AG#6 Chocolate Brown Porter

[stevela]

7am in the morning and the strike water is already on to brew my first AG porter

Recipe: AG#6 Brown Porter
Style: Brown Porter
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l
Bottling Volume: 20.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.051 SG
Estimated Color: 57.7 EBC
Estimated IBU: 26.3 IBUs
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name
3.75 kg Maris Otter
0.50 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L
0.25 kg Amber Malt
0.25 kg Brown Malt
0.25 kg Chocolate Malt
0.25 kg Pale Wheat Malt
0.05 kg Black (Crisp)
15.00 g Goldings, East Kent [6.00 %] - Boil 60.0
15.00 g Fuggles [4.30 %] - Boil 45.0 min
15.00 g Goldings, East Kent [6.00 %] - Boil 30.0
1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 15.0 mins)
15.00 g Fuggles [4.30 %] - Boil 15.0 min
1.00 Items Immersion Chiller (Boil 15.0 mins) -
1.0 pkg London ESB Ale (Wyeast Labs #1968)

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge, Drain
Total Grain Weight: 5.30 kg
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 23.62 l of water at 70.5 C 66.7 C 90 min
Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun, , 11.08l) of 75.6 C water

Looking forward to the variety of malts in this one.

 

[stevela]

Weighing Grains

Oblig Grain Shot

I've taken PD's advice from my first brew and shortened the hoses down considerably to improve temperature retention:

Aiming for 66.7 but close enough:

 

[stevela]

Mash has gone very smoothly this time (other than my flailing round swapping hoses, I think a second pump is in order next pay day)

Paid more attention to recirculating the wort this time and it shows in the clarity in the boiler, I also adjusted my false bottom as I noticed the previous time one edge was pushing down so I've slightly unscrewed one of the legs to make it more stable and prevent channeling down one side.

Recirculating (first by hand then by pump):

Transferring to the kettle:

Drained mash tun:

Hit 30 litres at 1.045 (est 1.046) which gives a mash efficiency of 82%

 

[stevela]

Start of boil:

Yeast well and truly smacked this time:

All finished with 24 litres at 1.052 giving overall efficiency of 76%, just the clean up to do now...

 

[stevela]

Taken a few gravity readings over the past few days and it appears to be stuck around 1.020, I've given it a gentle stir and bumped the fridge temp up to 21.5 to see if I can get this going again.

Tastes nice though, definitely feeling the urge to split this batch and flavour some with chocolate (nibs?) and vanilla.

 

[stevela]

Right I'm going to forget splitting it going all in with 250g of chocolate nibs seen below ready for roasting at 135C for 15 mins:

and two vanilla beans split lengthways.

All of the above will be soaked in some dark rum overnight before I add it tomorrow

 

[stevela]

15 minutes later the house smells amazing and the nibs are nicely roasted:

All in with the rum and vanilla and hidden away from lurking cats:

I'll rack on top of these tomorrow.

 

[stevela]

Nibs, vanilla and rum have been soaking for 24 hours now and time to rack onto them:

The smell from this is amazing :)

Beer racked without a hitch and I will leave it till next Friday at which point I can chill to 5 degrees and bottle on Sunday. Gravity is down to 1.015 so that comes out to about 4.9%, tastes quite good so far hoping the chocolate and vanilla will infuse nicely into this:

 

[stevela]

16 days later I've finally got some free time and have bottled this. 63 bottles in all which isn't bad going and it tastes superb. Aroma of coffee and a hint of the rum then a generous coating on the top of your mouth full of chocolate flavour.

It's the first time I've bothered to finish my sample glass from the bottling bucket.

Hopefully it will still be warm enough in the kitchen for this to carb up ok!

 

[boab42stout]

looks great let us know how it carbs up :

 

[boab42stout]

what size is your mash tun

 

[Manxnorton]

M8
All I can say reading through this is WOW!
A lot going on with the ingredients, something that frightens me with only jus popped my AG cherry.
Fascinating read and gets me motivated.
Well done.
ATB
Bri

 

[stevela]

looks great let us know how it carbs up :

This is a lively one to say the least, over carbonated this one, if you open at room temperature you are looking at a shower of beer, chill it down though and you end up with a large foamy head that soon compacts. I'll open one tonight and grab a photo.

what size is your mash tun

It's a 50 litre mash tun from MrLard at the homebrewbuilder.co.uk. Very very happy with it!

M8
All I can say reading through this is WOW!
A lot going on with the ingredients, something that frightens me with only jus popped my AG cherry.
Fascinating read and gets me motivated.
Well done.
ATB
Bri

Thanks, I was inspired by Partizan's 7 Grain Porter as it's one of the girlfriends favourite beers.

going all in with 250g of chocolate nibs

Sound like some really strange game of strip poker! :lol:

Transferring to the kettle:

Is that one of the FO hop filters from Homebrewbuilder?

It's one of his deluxe hop filters, the FO didn't exist when I picked this one up. Does the job nicely though!

I think the next time I work with chocolate (which will probably be a stout) I will try using it in 3 place, some in the mash, some in the boil and some in the fermenter to see if I can boost the flavour as it has diminished somewhat after being in the bottle.

 

[clibit]

Impressive. Thanks for sharing. I feck about with a big pan, a home made grain bag and a big sieve! Feel like an amateur! But I still get beer. :

 

[stevela]

Impressive. Thanks for sharing. I feck about with a big pan, a home made grain bag and a big sieve! Feel like an amateur! But I still get beer. :

Making beer is what it is all about, doesn't matter how you get there.

I'm still very much an amateur I just feck about with big shiny things. Water treatment, yeast starters, mash PH etc are all mysteries to me...for now :)

 

[stevela]

Quick photo of this brew (poured at my current cellar temp c. 16C)

Initial pour:

After a few mins:

 

[Cononthebarber]

That looks well yum!

 

[devexwarrior]

I'm surprised the 'after a few minutes' picture wasn't just an empty glass! Looks good

 

[pluckthechicken]

I'm thinking of trying a porter, I'd be happy if I get something that looks like that! I was wondering about grains... Since I haven't got any black malt yet I was wondering what a porter would be like without it, with the colour coming from the brown and chocolate? I haven't seen any recipes without black patent or roast barley.