Category Archives: porter

Live Long and Porter

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Today, Leonard Nimoy (better known as Mr. Spock) passed away after a long and prosperous life. As someone who really enjoyed his work and found his public presence to be a positive one, it only seemed appropriate to name today’s brew in his honor. I had a porter recipe that was otherwise untitled…thus, “Live Long and Porter” was born.

Live Long and Porter

  • 7.5 lbs. 2-row malt (Great Western Malting)
  • .75 lbs. chocolate malt
  • .75 lbs. Vienna malt
  • .5 lbs. Carapils malt
  • 1 oz. Cascade whole hops (5.5% estimated alpha), 60 minute boil
  • 1 oz. Cascade whole hops (5.5% estimated alpha), 20 minute boil
  • 1 tsp. Irish moss
  • 1 tbs. 5.2 pH stabilizer (in mash)
  • California Ale V yeast (White Labs WLP051), prepared 24 hours in advance in 1.5 L starter
Anticipated Statistics
  • 1.048 s.g., 1.012 f.g., 4.7% abv
  • 29.5 IBU
  • 23.8 SRM
Procedure
  • I mashed in with 3.125 gallons of water at 172°; the mash stabilized at 155°.
  • I let the mash sit for 80 minutes and then added 1.15 gallons of water at 190°. I let the mash rest for 20 minutes, and collected 3 gallons of wort.
  • I added 3.15 gallons of water at 190°; the mash was a little too hot, so I added ~0.25 gallons of ice cubes to bring the temperature down to 168°. I let this sit for 20 minutes.
  • In total, I collected 6.85 gallons of wort, with a gravity of 1.043 at 60°. This works out to roughly 83% efficiency!
  • I brought the wort to a boil and added the first round of hops. These were boiled for 60 minutes total; the second hops addition was boiled for 20 minutes. For the last 15 minutes of the boil, I added 1 tsp. of Irish moss.
  • After 60 minutes of boiling, I removed the kettle from the heat and cooled it down using my wort chiller. Final volume in the kettle was roughly 6.2 gallons.
  • The “official” measured starting gravity was 1.050 at 60°; this is just a hair above my predicted target (1.048), but well within the bounds of acceptability. The wort is a rich, chocolatey brown…very pretty!
  • I ended up with around 5.75 gallons of wort in the fermenter (after adding the starter), with a starting temperature of approximately 72°. I pitched the entire yeast starter and transferred the whole lot into the fermentation chamber. I’ll ferment it at 66°.

Edmund Fitzgerald Porter Clone Bottled

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After 12 days in the secondary fermenter, I bottled the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter Clone on Friday, September 26. The yeast had settled out the rest of the way quite nicely, with a thin and compacted cake at the bottom of the carboy.

I elected to bottle the entire batch of beer, rather than kegging. Thus, I measured out 3.2 oz. of priming sugar; with ~4.75 gallons of beer, this works out to around 2.1 volumes of CO2 for the batch. The end result was 18 12-oz. bottles, 14 18-oz. bottles, and 6 22-oz. bottles.

At bottling, final gravity was unchanged from the last check, at 1.016. With a starting gravity of 1.060, this translates to 5.8% abv.

Beer Update: Vaalbara Session IPA & Edmund Fitzgerald Porter Clone

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Today was a bit of “housekeeping” with my two latest brews–one batch to bottle, one batch to transfer to the secondary fermenter.

Vaalbara Session IPA
After two weeks of dry-hopping, I was ready to bottle this batch. The final gravity was 1.011; with a starting gravity of 1.045, this works out to 4.6% abv. The flavor and aroma are both quite pleasant!

The final yield as two 5-L mini-kegs (each primed with 1.5 tbs corn sugar), 3 12-oz. bottles (primed with one carbonation drop each), and 2 22-oz. bottles (primed with two carbonation drops each). Given the small volume that was not kegged, I didn’t feel the desire to mess around with corn sugar.

Edmund Fitzgerald Porter Clone
This beer has been in the primary for just over two weeks, so it was high time to move it to the secondary fermenter. The gravity is down to 1.016 from 1.060, or about 5.8% abv. Even better, it’s delicious! The beer has a nice roasty flavor (thank you, roasted barley!), black color, and is very definitely a “robust” porter. I’m going to let it sit in the secondary fermenter for at least two weeks, at around 66°.

In other news…
I tapped one of the Gondwana Pale Ale 1.1 mini-kegs. The beer is quite tasty, with well-balanced hops and malts, as well as a fantastic Citra hop aroma. The recipe is a keeper! If I have any minor complaint at the moment, it is that the carbonation is a little lower than I might like. I suspect this is because the keg has been kept cool (~66°), so a few more weeks of conditioning and carbonation are in order for the other keg.

Edmund Fitzgerald Porter Clone

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The past year has seen some major changes in my brew practices, most prominently in the transition from extract to all-grain. It has been fun to stretch my abilities and add new techniques to my toolkit, although not without its frustrations, either. There is a whole new learning curve to master! 
One of the toughest projects has been to master my mash efficiency. Where you can get really, really consistent gravities quite easily with extract (I would rate this as a big “plus” for extract brewing), I’ve found less consistency in my all-grain. From my reading and conversations with other brewers, “crush” hits the top of the list for improving efficiency. So, with that in mind, I purchased a two-roller mill from Monster Brewing Hardware. Their mills are pretty consistently well-rated, so it seemed wise to follow that reputation. It will be really nice to be able to control my crush more precisely–the local homebrew shop generally gave me good results, but now I can mill grains exactly to my home specs. This also makes it logistically easier to get big bags of my base malts (see photo). By buying in bulk, I can cut the per batch cost significantly.

It took me a bit to figure out what I wanted to brew for the first batch with my new mill. I had thought about a simple amber ale–but, I already have a fair bit of IPA and pale ale on hand (and apparently an amber ale is just a variant of a pale ale–makes sense, but I hadn’t thought of it this way before!). So, a good porter seemed like a great alternative. It will round out my beer stock nicely.

After a bit of thought and searching, I elected to go for a clone recipe that I’ve tried versions of before. One of my favorite beers is the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, courtesy of Great Lakes Brewing. It’s tough to find out in California, but I have had it a few times on tap or in the bottle when in the midwest or out east. For this batch, I stuck much closer to the original recipe from the North American Clone Brews book. The only mild variation was to have Cascade as strictly an aroma (steeping) hop at the very end, mainly because I forgot to pick up a little more at the store.

Edmund Fitzgerald Porter Clone

  • 10.6 lbs. 2 row malt
  • 1 lb. 60°L crystal malt
  • 0.66 lb. chocolate malt
  • 0.66 lb. roasted barley
  • 0.70 oz. Northern Brewer hops pellets, bittering, first addition (9.9% alpha, 4.6% beta)
  • 0.75 oz. Willamette hops pellets, bittering, second addition (5.3% alpha, 3.7% beta)
  • 0.75 oz. Willamette hops pellets, bittering, third addition (5.3% alpha, 3.7% beta)
  • 1 oz. Cascade hops pellets, aroma, fourth addition (5.5% alpha, 6.0% beta)
  • 1 tsp. Irish moss
  • 1 tbs. pH 5.2 stabilizer (for mash)
  • 1 pkg. Danstar Nottingham dry yeast (11 g)
Procedure
  • I mashed in with 4.3 gallons of water at 172°. As measured 20 minutes later, the temperature was stabilized at 154°.
  • After 1 hour, the temperature was down to 152°. I added 0.75 gallons of water at ~185°, stirred, and let it sit for 10 minutes. From this, I collected ~3.1 gallons of wort. I did have a slightly stuck sparge (first time ever!) towards the end of the collection, but was able to unstick it by stirring the top of the mash slightly and blowing air up the tube.
  • Then, I added 3.25 gallons of water at 190°. After stirring, the mash stabilized at 168°. I let the mash rest for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and collected 7.1 gallons of wort. I suspect I got so much because there was more wort left than usual in the first round of the batch sparge.
  • The 7.1 gallons of wort had a gravity of 1.046. This equals 72% mash efficiency.
  • Once the boil started, I added the Northern Brewer hops.
  • After 30 minutes, I added the first addition of Willamette hops. At this point, the wort volume was down to ~6.75 gallons.
  • After 60 minutes, I added the second addition of Willamette hops. Wort volume was down to ~6.2 gallons at this point
  • After 75 minutes, I added the Irish moss. Wort volume was down to 6 gallons at this point.
  • After 90 minutes, I added the Cascade hops, turned off the heat, and chilled the wort using my wort chiller.
  • It took ~30 minutes to chill the wort to 80°. I whirlpooled the wort, transferred it to the primary fermenter (with the Venturi pump in use for aeration), and pitched the rehydrated yeast. The beer was visibly bubbling within a little more than 12 hours.
  • The end result was 5 gallons of wort into the fermenter, with a starting gravity of 1.060 at 60°.
  • I am fermenting the beer at 65°. This batch was brewed on 30 August 2014.

California Vanilla Porter

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California Vanilla Porter

  • 5 lbs. US pale malt (2 row)
  • 5 lbs. Maris Otter pale malt
  • 1 lbs 60° crystal malt
  • 1 lbs. Vienna malt
  • 0.75 lb. chocolate malt
  • 0.5 lb. carapils malt
  • 1 oz. Cascade whole hops (60 minutes bittering)
  • 1 oz. Cascade whole hops (30 minutes bittering)
  • 1 tsp. Irish moss (15 minutes boil)
  • 1 pkg. Danstar Nottingham yeast
  • 4 Madagascar vanilla beans (cut up and soaked in a 2 ounces of vodka), added to the secondary

Steps

  • I added a tablespoon of 5.2 pH stabilizer to the grist prior to mashing in, to help counteract previously suspected pH problems.
  • Mash in with 16.8 quarts of water at 170°. This resulted in a mash that stabilized at 153° within 10 minutes. The temperature was down to 152° by 30 minutes, and 151° by 60 minutes.
  • After 60 minutes, I added 0.5 gallons of water at 170°, and collected the first runnings. The gravity from these was 1.074 (at 60°).
  • I then added 3 gallons of water at 170°, stirred the mash, and let it sit for 10 minutes. I collected the rest of the wort for a total starting volume (pre-boil) of 6.25 gallons. The gravity at the start of the boil was 1.052 (at 60°), indicating a mash efficiency of around 70%.
  • I started the boil, adding 1 oz. of whole Cascade hops. After 30 minutes, I added an additional ounce of whole Cascade hops. For the final 15 minutes, I added 1 tsp. of Irish moss.
  • I cooled the wort down to 78° using my cooling coil, which took ~25 minutes.
  • I pitched the rehydrated yeast. Fermentation had visibly started within 12 hours.
  • Starting gravity was 1.064 at 60°; approximately 4.85 gallons of wort were in the fermenter.
Notes
  • I plan to add the vanilla to the secondary fermenter.
  • This is the first all-grain batch for which I feel like things went fairly smoothly–finally a decent mash efficiency (I suspect I fixed a lingering pH issue), and a good batch of wort at the end.
  • This beer was brewed on Saturday, March 15.