I have decided to brew a Vanilla Bean Porter recipe that I purchased from the Home Brewing Depot in West Allis. I’m partial to the darker beers and stouts are my favorite. I really like the carmel and chocolate tastes in certain stouts and this one sounded perfect to me.
I also decided to graduate from a full malt/hop/grain extract kit to a recipe where I’d steep my own grains in a muslin bag (big tea bag for steeping hops, grains and adjuncts in your brew).
The beer includes Crystal Malt, Chocolate Malt, and Black Patent grains. It uses a Challenger hop for the bittering hops on the front end of the boil and Cascade hops for aroma near the end. During the secondary fermentation I get to split a vanilla bean and drop it in the fermenter.
I also used a liquid yeast in a Wyeast smack pack instead of pitching dry yeast like I did in Goosebrau. I’ll admit that I didn’t follow instructions and had to purchase another pack and re-pitch, as my fermentation was about 2% compared to my last batch. After I re-pitched my 2nd container of yeast it went off like gangbusters with some great CO2 action in my blow off tube.
I did watch a great video series on Expert Village by Mark Emiley. I’ll be watching more of his videos as I really liked his style of explanation. Here was the video series on brewing a porter. I learned a few tips that will likely improve my process and my brew next time. Off the top of my head, I won’t squeeze my muslin bags to extract every bit of liquid out of them. Rather, I’ll boil about 20 ounces of water, take off heat and pour/rinse the bags with that water. He said squeezing the bags will extract a lot of the natural tannins into the brew, which can cause undesirable tastes. Learning more every time.
My carboy is sitting in the basement, which has a room temp right now of 60 degrees. I pitched the 2nd batch of yeast on January 2nd, so nearly 2 days have gone by and I’m getting about 20 blow bubbles every 10 seconds out of my blow tube. It seems to be very aggressive, so I hope that is good news.
Sounds tasty I’ll save you some of the porter I just made if I have it bottled by the time you get her later this month. I will be racking it to a secondary today or tomorrow. I also have a dry hop sample waiting for you when you get here.
Sorry I lost your bottle I cannot find it anywhere, I know I saved it from the recycle bin but then lost track of it.
Enjoy
Bill
No problem about the bottle. My wife actually recycled one of the four you sent up. I’ll be bringing back three empties for you. Good time of the year for stouts with a cold unfinished basement. I’ll again save some for you (if it turns out ok) and look forward to tasting yours.
Glad you liked the videos.