Porter

As the years pass I'm mellowing in many ways. For longevity someone once said 'Sit loosely in the saddle of life'. Despite never being the most relaxed of people, age has tought me to slow down, not to sweat the small stuff and to drink dark beer.

That last bit might not be entirely true, but I am enjoying the odd darker brew from time to time and with that in mind I decided to brew a Porter toward the end of last year. It's my most recent brew and I have to say it turned out rather well.

To be fair the recipe's not entirely mine - I took it from an old home-brew publication by Marc Ollossen. The edition I have was printed in 1997 and is an ex-library book which cost pence to purchase, although I believe the book may still be about having been republished at some stage. I've only done a small handful of recipes from the book, but I can't remember a bad one so Marc has done his job well.

There's several Porter recipes within its pages and I narrowed the choice down largely based on ingredients I already had in stock. It's based on a commercial recipe but as far as I'm aware the brewery quoted (Marston Moor) is no longer around, unless it was swallowed up by one of the bigger boys.

The grist I came up with for a 23l batch was made up of;

4000g Maris Otter
155 g CaraPils
380g Roasted Barley
120g Dark Crystal
120g Wheat Malt

For an OG of 1.046

Hops were;

Challenger 43g @ 60mins
Savinjski Goldings 20g @ 15mins
plus
Savinjski Goldings 10g steeped at 80c during chillling.

The yeast I used for this one was Muntons Premium Gold. Not the most popular of dried yeasts among the brewers I know, but I find it works very well for beers with a malty profile;  https://www.muntons.com/home_brewing/muntons-premium-yeast/

These days I'm brewing with a 20L Braumeister and the brewday for this one was a bit of a mare. The mash schedule I intended was;

80mins @ 68c
5mins @ 78c

but I suffered a power outage - having left the German piece of kit to do it's thing unattended - this was the first time I hadn't sat like a nursemaid by its side while mashing (I'd nipped back to bed for an extra half-hours kip and a subsequent shower) - I returned to find the power dead due to a faulty extension lead.

I had no idea how long the power had been out, (I can't recall now what the temperature was when I returned to the mash either) so I decided to start the process over, so the upshot was a very long mash.

This may have contributed to a slightly thinner than anticipated body, but at the end of the day it didn't really detract from what was a damn fine pint. The recipe's a keeper.

It's been a while

Five and a half years to be precise. I've not brewed much in the intervening time and I've sold my old 10 gallon brewery pictured on the right.

But all is not lost. The hiatus is over and I'm finally brewing once more. Maybe only 3 or 4 times a year, but I'm enjoying it again and I'll bring you up to speed with details of the new set-up very soon.

I rediscovered this old blog and found it a useful resource to remind me what went well and what didn't. I also find it therapeutic to write (even if no else reads it but me) so here we go again...

Oh and apologies for any images missing on the old posts - there's nothing I can do to recover these.

Brewday - Cream Ale 05/06/2014

It's been a while. A change of work regime has impacted more than expected, but I'm still here and I'm still brewing.

A Cream Ale is on the agenda this week. The local homebrew club has a 'lager' night coming up, but I didn't fancy brewing a lager and thought a Cream Ale might fit the bill just as well.

The weather forecast looks shite, so I'm guessing I'll be in the garage, rather than pulling the brewery out onto the drive and sitting in the sunshine, but hey, ho, I'm looking forward to a day off and what better way to spend it?

I'm not sure if this is an authentic recipe for this American style beer, but I found a couple of recipes on the internet and tweaked them to fit what I had ingredient wise. Either way it should be a pale, lightly-hopped beer, that will be nicely carbonated and served chilled. One that's likely to go down well, should the summer ever threaten to make an appearance.

Cream Ale

Cream Ale

Type: All Grain	Date: 05 Jun 2014
Batch Size (fermenter): 50.00 l	Brewer: Mark
Boil Size: 59.08 l	Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 75 min	Equipment: Elite Brewery 10G
End of Boil Volume 54.08 l	Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Final Bottling Volume: 50.00 l	Est Mash Efficiency 72.8 %
Fermentation: Lager, Single Stage	Taste Rating(out of 50):
Taste Notes:
Ingredients
Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU 8000.00 g Pale Malt, Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett) (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 73.1 % 1260.00 g Munich Malt (17.7 EBC) Grain 2 11.5 % 1000.00 g Maize, Flaked (Thomas Fawcett) (3.9 EBC) Grain 3 9.1 % 450.00 g Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC) Grain 4 4.1 % 240.00 g Vienna Malt (Weyermann) (5.9 EBC) Grain 5 2.2 % 30.00 g Cluster [7.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 11.0 IBUs 20.00 g Cascade [7.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 7 6.0 IBUs 10.00 g Cascade [7.50 %] - Boil 7.0 min Hop 8 1.1 IBUs 10.00 g Cluster [7.00 %] - Boil 7.0 min Hop 9 1.0 IBUs 15.00 g Cascade [7.50 %] - Boil 1.0 min Hop 10 0.3 IBUs 15.00 g Cluster [7.00 %] - Boil 1.0 min Hop 11 0.2 IBUs 4.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) [50.28 ml] Yeast 12 -
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.048 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.046 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.010 SG	Measured Final Gravity: 1.010 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.9 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol: 4.7 %
Bitterness: 19.5 IBUs	Calories: 427.1 kcal/l
Est Color: 10.3 EBC

Homebrew Review - Blind Tiger

Life is too short for mediocre beer. And if you're brewing ten gallon batches and get it badly wrong, that's a shedload of mediocre beer to get through.

I'm not sure when I last ditched a batch, but this particular beer was a disaster from start to finish. It started with the recipe. A good idea, badly executed.

The idea of a low gravity easy-drinker with a nice hop combo appealed, but the idea of pairing carahell malt with mild ale malt to create a bit more body than you might expect from a lightweight beer, was a bad one. The sickly sweet malts completely dominate this beer and the hops fail to punch their way through.

I overshot on the gravity too, so it wasn't the small beer I was hoping for and the combination of malts made for a much darker beer than the software predicted, so it wasn't as pale as anticipated either.

To add insult to injury, I also took the beer off the yeast too early. Pressure of work made me use a window of opportunity that was far too early, so there's some diacetyl to add into the mix too. Lovely.

So all in all, a pretty poor effort, both in design and execution. I'm ditching all the bottles and will make a decision on the other half of the batch (which is kegged) in the next couple of days. I'm pondering whether to chuck in a load of dry hops to the keg, to see if this makes it more a amenable brew.

Anyhow, I've brewed again since revisiting a recipe that won me a bronze at the National Homebrew Competition a few years back. I'm not sure why I've taken so long to re-brew this one, but at least I can be hopeful of some decent beer to drink in a few week's time.