On Thursday the Coffee Porter made it's way from the secondary fermenter into bottles. Total yield was 657 ounces (5.13 gallons) divided amongst 26 x 12oz bottles and 15 x 23oz bottles.
OG: 1.061
FG: 1.016
ABV: 6.0%
I used light brown sugar as the priming sugar.
First taste:
The color is a dark brown almost the exact color of a pot of coffee. The immediate aroma that you get is of coffee followed by the subtle reminder than you are indeed holding a beer. The taste of the beer is very coffee-y. There is definitely no doubt when you are drinking this that it is a coffee porter. The finish is less of coffee and more of the beer.
I am hoping that while in the bottle the coffee blends even more with the overall taste. Right now the two flavors are a little distinct i.e. you taste coffee and then porter. But it's definitely going to be a good one!
I'll crack open another bottle on the 26th, but my guess is this one is going to need an extra week (or 4) of conditioning. Just in time for extreme beer fest!
Monday, January 16, 2012
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Coffee Porter
Last Thursday was a crazy day. Normally when I plan to brew a beer I plan ahead at least a few days. This time I decided that morning that I was going to brew. Not only did I decide that I was going to brew, but I also chose the recipe, decided to make a wort chiller, and did I mention it was my first attempt at all-grain? Nonetheless, I thought that I could make it happen that night. After work I went to the Home Depot to get the wort chiller supplies and then ran to the homebrew store to grab the ingredients.
The beer I made is a Coffee Porter.
Ingredients:
grain: 2-row malt
specialty grains: chocolate, munich dark, caramel 120L
hops: mt. hood (finishing and aroma), perle (bittering),
yeast: wyeast irish ale yeast
priming: light brown sugar
miscellaneous: coffee (sweet puppy love from wired puppy)
When I got home from work I threw 6 gallons of water on the stove and waited for the small stove burner to bring it to a strike temperature of 171.
My original intention was to check on the mash every 15 minutes (total mash time one hour), but I got distracted making the wort chiller. Looking back I should have made the wort chiller while the water was heating up, but I was hungry and used that time to make dinner. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20. When I checked the mash temp the first time 30 minutes in I found that it had dropped significantly to 140. It took about 20 minutes to get it back up to 156. To compensate I added 15 minutes to mash (truthfully I have no idea if this will actually change anything. With the higher mashing temp I was hoping for a fuller bodied beer. The lower temp will result in more fermentable sugars leading to a thinner beer, but it will be more alcoholic, and that's not the worst thing in the world. My understanding is that the difference is not huge, so I'm hopeful.
After mashing comes sparging. This is the act of pouring hot (~175 degree) water over the grains to rinse all the sugars from the spent grain and collecting the sweet, sweet wort for boiling.
Lautering/sparging took about 25 minutes. In the future I may save the spent grains to make bread or something along those lines, but not this time.
It took an hour to bring the wort to a boil. I boiled the wort for an hour. The perle hops boiled for an hour, half the mt. hood for 15 minutes, and the rest of the mt. hood went in at flame out.
Initial gravity: 1.061
Estimated ABV: 7%
Primary Fermentation: 7 days
After the primary fermentation was complete I transferred the beer to the secondary fermenter and added a pot of strongly brewed coffee. The beer is a nice dark brown color and smells delicious. There is a strong hoppy aroma that will fade and I am looking forward to seeing what the coffee adds to the aroma. I did not taste it at this stage. Secondary fermentation will last for another week. Bottling will take place next thursday.
When the water reached 171 I added the grains. I was hoping for a mash temperature of 159, but when I added the grains it only brought the temperature down to 163, so I added cold water to the mash until it reached 161. I left the mash to do its business and proceeded to start on the wort chiller.
After mashing comes sparging. This is the act of pouring hot (~175 degree) water over the grains to rinse all the sugars from the spent grain and collecting the sweet, sweet wort for boiling.
Lautering/sparging took about 25 minutes. In the future I may save the spent grains to make bread or something along those lines, but not this time.
It took an hour to bring the wort to a boil. I boiled the wort for an hour. The perle hops boiled for an hour, half the mt. hood for 15 minutes, and the rest of the mt. hood went in at flame out.
15 minutes before the end of the boil I put in the wort chiller to sanitize it. When the boil was complete I started cooling the wort. The faster the wort is cooled and the yeast is added the less chance there is for bacterial contamination. Cooling took 25 minutes.
Initial gravity: 1.061
Estimated ABV: 7%
Primary Fermentation: 7 days
I am definitely looking forward to having a closet full of homebrew again! Up next is either an all-grain revisit to the extract double ipa or an attempt at an original ipa.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Friday was one of the most spontaneous days I have ever had, in terms of brewing anyway. I have just returned from a long weekend and am too tired to write all about it. The next post will give you all the details of the day's brewing. That being said, through the course of the day I did decide to make a wort chiller, and I thought I'd share how to do it.
I discovered via some web surfing during work that it is highly encouraged to use a wort chiller. (Wort is essentially beer before the yeast are added. A boiled concoction of water, grains, and hops. Once you add the yeast the wort becomes alcoholic and is then, and only then, called beer). Without a wort chiller you could literally watch a 5 gallon pot of wort cool for close to two hours! So Thursday I went about searching for a chiller. My local homebrew store was getting some in stock after the weeked, but they were $80. I also checked on-line and the best price I found was $45 with shipping. That seemed like a good deal except that I wanted to brew that day. So after further web browsing I came to the conclusion that making a wort chiller seemed easy enough, it was cheap, and it was the only feasible way to have a full fermenter by night's end.
I went to home depot and picked up the necessary supplies:
20' long 3/8'' diameter copper tubing
4 hose clamps
2 3' lengths of vinyl tubing
a tube bender
Total came to $42, and I had to buy a 4 pc tube bending set, because they didn't sell individual ones.
The assembly is pretty simple. It took about 40 minutes. I did it during the mashing process (not recommended, I got slightly distracted. More on that tomorrow).
Step 1. You can either free hand or use a cylindrical object like a pot to bend the tubing into a spiral. Slowly work your way around with the tube bender.
Step 2. When you are finished coiling, bend a straight piece to extend from the bottom of the brew kettle up past the top of your kettle. It should look like this.
I discovered via some web surfing during work that it is highly encouraged to use a wort chiller. (Wort is essentially beer before the yeast are added. A boiled concoction of water, grains, and hops. Once you add the yeast the wort becomes alcoholic and is then, and only then, called beer). Without a wort chiller you could literally watch a 5 gallon pot of wort cool for close to two hours! So Thursday I went about searching for a chiller. My local homebrew store was getting some in stock after the weeked, but they were $80. I also checked on-line and the best price I found was $45 with shipping. That seemed like a good deal except that I wanted to brew that day. So after further web browsing I came to the conclusion that making a wort chiller seemed easy enough, it was cheap, and it was the only feasible way to have a full fermenter by night's end.
I went to home depot and picked up the necessary supplies:
20' long 3/8'' diameter copper tubing
4 hose clamps
2 3' lengths of vinyl tubing
a tube bender
Total came to $42, and I had to buy a 4 pc tube bending set, because they didn't sell individual ones.
The assembly is pretty simple. It took about 40 minutes. I did it during the mashing process (not recommended, I got slightly distracted. More on that tomorrow).
Step 1. You can either free hand or use a cylindrical object like a pot to bend the tubing into a spiral. Slowly work your way around with the tube bender.
Step 2. When you are finished coiling, bend a straight piece to extend from the bottom of the brew kettle up past the top of your kettle. It should look like this.
Step 3. Bend a 90 degree angle at the end of the straight pieces and extend another straight piece at the end of the coil. Both ends should be relatively close together.
Step 4. Attach a length of tubing to each end using 2 hose clamps on each end.
Step 5. Attach a faucet adapter to one end of the tubing. (I could not find the right adapter so I omitted this step and just held the tube up to my bottle washer which shot the water through the tubes. It got the job done, but holding it for 25 minutes is less than fun. I will definitely purchase a faucet adapter before I brew again.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)