#21 Death by Malt
| Brewed: | Jun 2013 |
| Style: | Porter |
| ABV: | 6.3% |
| Original Gravity: | 1.061 |
| Final Gravity: | 1.014 |
| Bitterness: | 40 IBUs |
| IBU/OG: | 0.656 |
| Batch Size: | 23 ltr |
| Method: | Batch Sparge |
| Mash Temp: | 67°C |
| Mash Volume: | 21.5 ltr |
| Sparge Volume: | 17.7 ltr |
| Mash Time: | 75 min |
| Boil Time: | 90 min |
| 5.0kg | Pale Malt | |
| 1.0kg | Medium Crystal Malt | |
| 1.0kg | Chocolate Malt | |
| 500g | Black Malt | |
| 25g | Chinook 11.1% | Boil 60 min |
| 20g | Willamette 4.7% | Boil 40 min |
| 25g | Willamette 4.7% | Boil 10 min |
| 1 | Vanilla Bean | Boil 5 min |
| 30g | Willamette 4.7% | Dry Hop 6 Days |
| 30g | Saaz 4.7% | Dry Hop 6 Days |
| Safale US-05 Dry Ale Yeast | ||
| 3 Vanilla Beans in a bit of vodka for three days, then added to fermenter for 14 days | ||
| 80g Dextrose | ||
I finally got back to doing a porter. I wanted to do a vanilla porter but could not settle on any of the recipes I found. So I took the Port O’ Palmer recipe and then massively increased the speciality malts. Will it work? Probably not – I did not see any recipe with similarly large % of speciality malts. I probably should remember to add some dry hops in to help balance it.
Notes
It all went well except when I put the second lot of hops in – then it suddenly boiled over massively. So, I think I lost most of the second addition. It was very dark. Hopefully the vanilla will soften it nicely.
7/6 3 vanilla beans into some vodka – will let it extract the flavour for a couple of days and put it into the beer on the 10th.
17/6 Added some dry hops – not too typical for a porter but little worried about the dark malts over powering. It looked good and smelt nice when I popped the top to add the hops. I need a wine thief to take a taster!
23/6 Bottling day. It smelt and tasted quite good. I just cannot explain the FG – how is it that I cannot get a decent FG? They all are crap.
Tasting Notes
The vanilla did not last that long. It was a strong stout flavour – too harsh I think. A bit thin even. Still very drinkable.
11/10 – Final bottles drunk tonight. Man this beer aged well. It started off harsh but with a hint of vanilla and ended up mallow and smooth and darn tasty even if I do say myself.