English Porter

Today we brewed our first true English-style ale: porter. It's hotter than sin outside as I brewed today, the heat index was 103, and I am wondering why I decided to pick up the ingredients for a porter? I now remember that I was planning on brewing this in late September to have for a nice October-time porter. Oh well, who doesnt like porter on a hot day with some good barbeque?

After brewing in the heat and having previously brewed in the very cold (feels like 103 vs ~24) I was tyring to think which one I would rather do again. In the very cold, you can just put on a coat, hat, and gloves and be reasonably warm. In the heat, you can just go inside to the A/C while the boil is going and come out for your hop additions. The biggest difference I have seen though, is that when it comes time to cool. Super cold outside (i.e., snow everywhere) > super cold ground water (~33 when you add the snow) = super fast cooling. Super hot outside > super warm ground water (+78) = long, long cool time, and you still dont get down to much less than 85. However, when you are cleaning up, you cant get hands wet in the cold temps, so you have to clean up inside. If this isnt an option, I can imagine clean up would be rather difficult. In the warmer weather I can just go spray-crazy with the hose and clean everything up very quickly. So it's a toss up with the weather. If I had to pick, I would pick right in the middle. Cool enough outside to where you can hang out, but still warm enough to where you dont have to worry about getting wet and freezing......but who really cares, you make beer either way.

I am very interested to see how this recipe turns out. We've never really paid that much attention to where ingredients come from when making certain styles. We typically use American specialty grains in most beers, with the occassional Belgian specialy malts (e.g., Special B, melanoiden, etc), but we have never used English malts. Today the grist is ~80% Marris Otter, 15% English Brown malt, and 5% Black Malt- all malted in the UK. I've heard to make authentic British ales, British ingredients are a must, so I'm very hopefull that this beer will be really tasty. I doubt I'll ever compare it to a version with American ingredients, but I hope I like this beer enough to not want to go back to US malts for English-style ales.

The mash smelled awesome today, I love the smell of the mash of dark beers. The chocolate, roast, coffee/espresso, and bready aromas will hopefully make it into the final product, and as you can see, it will have a nice dark head. The OG was 1053, modest compared to our average brews (the Black IPA was 1070) but the ~5.1% alcohol is high compared to traditional English session-style ales which usually hover around 4.3-4.6%. If this one turns out well I imagine I'll make another more traditional, i.e., low alcohol Enlgish bitter or something in the future.

 The hops are doing well too. As you can see they've climbed as far as they can go and are now climbing back on themselves. Next year we are going to have to put some really trellis' up so that they can actually grow higher than 6 feet, but we've got plenty of time to figure that all out. This year is all about root growth, so once the roots are settled, then we can have the hops climb.

 In this picture you can see the small flowerly-like thing and although not I'm not 100% sure what it is called, this will eventually turn into a hop cone. There is a decent amount of these on both plants and more are sprouting up everyday. It will be another 5-6 weeks before I think any cones will be large enough to use and I think we'll just make a simple pale ale using all of our home grown hops. We'll have to see which plant looks like it will produce more to determine when we'll make that beer. If the Centennial is going to have a lot more cones, we'll probably make the beer in August so that we can use the fresh hops to dry hop the beer with. On the other hand, if the Newport is doing well we'll have to wait until the harvest time to brew a beer so that we can use the hops in the actual boil.

No planned brew date for the next beer, but I imagine it will be the black lager. With the Porter on tap in the future, I hope to have the black lager in a keg actually lagering in the fridge for a couple of months before we put it on tap. After that will be the last brew we have the ingredients for, the Dubbel. I am planning to do another purchase and plan out our next few brews which will likely include the Belgian Pale, Brown, and probably another Saison (which was bottled the other night and tasted awesome).

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Saison

Tonight we bottled the Cottage House Saison that was brewed on the 4th of July. The yeast did a very good job of attenuating as the beer went from 1064 to 1004 for 7.8% alcohol. Definitely not a session beer, which is worrisome because the samples were tasting very very good. It seems pretty easy drinking, so we'll have to be careful with this one. I think I could smell the lemon zest that we added as the beer has a nice bright citrus aroma, with a little bit of spice, maybe from the yeast, maybe from the pepper. Either way, I'm very excited about this beer and I think it's going to be a great summer beer.

On Sunday after work I'll be brewing the English Porter. It's a simple recipe with only 3 grains and hopefully it will also be a quick turnaround beer to finally get something on our 3rd tap. I'll post some more about that beer on Sunday as well as some photos of the hops.


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Short Update

Life's been busy; very busy. As a result I havent been able to post as much as I would like. Either way, we've made a couple of beers and now have 2 beers on tap.....sort of; more on that later.

First, the hops are both doing very well. I will post a picture in the next couple of days, but needless to say, they've both reached the top of their respective trellis. The Newport still only has 2 bines, but they are already producing some small burrs that will eventually be hop cones. The Centennial probably has 6-8 bines and about 3 have reached the top. It is a much fuller "bushier" plant compared to the Newport, but it too has a few burrs.

On the 4th of July we brewed a Saison for the summer. I found a recipe online called Cottage House Saison that has been very well received. In addition to the normal malts (wheat, caramunich, pilsner) there is the zest of 1 lemon as well as 1.5 tbsp of fresh ground black pepper. We added both at the end of the boil so hopefully the aromatics will still be around in the finished beer. We are planning on cold crashing later this week and then bottling next weekend.

Next weekend we'll also brew our British porter. We have a ton of light colored hoppy beers and I thought a nice porter would be a good change of pace. That one should be ready to drink in about 3 weeks as well.

As for the beers on tap (Double Pale Ale and Black IPA) we've had some trouble carbonating the Double Pale. It has been on gas for a few weeks now and it's probably at 50% of where it should be. The heat wave could have been the problem in that the fridge couldnt stay cold enough therefore the set pressure on the CO2 tank would have been inadequate. But now that its cooled down I would expect it to carbonate more appropriately. We'll see when we take a pull or two in the next few days. It's still tasting good enough and the dry hop is coming through really well. A little bit of carbonation will help lighten it up and make it much better and I hope we get it right before we drink the rest of it.



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