Beer Forum

Hey hey...I've nearly drank my way through my first 5 gallons on homebrew (a McEwan's clone) and I picked up the ingredients for a porter yesterday. I probably should have posted the recipe here first, but it's a bit late for that now.
My plan (based on a recipe I found online and suggestions from the homebrew store owner) is this:
.5lbs chocolate malt & 1lb black patent malt: steeped in 1 gallon of water at 150F for 30 minutes, rinsed with another gallon of 150F water.
Bring to boil and add 7.5lbs amber DME & 1.8oz (or most likely 2oz) Perle hops for bittering. 60 min. boil.
Add .5 oz Cascade hops for flavoring and 1 tsp. Irish moss 15 min. before end of boil.
The hombrew guy said not to bother with any aroma hops (I had originally planned on Tettanger).
I'm going to use Wyeast London 1028 in a liter starter.

Sorry if the formatting of that recipe sucked.
A couple questions:
- How does the recipe look? What did I mess up before I even started?
- Do you recommend following the Pope's starter instructions on Mr.Malty exactly or do you have other starter suggestions (this is going to be my first one)?
- I'm going to try to do a full boil over 2 burners of my electric stove. I went for the big brewpot from the start and want to try to get rid of the "twang" I had in my first partial boil batch. Will starting with 5.5 gallons before the boil give me 5 gallons after evaporation? I don't imagine my boil is going to get too VigARous.
- When should I add the espresso? The original recipe calls for 4 shots to go in when I pitch the yeast, but I know some folks recommend adding it at bottling.

Thanks in advance,
-E-

First, RDWHAHB (Relax, don't worry, have a home brew)

The recipe looks decent -- it will be a good beer.

Improvements/considerations going forward for you:

1) Don't use Amber or Dark malt extracts. This is not to say that they are all bad. This is because you will have a bitch of a time translating the recipes if you ever want to make the move to AG or if the store doesn't carry the exact brand of extract that you need.
Instead, always use pale extract and a medium crystal malt (like C40 or C60) instead of Amber. IMO, Dark malt extract is pure evil. Dark malt extract can be made with either black patent or roasted barley or both, with and/or without crystal and/or chocolate malt, etc. The substyles of stout or porter or schwarzbier or (insert your favorite dark colored beer name here) can be thrown off by using the wrong variation of dark malts. Dry stout for instance is typically all roasted barley, no black patent. Robust porter is typically the other way around. Some styles of stouts and porters need chocolate and or crystal malts, others do not. Nobody knows what the fuck they put into the dark malt extract, so <insert Forrest Gump voice here> "You never know what yer gonna git". Typically, they shoot for the middle, which doesn't help out for most styles. Instead, the rule is to always use pale malt extract and then darken it up yourself. Hope that makes sense. Post a question here any time you are unsure of recipe forumulation and any number of us will be glad to help.

2) Generally, when making a style of beer, consider where that beer style originated. For instance, Porters "grew up" in England. Lagers are (generally) from Germany. American versions are from America, etc. As such, those styles made use of the local ingredients, because back in the day, they didn't have MoreBeer.com or NorthernBrewer.com (our fine sponsors) from which they could buy any ingredient they wanted. Instead, they had to make due with whateve was local. So, to be closer to style, stay with British ingredients for British beers (ie, Porters), American ingredients for American beers, German Ingredients for German Beers, etc. Your recipe is an English style (porter) that bitters with German (Perle) hops and uses American (Cascade) flavor hops, with a British (1028) yeast. It is your second brew, so this is no big deal at all, but it is something to consider as you gain experience and start to take your beers up to the next levels. Like I said, Brew it, Drink it, it WILL still be delicious. But learning the finer points now will save you tons in terms of experiments (esp. the ones that go awry) in the future.

3) The fact that you know about starters on your second batch is a good sign. Use them. The Pope's calculator is awesome, but you can fudge it up or down a little, no big deal.

4) Extract Twang can be defeated by doing the Extract Late Method. Google that. It's easier than trying to fuck around with 2 burners. Besides, it is the boil time of the extract that makes the twang, not so much the boil size. Concentrated boils make more twang, but it's often still there if you boil the extract for the full boil time.

5) Add the espresso at your choice of times. Generally, though, aromatics last better when they are added later (like brite tank/secondary or just prior to bottling, unless they need steriliztion, which would point to very late in the boil).

HTH-

thanks very much for the input...once i sort out the process i'll definitely be looking to work on my recipes and keep them close to their roots...
the brewday today went well...saint paddy's day + 9am start to a brewday = good times...
i got the full wort boil up to a boil spanning 2 burners on the stove...having the lid on for a few minutes at the start helped a lot...and thanks to my starter, she's already bubbling (albeit slowly) 4 hours after pitching...
my original gravity came out as a 1.070, which is high for style, i think, but since the recipe didn't come with an OG to shoot for, who knows...we shall see...

Sounds like it went well! Congrats!

((7.5 x 1.036) + (.5 x 1.032) + (1 x 1.031)) / 5 = 1.063

You should have had about a 1.063 beer if there were no more fermentables and that was a 5 gallon batch. You might have either over boiled, or you didn't stir completely before taking your sample, and you got a bunch of the heavy wort.

RDWHAHB

Interesting. Is there a handy resource where I can find those numbers?

Also, the fermentation is going to so well that I woke up this morning to find the krausen working it's way up into the airlock. I frantically put together a blowoff tube (breaking the airlock in the stopper trying to get it out actually helped -- free rigid tubing) and I'm hoping this keeps things contained...but still sanitary.

Update on the porter: after 2 weeks and a few days I bottled this afternoon, skipping the secondary because I hear that's what all the cool kids are doing...
The final gravity reading I got was 1.024, which is higher than I was hoping for. I'm putting that down to me not really knowing what I'm doing yet and crappy hydrometer skills...hopefully I won't have any bottle bombs.
Speaking of which I used 2 online calculators and the clever chart-graph-thingy in Rock Candy's book and used 5.4 oz. DME to prime with. Have I just effed myself?
I just finished listening to 4 hr. show where JP thinks audio rock-paper-scissors is a good idea and I'm enjoying the uncarbonated beer that wouldn't fit in a bottle. Not a bad way to start a weekend...
cheers,
-E-

Gravity sounds high, but hopefully it's because you didn't degas the sample so you had bubbles sticking to the hydrometer, pushing it up and giving you a high reading.

To be safe, I would suggest that you be very careful with these bottles, Keep them warm, but put them in a plastic tub and somewhat covered just in case they turn into bottle grenades. They are going to take at least 2, probably 3 weeks to fully carbonate.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Gah! Now, to quote Doc, I'm FREAKIN' OUT!
If these things are going to go ka-blooie, how long do I have? Or are there too many factors?