Ingredients
So we start with a base porter recipe that we devised for a 1.095 OG. We likely won't get that due to our novice mash/lauter capabilities, but hey, it is what it is. Seeing as how sweet the peanut butter and cocoa beans will make it, we added a hefty amount of roast barley to try to even it out so as to make the beer not too sweet.
Unfortunately, the brew shop had no Challenger hops, so we just used all Kent Goldings instead.
And so here is our ingredient list.
| Requested | Used |
| 11.5 lbs. Pale Ale malt | " |
| 1.125 lbs. Chocolate malt | " |
| 1.125 lbs. Black malt | " |
| 0.5 lbs. Roasted Barley | " |
| 1 lb. of unsweetened peanut butter | " |
| 4 oz. cocoa beans, crushed | " |
| 4.5oz Challenger (6%AA) | NADA |
| 2/3oz Kent Goldings (5%AA) | 5oz Kent Goldings (6.3%AA) |
| Some kind of English ale yeast | Dry English Ale (WLP007) |
January 12, 2008
After constructing our awesome false bottom for our mash/lauter tun, we pre-heated it with hot hot hot tap water (around 150°F) for about a half hour or so, then drained and added our grains.
We washed the cocoa beans, and roasted them at 300°F for 35 minutes. After they cooled, we crushed them with a hammer and added them directly to the mash.
Added our strike water about a quart at a time. With a 14.5lb grain bill, at 2 quarts to 1lb ration, we needed 7.25 gallons of water for the mash.
Strike Temperature: 170°
T=60min
Mash temp=152°
T=45min
Added 1 gallon 183° water
Mash temp=153°
T=30min
Added 1/2 gallon of ?° water
Mash temp=154°
T=15min
Added 1 gallon 190° water
Mash temp=154°
T=0min
Mash temp=153°
Lautered our wort into the boil pot. Thanks to our new 2-stage filtering system inside the mash/lauter tun, our very first runnings were beautiful. Looked like motor oil. Mmmmm. We lautered about 2 gallons and then poured that back into the mash tun, to recirculate and filter through the grain bed. Once we lautered out about 6 gallons, we sparged with 2 gallons of 186° water using our brandy new sparge arm. We ended up with almost exactly 8 gallons of wort for the boil. Our boil pot holds 8.25 gallons. Eek! Close fit!
Brew Method
January 12, 2008
SO, we've got 8 gallons of wort to boil. In an 8.25 gallon pot. We'd better watch this one with a very close eye to make sure it doesn't boil over. It did actually boil over a little bit once, but luckily we were right there to catch it and minimize the loss. Cleaning that up is a bitch, though.
We added our jar of 1lb unsweetened peanut butter (ingredients: roasted peanuts) as it boiled to prevent scorching.
T=60min
Added 3.325oz of Kent Goldings (6.3%AA)
T=30min
Added 1.5oz of Kent GOldings (6.3%AA)
Readied ice bath
T=15min
Added 1 tspn Irish Moss
Inserted wort chiller for sanitization
T=5min
Added 0.625oz Kent Goldings (6.3%AA)
T=0min
Cut the boil, and brought the pot over to the ice bath. Set it to the side, hooked up the wort chiller to the submersible pump, and pumped through our ice water to cool down the wort. Once the wort temperature reached about 110°, we put the pot itself into the ice bath as well. It took 25 minutes to go from boiling to 68 degrees F.
We strained out the hops and racked the wort into the primary, while aerating it with the airstone in the primary. As we aerated it, no head formed on the beer. None. This is highly unusual for us. We figure there are just lots of peanut oils in the beer that are breaking down any surface tension that would lead to a head.
Our OG reading was 1.060, despite a predicted 1.095. I've since discovered that problem though (mash efficiency d'oh). We wanted an imperial porter, but we'll settle for robust. Unfortunately, that throws off our BU:GU ratio by a ton. We WANTED about 0.74, but instead we're gonna end up with about 1.17. In a beer like this where we want the chocolate and peanut butter to be prevalent, this may end up being too hoppy and crap. We'll find out soon enough.
Fermentation
January 12, 2008
Pitched our yeast following cooling and racking, and put in the basement to begin fermentation.
January 14, 2008
Yesterday I took a peek at the beer and observed a bubble emerge from the blowoff. I didn't stick around long enough to see another though.
This morning there was one bubble emerging per second. As of this writing, there are two per second. The krausen is just beginning to form. And, despite our observations during lautering, there seems to be a good amount of grain sediment in the fermenter. Maybe we just couldn't see it because this beer is one hundred billion percent opaque.
January 27, 2008
Racked the beer to the secondary fermenter. We've got a lot in here! We ended up not even getting everything from the primary to the secondary. So... we drank what was left :) And it's actually good! It's not what we expected, but still good. We decided there's entirely too much roasted barley and we'll omit it next time. Also noticed high prevalence of peanut oil on top of the beer. That's going to impede any head on the beer... completely. But it has an interesting side effect. When you sip the beer, you pull the glass away from your mouth, and if you lick your lips, the peanut oil has come off on them. And you get an mmm yummy peanut taste.
Bottling
February 9, 2008
Bottled! We got 24 full 22oz bottles, and some to spare! And, by "spare", I mean "drink"! It's very yummy. Can't wait to see what some time does to these!
Tasting
February 24, 2008
On second thought, I'm not terribly fond of this one. It's waaaay too acrid for me. Far too much black patent, and it just tastes fairly shitty to me. Maybe it would be better with a meal, but alone, I can't drink this.
-mike
Notes
- Figure out why we're only getting 2/3 predicted OG from our mash
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