Wednesday, July 27, 2011

group brew prototype: historic brown porter

on july 24, i brewed a historic porter based on the '1776 porter' from Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing (p. 96) as a test batch for the upcoming Pale Ales Group Brew.  well, also for my own curiosity, as the samples that i tasted from a recent meeting were quite good and interesting.  i was given advice (Al and Clay had brought the samples) to use rice hulls to make sure the mash flowed and to expect a rather viscous run-off.  so i gathered up the following ingredients:

9 lbs. TF Brown malt
9 lbs. TF Amber malt
9 lbs. Briess 6-row
1.5 lbs. Weyermann CaraAroma
1.5 lbs. Briess CaraBrown
0.25 lbs. Franco-Belges Kiln Coffee Malt
0.25 lbs. TF Pale Chocolate Malt
0.25 lbs. Solar kilned malt (courtesy of Joe @ Princeton Homebrew)*
3 lbs. rice hulls (i know this is overkill in hindsight, but a stuck mash is never never NEVER fun)
8 oz. East Kent Goldings, 4.5%AA, pellets
WLP022, Essex Ale yeast (1/2 gallon starter prepared)**

*malted and kilned as an experiment at Princeton Homebrew
**had saved a slurry of this yeast in my fridge as it is a seasonal strain
6-row on the left.  brown, amber, spec. grains on the right.

my ten gallon setup was used to brew this 10 gallon batch:
not too fancy, not too shabby
i heated up plenty of strike water to 165-170F, and started to fill the mash tun (center vessel).  first i doughed in the 6-row and rice hulls.  next came all the brown, amber, and specialty malt which did not crack so nicely. the brown and amber malts milled like roasted grains, i.e. nearly exploded into dust. i say nearly since they were not dust, but not too much intact husk was left for a nice filtering bed.  after adding all the grist, i started up one of my pumps to recirculate the mash, and the temp fell below where i was aiming (but not too low)

150F mash, recipe calls for 156F.  d'oh!



mash tun's pretty full
i heated up more water to sparge the mash, but also for the hop steeping, another historic part of the recipe that Mosher calls for.  one pint 160F water per ounce hops, and allow them to steep for up to four hours.  sounds like first wort hopping to me.

8 oz EKG @ 4.5%AA
1 gallon 160-170F water, EKG's in 2 lrg muslin bags
after an hour of conversion time, an iodine test indicated there was no starch remaining, so i transferred the near-boiling sparge water to the hot-liquor tank, and ran off 1 gallon of wort to the boil kettle.  i added ~1.5 gallons of near boiling water to the mash tun for mashing out.  i started the burner on high, as the first gallon of wort was to be caramelized to a somewhat thick syrup, and stirred like it was my job.

Stir!  Caramelize!
after a nice steam bath and an amazing olfactory experience (so long as you like malty smells) things were thicker and reduced, but not burned.  Mosher thinks you should taste it, but i wasn't going to burn my tongue with plenty of brewday remaining.  while i was creating this syrup, i recirculated the mash, and directed the run-off into a bucket for temporary holding.
Reduced'n'syrupy
after the boil down (~30 minutes), i dumped the hop steep into the kettle (water and hops) and directed the sparge output to the boil kettle (fly sparge).  i don't recall exactly how long i sparged, but i would say around 80 minutes.
two pumps made this easy

grain bed after sparge

filled up boil kettle
the wort was boiled for 90 minutes, and there were no other hop additions or irish moss for that matter.  Mosher's recipe calls for licorice root and brewer's licorice to be added near the end of the boil, which i did not add but they were typical brewing additions at that time.  at flameout i whirlpooled the wort, and allowed it to stand for 20 minutes while i got my fermenters and plate chiller ready.  i started the cool water in, and started to pump the wort to the chiller... and that's when trouble started.  it started flowing fine and then reduced the flow to a trickle.  checked the prime on the pump, it's fine.  oh no.  the plate chiller was clogged.  after a thorough backflush and resanitizing, i started the run off again.  same result.  repeat the following steps and finally things were flowing.  after collecting my 10 gallons of wort in two 5 gallon vessels, i checked the bottom of the boil kettle and noticed there were little clumps of what looked like brown and/or amber malt.  looks like the recirculation needed a little bit more time to ensure the grain bed was set.
OG @ 90F
the wort was quite thick coming out.  and the aroma was really nice!  chocolate and toast malt smells abound. after sitting to cool a while to 72F, the decanted starter was pitched to both batches.  fermentation started within 10 hours.  the chocolate-sweet malt aroma coming out of the buckets was really nice.
fermentation after ~60hrs.
so after primary fermentation, one 5 gallon batch racked to a secondary and aged for a little while (6-8 weeks).  the second 5 gallon batch will be racked to a secondary and will receive some dregs from an old ale fermented with Wyeast's Old Ale Blend (9097-PC, contains brettanomyces) to 'stale' the beer.

i am not sure what the attenuation will be as of yet, but i have a small amount of wort that i saved for this purpose so i do not have to test the entire batch.  more information as it becomes available...

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