Sunday, June 20, 2021
Today I brewed a porter recipe from the internet. It says:
The recipe is one of Ron Pattinson's historic recreations based on Whitbread brewing logs.
It's supposedly from 1880 and is called "Whitbread Porter." I'm going to call it "Boxy Brown Porter."
| Grain | Quantity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pale 2-Row | 9 lbs. | |
| Brown Malt | 1 lb. 12 oz. | |
| Black Malt | 12 oz. | |
| Hop | Quantity | Boil Time |
| East Kent Goldings (4.4% AA) | 3 oz. | 60 min. |
| Yeast | Quantity | Notes |
| Safale S-04 | 1 pack dry | stirred into some wort and pitched |
Here's what the strike water temperature calculator had to say:
| Grain Weight | 11.5 pounds |
| Grain Temperature | 82° F |
| Strike Water Amount | 4 gallons |
| Target Mash Temperature | 154° F |
| Equipment Loss | 0° F (preheated) |
| Strike Water Temperature | 164.4° F |
In practice, I might have mashed in a little too hot. It's hard to tell, because temperature readings vary widely depending on where in the mash I stick the thermometer. My notes say that the "mash is somewhere between 151°F and 157°F, depending on where I measure it."
After mashing for an hour and a half (went out to dinner), the mash was "between 149°F and 153°F, depending on where I measure."
An iodine tincture test showed that there was no starch remaining.
I did a fly sparge, collecting seven gallons of wort in about an hour.
[water goes in]
[wort comes out]
I didn't write down the gravity of the runnings.
Don't brew in my apartment during the Summer. The windows don't open much, and the only windows are in the front, so there's no way to create a cross breeze. The window air conditioning unit can't keep up with the stove, especially with two burners going full blast. The result is that the temperature and humidity in the apartment continually rise throughout the boil. It must have been over 100° F and 100% humidity by the time I turned off the burners.
I started heating the wort as I was collecting it during the sparge. My notes say that there was a rolling boil at 8:26 PM, though it was probably already boiling before then. I started the first (and only) hop addition at 8:41 PM, so that's at least 15 minutes of boiling before the 60 minute addition.
I added the 3 oz. of East Kent Goldings pellets (4.4% AA) and boiled them for 60 minutes. Then I turned off the burners, started the chiller, and turned on the air conditioner...
The result was five gallons of wort with a starting gravity of 1.052. If that ferments down to 1.010, which it usually does, then it'll be 5.5% ABV.
The yeast was a fresh packet of S-04 ale yeast, stirred into some wort and then poured into the fermentor.
I affixed a blowoff tube to the carboy and put it into the chest freezer set to 60° F.
Two days later, this is what I had:
Lessons learned:
I cleaned up the mess and replaced the tube with an airlock.
We got 42 bottles of porter, plus one partially filled. Not bad, considering that the fermentor exploded.
The hydrometer read 1.014 at 64° F, which means the final gravity was 1.014, which means the beer is 5.0% ABV.
I primed the beer with 1¼ cups of pale dried malt extract boiled in about a quart of water and cooled.
The beer tastes good flat. Let's give it a few weeks to carbonate before the first tasting.