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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Black IPA

Busy weekend, so this will be a short post. We've finally brewed the Black IPA again and hit numbers similar to last time. The original gravity was 1.070, which if it ferments as well as the last version, should result in about 7.2-7.5% alcohol. We used some of the yeast from the Double Pale Ale for the Black IPA and will save the rest for future brews. We are going to rush this one through a bit, similar to the Double Pale, and will hopefully be drinking it in about 3 weeks.

The Double Pale is sitting in the garage at 30 PSI and will stay there until tomorrow morning at which point I'll take it off the gas and then put it in the kegerator on Wednesday night. We dry hopped with an ounce of Citra and 0.5 oz of Chinook. We havent used Citra before so we are looking forward to seeing what kind of aromas we get out of that hop.

We also took a quick sample from the Raspberry RIS and have decided to let it go another 3-5 days before we bottle. I was going to finally get around to cleaning the keg that we stored the RIS in and discovered that there was a decent amount of beer still in there (I dont how we didnt get it out when we racked it to the carboy). When I found the beer I quickly put the lid back on the the keg and hit with CO2 to seal it. I am assuming it's still clean, and not infected, so when we bottle, I'll just add it to the rest of the beer that was on the raspberries. No plans yet for the next brew, but I'll bet we do something in 3-4 weeks.

Hop Update

The picture above is of the Centennial pot and as you can see, it is doing very well. We now have trained 4 bines on to the trellis, 2 of which were trained just yesterday. There is another bine growing that is becoming pretty long as well that I havent decided whether or not to prune it or just let it go up the trellis too. We added some basic fertilizer this morning and hopefully that will help with the leaves looking a bit discolored. So far not too many bugs either. I think I've seen a wooly aphid (?) but I've sprayed the underside of the leaves and the bine itself with a water/soap mixture and that seems to be working in keeping them away for now.

The Newport has also had a lot of growth since the last update. I think that the one bine (farthest right) is a little bit taller than the Centennial, which had about a 2 week headstart. There is only 2 bines on the trellis, which may be why they can grow so much faster, because the plant is only focused on 2, and not 4-5 bines. Either way, I'm pleased with the progess so far, and the Newport seems to not be attracting as many bugs as the Centennial. It's still a long summer, but hopefully both of the plants will make it through and give us some hops to use in the Fall.

Thankfully the Double Pale Ale was cold-crashed last night. On Saturday we'll dry hop/keg it and hopefully by the following Saturday we'll finally be drinking some beer on tap again. It seems like it's been a long time since the kegerator was in action, and hopefully, we wont run into this problem again in the future.

Raspberries and Empty Kegs

Bad news first: we're out of kegged beer.......We'll let that breath for a second.........

Ok. We're back: We were worreid it would happen and it did. With the hiatus in brewing because of the move, the lapse has finally caught up and our kegerator is empty. The brown went about 3 days ago and the Belgian went last night. Fortunately, we've got a decent amount of dubbels and rye saison's left to last, but only 6 steam beers and no hoppy beers. The Double Pale has been in primary for 1 week now and is probably finished fermenting. We'll let the yeast clean up after themselves for a few days and then we are planning on cold crashing on Wednesday this week. After 3 days at 38, we'll keg it and add dry hop with 1oz of Citra and 0.5 oz Chinook. We'll leave it at room temp for 4 days (normally I like 7, but we need to rush things), then into the kegerator, then hopefully by next Wednesday it will be close enough carbonation-wise to start drinking.

Now good news:

We've finally gotten around to adding the raspberries to our Russian Imperial Stout. I could not find the canned raspberry puree this year, so we got about 3 lbs of frozen raspberries and let them thaw in the fridge. We then put them in a half gallon of water and raised the temp to about 160 F to hopefully pseudo-pasteurize as well as mash them up a bit to get the juices flowing.

The beer is now sitting in the shower (the garage gets a little too hot during the day for my tastes) and will stay there for 7-10 days. We'll sample it after a week and then decide when to bottle. I think this year we might have to do something different than normal to avoid the overcarbonation problem we had last year. My guess was that the bottling yeast ate the sugars in the raspberries which resulted in the excess CO2. It looks like there is a small amount of bubbling going on now, which could mean a little bit of fermentation (which I doubt because the beer has sat so long the yeast are probably pretty dead) or its just some extra gas escaping.

Next up is the Black IPA a week from today and then probably the week after that we'll do the Saison. I dont have the ingredients but I think we should brew the Belgian Pale again as it seems to be a crowd pleaser.

Double Pale Ale & Hop Update

Yesterday we brewed our 3rd installment of the Double Pale Ale. Everything went pretty smoothly considering it has been about 3 months since we last made a beer. Having a hose around was definitely an improvement and allowed me to clean up outside instead of the kitchen, which Elise appreciates greatly. Unlike my last post said, I did actually brew just outside the garage instead of the back yard. I decided to stay in the garage because all of my equipment is right there and I can just bring the hose around the side of the house to where I need it. This side of the house is also a bit more shady and therefore cooler which doesnt hurt.

I wasnt sure how the change in elevation or humidity would effect our boil off rate, so I turned the burner up a little bit and ended up with 4.75 gallons instead of our normal 5. Other than that minor issue, our numbers were similar to previous versions of this beer which is nice to see as it means we are brewing consistent beers.

We haven't exactly decided when we are going to brew the Black IPA, my guess is probably the weekend before I start working. If that is the case we will probably be down to 1 beer on tap, or even 0 before the new beers are ready. During our graduation/baptism weekend with all of the guests in town we drank a lot of beer and killed the Schwarzbier and Double Pale and put considerable dents in the Brown and Belgian Pale Ale. I'm hoping we can have the Double Pale on tap before we completely run out, but it will be a few months before we've caught up again and have 3 beers on tap together.


I snapped a couple of shots of how the hops were progressing:

Above is the Newport. It is growing a bit slower than the Centennial (below), but it has 1 good bine going that in a week will probably be long enough to train on to the trellis.

The Centennial is growing very well so far and I have been able to train 2 bines on to the trellis. Once they were put on to the trellis they seemed to start growing even faster and they probably make a complete rotation every 1-2 days depending on how much sun they get. I have high hopes for the Centennial giving us at least a couple of ounces of hops to use in a beer, the Newport on the other hand may only give us a couple of cones. We'll see


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