrupy. The flaked rye really adds its character here. Moderate-low carbonation, just the way I like a big/dark beer.

Drinkability & Notes – For a relatively young (about 4 month old) high gravity beer it is nicely rounded and mellow. The smoke has come out more as the beer sat in the bottle for a couple months and cleaned up. It isn't as rich or complex as I expected, but that may come with a bit more age.

Pumpernickel Porter Double Tasting

If you haven't been interested by the last three weeks worth of posts on kvass, you'll probably be pleased to hear that this is the last you'll hear of them on this blog (at least for a few weeks). 

Last night I decided to cracked open two bottles of the Pumpernickel Porter to try side-by-side, one that was primed with table sugar, and one that was primed with caraway infused molasses.  Drinking two similar beers next to each other is the best way to tease out the flavor contributions of a single ingredient, it allows your pallet to focus on the differences rather than the similarities.

What was most interesting about this batch is that despite dumping a pureed loaf of pumpernickel bread into the boil (with all its salt and starch) the base beer is remarkably unremarkable.  It is a solid session beer that I wouldn't think twice about if I had it on tap at a local brewpub.  It is hard to say just how much of the "bready" character comes from the bread (rather than the Maris Otter and specialty grains), but it is a testament to the fact the the standard brewing practice isn't the only way to make a standard beer. 

Pumpernickel Porters

Appearance – Hazy dark brown body with a thin off-white head sitting atop. Decent retention for a small beer, but it starts to sink after a few minutes. The two versions look very similar (no surprise) but the caraway/molasses portion has a head that is slightly darker.

Smell – Nice light cocoa powder nose with bready/malty backup on the standard version. The caraway takes the lead in the spiced half, with the bready character staying in a supporting roll.

Taste – The balance is towards the malt, with minimal hop bitterness. The same sorts of complexities from the nose come through in the flavor. With the standard version staying bready and clean, and the spiced version leaning towards the caraway (probably a bit too much in the finish).

Mouthfeel – Nice creamy body on both with light “cask” carbonation.

Drinkability & Notes – The standard version is a great session ale, the sort of beer you can drink and not think about too much. I like the caraway flavor in this beer, but I was probably a bit too heavy handed with the addition. If I tried the same technique again I would probably cut the amount of spice in half (a 50/50 blend of the two is close to what I was aiming for).

Pumpernickel Porter Kvass Recipe

The third and final entry into Nathan and my series of  Kvasses was a Pumpernickel Porter (just in time because the December issue of BYO Magazine showed up in my mailbox on Friday).  This recipe turned out a beverage much closer to what most people would recognize as beer than either the Scandinavian Gruit or the East End (a substantial addition of hops in the kettle and the switch from bread yeast to ale yeast prevented it from souring... so far).

The grain bill was based on East End's Wood Street Kvass with the addition of Carafa Special II and Chocolate Rye to give the beer a more suiting darker color and flavor.  Chocolate rye like Carafa Special is dehusked, and has a similar coffee flavor without being harshly ashy/acrid/burnt like other dark grains.  We also made the switch to Maris Otter for the base malt to provide more depth to the toasty malt/bread flavors.  Of course we also swapped out the loaf of seeded rye for pumpernickel bread. 

I primed half the batch with table sugar, but for the remainder I added caraway infused molasses at bottling.  To infuse molasses I mixed it with an equal volume of water and some coarse ground caraway in a small saucepan.  After bringing the mixture barely to a boil I allowed 10 minutes of steeping before straining through a piece of cheesecloth in a small sieve to remove the seeds.  I'm not usually an advocate of priming with unrefined sugars, but I think molasses is flavorful enough to be a worthwhile addition even in such a minuscule amount (although the carbonation will be less predictable).

Our beer isn't as big and rich as Beer Here's Mørke Pumpernickel Porter (an excellent beer), but the bread character certainly comes through making the beer feel substantial.  The plain version doesn't taste much different from a fresh bready brown porter, but the molasses/caraway version is certainly more reminiscent of its namesake.

Pumpernickel Porter Kvass

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 8.25
Anticipated OG: 1.042
Anticipated SRM: 22.9
Anticipated IBU: 14.7
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80 %
Wort Boil Time: 30 Minutes

Grain
-----
72.7% - 6.00 lbs. Maris Otter
16.7% - 1.38 lbs. Rye Malt
4.5% - 0.38 lbs. Brown Malt
3.0% - 0.25 lbs. Chocolate Rye
3.0% - 0.25 lbs. Carafa Special II

Hops
----
1.12 oz. Fuggle (Whole 4.75% AA) @ 30 min.

Extras
-------
1.00 Whirlfloc 15 min.

Yeast
-----
Safale US-05

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
-------------
Sacch Rest 60 min @ 152

Notes
-----
Brewed 9/24/10 with Nathan and Devin

1 gallon of bread goo (1 loaf of pumpernickel pureed in water after 24 hours of soaking) added at the start of the boil.

Chilled to ~80, left in the fridge overnight at 64. In the morning pitched most of a pack of US-05 and gave 30 seconds of pure O2.

Good fermentation after 12 hours, but the krausen never got very big.

10/1/10 Moved out of the fridge to ambient basement temps to help fermentation finish.

10/9/10 Bottled 2.5 gallons with 1.875 oz of table sugar. Bottled the remaining 2.25 gallons with 2.75 oz of Grandma's blackstrap molasses that was boiled with .25 oz of crushed caraway seeds and allowed to steep for 10 minutes before adding to the beer.

11/18/10 Great session beer, although I overdid it with the caraway addition on that half.  Next time I'd cut it down to 1/8 oz.

Smoked Rye Baltic Porter Recipe

In the great ether of the Internet I do a lot of talking about homebrewing, between posts and comments on this blog, emails, forums, Twitter, and Facebook.  It feels odd to talk with so many different people about brewing without actually getting to sample their beer or visa versa.  Once in awhile I'll swap some bottles with someone else via UPS, but it's rare (so much effort to try beers from one person). 

A few months back a few guys on BeerAdvocate hatched a plan to form a group of homebrewers willing to brew the same beer style (with our own spin) and then swap bottles.  Sounded like a good plan to me.  The basic concept was borrowed from a group of professional brewers who dubbed themselves Collaborative Evil.  The group was founded by Todd Ashman of FiftyFifty, Zac Triemert of Lucky Bucket, and Matt Van Wyk of Flossmoor Station in 2008 with the idea that they each brew a version of the same recipe with their own embellishments.  Over the last few years the group has grown to include five other brewers.

For our first attempt at this concept we decided to copy this year's Collaborative Evil style, Baltic/Strong Porter.  I decided to use the opportunity to brew the spiritual successor to the best dark beer I've brewed, my Scandinavian Imperial Porter (which I'm down to the last three year old bottle of).  I took what I liked from that recipe, but pared down the overly complex malt bill and eliminated the tacked on ingredients (heather-honey, licorice, cardamom).  I also added a hefty portion of smoked malt in place of half of the Munich/Pils base.  I did keep the flaked rye because I love that it contributes a hefty body without adding excessive sweetness like a higher mash temp or crystal malt does.

Smoked Baltic porters seem to be in vogue these days with Surly's Smoke, Hill Farmstead's Fear and Trembling, and Great Divide's Smoked Baltic Porter.  I haven't had a chance to sample any of them yet, but the idea of rich smoke mingling with the coffee and dark fruit character of a Baltic Porter seems like a perfect pairing. 

With the fermentation complete, yesterday I dropped the temperature of my fermentation fridge for the long cold lagering period.  Over the next six weeks the yeast and proteins will slowly fall to the bottom and the yeast character will mellow, hopefully allowing the smoke to shine through. This batch should be ready to drink just as winter is really hitting here in the Mid-Atlantic.

Smoked Rye Baltic Porter

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 4.75
Total Grain (Lbs): 14.50
Anticipated OG: 1.081
Anticipated SRM: 34.4
Anticipated IBU: 48.2
Brewhouse Efficiency: 73 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain
------
41.4% - 6.00 lbs. Weyermann Smoked Malt
20.7% - 3.00 lbs. German Munich Malt
20.7% - 3.00 lbs. French Pilsen
6.9% - 1.00 lbs. Flaked Rye
5.2% - 0.75 lbs. Brown Malt
5.2% - 0.75 lbs. Carafa Special II

Hops
------
1.00 oz. Brewer's Gold (Pellet, 7.80% AA) @ 75 min.
0.75 oz. Perle (Whole, 7.17% AA) @  75 min.
0.38 oz. Fuggle (Pellet, 4.00% AA) @ 35 min.

Extras
------
0.35 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.

Yeast
------
WYeast 2565 Kolsch

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
---------------
Sacch Rest 60 min @ 154

Notes
------
Brewed 9/11/10 by myself

For the Collective Sin group.

Collected 6.5 gallons of wort from batch sparge @1.072. (Much better efficiency than expected, so I added an extra 1/2 gallon of water mid-boil along with the Fuggles to boost up the IBUs slightly)

Chilled to ~80 and place in the fridge at 54.

Pitched the small yeast cake from Fresh Hopped Pale Ale after 5 hours. Gave 45 seconds of pure O2 before pitching. Attached blow-off tube.

Good fermentation after 8 hours.

9/17/10 Upped temp to 60 to help it finish out.

9/24/10 Racked to secondary, still has a krausen, still really yeasty.

9/27/10 Down to 1.026 (68% AA, 7.3% AA), nice bacon-y smoke, still a bit sweet and yeasty, but another week should take care of that.  Temp up to 64 to make sure it finishes out.

10/3/10 Dropped the temp to 35 to start dropping out proteins/yeast.  Shooting for 6 weeks of lagering before bottling.

11/19/10 Bottled with 2.5 oz of table sugar.  Stirred up with the auto-siphon to pick up a bit of the yeast. Down to 1.024.

1/20/11 Smooth chocolate roast, but not as much smoke as I was aiming for.  I guess the smoked malt wasn't as fresh as I hoped.  Still a pretty good beer, drinkable for being so big/young.

Munich Porter Tasting

A few months back my friend Nate and I brewed a batch of dark ale with Munich malt accounting for most of the grain bill.  The result of our collaboration was supposed to be a rich roasty porter, but the Briess chocolate malt and roasted barley were so light that the result doesn't have the roasted flavor/aroma we were expecting.  The Munich malt provides a great toasty/bready backbone, but the coffee/chocolate character just isn't there.  These malts are interesting and could add good dimension to a porter/stout, but you'd have to use a much higher percentage or combine them with darker grains to hit a classic flavor profile.

Seeing the DC Brau sticker on my keggerator reminds me to mention how excited I am about the opening of DC's first production brewery in something like 40 years.  They are hoping to start brewing in the next few months, canning a Belgian Pale and an IPA and doing some seasonal release bombers.  I've known Jeff (the brewer) for a couple years, and gotten the chance to try some of his homebrew (like a wonderfully funky blended Lambic) as well as a test batch of a brown (with plenty of brown malt) he did for the new brewery.   

Munich Porter

Appearance – At first glance it is an opaque dark brown, but held to the light it is a surprisingly clear leathery amber. The tan head pours with decent height, but quickly slips to an 1/8 inch covering that lasts until the glass almost empty.

Smell – Light chocolate (sort of like a cheap candy bar) with a hint of spice from the Willamettes. Rich bready tones (fresh crushed grain) and a subtle creaminess come through as well.

Taste – Well rounded breadiness with a subtle mocha character in the finish. The roast is not nearly as potent as I was intending with ½ lb chocolate and ½ lb roast barley. It has a nice balance with a kick of bitterness at the front and a moderately sweet finish. The Wyeast 1968 London ESB did it's job, leaving a malt tipped beer despite the 40 IBUs. The character is not unlike an Imperial Mild.

Mouthfeel – Beautifully creamy with nicely subdued carbonation. The flaked oats and wheat really helped, I like the fullness from the beta glucans in flaked grains more than from the dextrins in carapils and other crystal malts.

Drinkability & Notes – Not a bad beer, but not really what Nate and I were aiming for. The Briess chocolate/roast are good, but didn't have the impact I'd expected.

Three Year Old Scandinavian Imperial Porter

Is there anything sweeter than cracking open an old homebrew and having it taste just like you were hoping? I wasn't planning on doing a review of my Scandinavian Imperial Porter, but when I cracked it open I just had to jot down some notes (especially since my last review of it was nearly 3 years ago).

The malt bill for this batch was a bit cluttered:
62% base malt (MO + Munich + Dark Munich)
11% crystal malt (CaraVienna + CaraMunich + CaraAroma)
11% specialty (Flaked Rye + Brown)
9% roasted (Black Roasted Barley + Black Patent + Chocolate Rye + Chocolate)
7% Honey (Greek Heather Honey)

A much as I preach brewing simple, sometime you get lucky and a stupid batch with 13 fermentables works perfectly well. Shame I didn't brew more of this, especially now that I'm down to my last bottle...

Scandinavian Imperial Porter 6/8/10

Appearance – It pours with a satisfying viscosity. Oil spill black, with virtually no head or visible carbonation.

Smell – Big dark fruit (plum, raisin, fig) after more than three years the aroma is showing hints of oxidation, but it doesn't detract. A bit of coffee-roast mingling with bready/toasted/biscuity malt. The bourbon shows up as well (vanilla-tobacco), adding a hint of ethanol to the finish.

Taste – Rich, complex, fruity, dark and licoricey without being burnt or acrid. The sweetness helps to tame the alcohol (and visa versa). There is a lot going on, but sadly the heather honey is still lost in the shuffle. I might have gone higher than 37 IBUs if I was intending on aging it this long just to leave a bit more bitterness. The wood/tannin character carries through in the flavor helping to cut the sweetness. 

Mouthfeel – Thick/creamy body (love that flaked rye), it has enough body that I don't miss the carbonation.  I had a carbonated bottle awhile back, but it must have been a fluke because this one only has slightly more CO2 than dead flat.

Drinkability & Notes – Just a terrific combination of complexity and drinkability. The sweetness does reduce the appeal a bit, but it helps to counter the lack of carbonation. I'll have to revisit this recipe at some point and streamline the recipe.

Munich (Malt) Porter

Nate (not to be confused with Nathan) and I have been beer buddies for about a year now.  He is an extract brewer, but that doesn't stop him from brewing some really tasty beers.  Over a couple beers one night a few months back we decided to brew an all-grain batch together so I could show him how I brew.  We wanted to do something that would be difficult/impossible for him to do as an extract beer, an oatmeal porter using Munich as the base malt was the result.  The only other Munich malt based black ale I'm aware of is Bell's Double Cream Stout (not that we were trying to clone it).

Munich malt gives some great bready/toasty flavors, and is most commonly used in Bocks and Doppelbocks.  When using small amounts I don't mind using the American version (which is often produced from six-row malt), but when using it as a base malt I always go with high quality German Munich malt.  It has enough enzymatic power to convert itself, but not enough to convert much adjunct grain.  We were probably pushing our luck with a pound of flaked oat/wheat, so we added a pound of American pale malt and extended the saccharification rest to 75 minutes to ensure full conversion.

In addition to the Munich base, the other twist to the malt bill was the use of dark American grains.  That may not sound like much of a twist, but all of the homebrew stores around DC only carry roasted barley, chocolate malt, and black patent from UK maltsters (Muntons Malt, Simpsons Malt etc...).  These grains tend to be extremely dark (475-600 L) and give more acrid/burnt flavors and not the lighter coffee/chocolate flavors often found in American Porters.  I wanted to give the American grains a test run (Briess Roasted Barley is only around 300 L) so I ordered them from Midwest Supplies along with some other items I'd had trouble procuring locally. 

Nate and I kept the hop bill pretty simple with two additions of Willamettes, aiming for solid bitterness and a bit of earthy flavor.  The yeast (Fuller's strain) was harvested from the ESB I had brewed a week earlier.  Nothing too exciting on this batch technique or process-wise, but it seemed like an interesting combination of ingredients.  I'm really looking forward to trying a sample in a couple weeks once we get together to bottle it. 

Sadly we were enjoying ourselves so much on brewday that I neglected to take any pictures, but I just brewed yesterday and took a photo of just about ever step (I've had calls for a "process" post to detail exactly how I brew, so that will be coming shortly).

Munich (Malt) Porter

Recipe Specifics (All-Grain)
------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25   
Total Grain (Lbs): 13.00
Anticipated OG: 1.064
Anticipated SRM: 30.8
Anticipated IBU: 39.1
Brewhouse Efficiency: 71 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 min

Grain
------
76.9% - 10.00 lbs. German Munich Malt                  
7.7% - 1.00 lbs. American Pale Malt             
3.8% - 0.50 lbs. American Chocolate Malt                             
3.8% - 0.50 lbs. American Roasted Barley
3.8% - 0.50 lbs. Oatmeal
3.8% - 0.50 lbs. Flaked Wheat

Hops
------
2.00 oz. Willamette (Pellet, 4.80% AA) @ 60 min.
1.00 oz. Willamette (Pellet, 4.80% AA) @ 10 min.

Extras
-------
0.50 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min.
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

Yeast
------
WYeast 1968 London Extra Special Bitter

Water Profile
--------------
Profile: Carbon Filtered Washington DC

Mash Schedule
----------------
Sacch Rest 75 min @ 151

Notes
-------
Brewed 3/21/10 with Nate

No water adjustments.

Collected 7.5 gallons of 1.050 runoff.  Hop AA% adjusted down since they were 18 months old.  Irish Moss and yeast nutrient rehydrated in water for 45 min before adding to the boil.

Ended up a bit high on volume.  Chilled to 69, racked onto the yeast cake from the Golding Medal Bitter.  Shook to aerate.  Left in the basement in the mid-60s. Pretty smooth brewday.

The color of the wort was lighter than expected for 1 lb of dark malt in a 5 gallon batch (even considering the lower Lovibond of the American grains). 

Within 12 hours there was a borderline explosive fermentation going on, probably lost 1/2 gallon of wort to the blow-off.

3/31/10 Racked to secondary, yeast had flocced out completely.  Left in the basement mid-60s.

5/06/10 Bottled with 3.00 oz of table sugar.

6/30/10 Tasty, but the roast character is much more subdued than I was aiming for.  Those Breiss malts really are worlds apart from the English roasted barley and chocolate malt I have used.

Sour Bourbon Barrel Porter

If there is one thing that homebrewing has taught me, it's patience.  It is amazing that our (sour) bourbon barrel aged "wee heavy" has already been relaxing in its oaky resort for more than a year.  In that time it has gone from a rich caramelly fresh beer to a sour, oaky, aged delight (although clearly not what we originally set out to make).  In a couple days we'll be repeating the efforts of our Flanders Red bottling day to prime and bottle the ~50 gallons of strong-amber-sour-beer.  It will be interesting to see how it tastes with some carbonation (assuming we find a yeast capable of dealing with the considerable alcohol and low-pH).

Once the barrel is empty we will immediately begin filling it back up with a new beer.  This time around the vote was to do something strong and dark enough to nearly be an Imperial Stout, if it wasn't going to be sour and funky.  Jolly Pumpkin's Madrugada Obscura was a big inspiration for the idea, although we were not in any way trying to clone it as far as the recipe goes. 

The roasted character will be a bit restrained (9% dark grain), although if I was the recipe boss I would have reduced the chocolate/roast and added Carafa for a soft roasted character (I'm worried that the roast won't seem smooth once the resident bugs and critters lower the FG).  We also wanted to keep the IBUs low so the bitterness doesn't clash with the sourness.

We kept the recipe pretty simple (as we usually try to), with complexity coming from the different malts we each chose to brew our batches with (not to mention the bugs and the barrel):

Sour Bourbon Barrel Porter (All-Grain)
84% Pale
7% Crystal (I used a combo of 55L and 150L)
5% Chocolate
4% Roasted Barley
Mash ~155 F (to hopefully save some body/sweetness even after souring)
OG ~1.080

90 minute boil with 25 IBUs of a clean hop near the start of the boil.

For yeast anything relatively clean was acceptable, American, English, Scottish, Irish etc... (I used Wyeast American Ale - 1056.)

This batch will get the same treatment as the Wee Heavy, clean primary fermentation by each of the brewers, followed by about a year in oak with the microbes now living int eh barrel, the specific time will depending on how the flavor and gravity progress.  Most likely the oak character will be lower in this batch than the Wee Heavy since the first beer probably pulled out a good deal of the wood's character.

3/20/10 Racked into the bourbon barrel in Nathan's basement on top of the last 2 gallons or so of  slurry from the wee heavy.

1/15/11 Bottled with 120 g of sugar per 5 gallons plus 2 packs of Champagne yeast for ~40 gallons.  Half my share went onto 2 lbs of sour cherries.  Gravity only made it down to 1.016.

3/12/11 Bottled the 2.75 gallons of the cherry portion 1.25 oz of table sugar.  Aiming for 2.0 volumes of CO2.  Added 1 gram of 71B-1122 to the bottling bucket.  Gravity back down to 1.016.

5/18/11 Despite its short time in the bottle it is already drinking well, great blend of coffee, vinous, tart, sweet.  Excited to see where it goes in another year or two.

6/27/11 The cherries add a wonderful secondary dimension to the vanilla of the barrel, really happy with how this one turned out.

5/7/12 The cherry version scored a 32 at NHC as a Fruit beer. Placed 3rd out of only 16 beers. Snippets of the judges' notes.

The Difference Between Stout and Porter (rant)

Too often on homebrewing forums I hear the claim that all stouts should contain (unmalted) roasted barley and all porters should contain black patent.  The truth is that commercial examples of porter and stout are too varied (and the histories of the two styles and their various sub-styles too intertwined) for this to be the case; the difference between a Dry Stout and a Baltic Porter is no greater than the difference between a Sweet Stout and a Russian Imperial Stout.

First of all some great, classic beers do not follow this pattern.  For example Sierra Nevada Stout contains no roasted barley, while Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter does.  With thousands of porters and stouts produced today of course I could just cherry-pick some examples, but in Designing Great Beers Ray Daniels lists the occurrence of various dark malts in a survey of commercial stout and porter recipes.  Out of 14 stouts he surveyed 4 contained roasted barley exclusively compared to 3 that used black malt exclusively (only 1 used both).  Out of 31 porters surveyed a similar pattern emerged, 11 recipes contained solely roasted barley compared to 10 with just black malt (again only 1 used both).  It seems clear from this analysis that as far as commercial brewers are concerned roasted barley and black malt are interchangeable ingredients that accomplish very similar goals in recipe formulation.

Sure (I can hear you say), that may not be the case today, but what about the historic origins of the styles?  Ron Pattinson gives a great deal of historical detail to this difference as well in this post on Shut up about Barclay Perkins.  He comes to this conclusion after analyzing historic recipes for stouts and porters from the same brewery, "So what was the difference between Porter and Stout for Whitbread? The amount of water used." 

The BJCP Stout guidelines only specifically call for roasted barley in one stout sub-style (Dry Stout - "While most commercial versions rely primarily on roasted barley as the dark grain, others use chocolate malt, black malt or combinations of the three."), the rest of the styles simply mention something like "Dark roasted malts and grains."  Jamil's (award winning) sweet stout in Brewing Classic Styles does not have any roasted barley in it, so the BJCP judges don't think roast barley flavor is necessary for every style of stout.  At the 2009 GABF Flying Dog's Gonzo Imperial Porter (which does not contain roasted barley) won a gold medal as an Imperial Stout, apparently those judges can't taste the difference either.

The point is that the flavors created by black patent and roasted barley are very similar.  In many cases the only difference between porters and stouts is the name on the label, if it is dark and roasty a brewery (or homebrewer) can call it whatever it wants without being incorrect.

If you agree (or disagree), let me know in the comments.