Vanilla Bourbon Porter Update

Here is the porter on 3 day of fermentation. I have started keeping the carboy in the broom closet. It is in the center of the house and the furnace pipes run under it so it is evenly warm. It also completely excludes light so the sun can not skunk the beer.

One the first day the airlock was slowly active. On day two a krausen formed and the airlock was quite active. On day three it is about the same. I suspect fermentation will slow tomorrow.

This is quite a big beer so I will ferment it for at least 4 weeks, maybe even 6. There also is a lot of sediment from all the grain so I will be racking to a secondary fermenter at the 2-3 week mark. I will also be using gelatin finings in hopes for getting it crystal clear.

Not much interesting will be happening with the porter until I put it in the secondary so I will not update until then. In between I will be doing some posts on beers I have tasted lately.

Vanilla Bourbon Porter Brew Day

I brewed the porter Tuesday night, it took about 6 hours total, what a work out. Here goes a few photos of brew day. If you are looking for the recipe you can find it HERE.

Taken after mashing the grain for 60min. 3gal mash with 9.5lbs of grain.

Taken at the end of the second mash, 30min this time. This was done with 2gal of water, a sparge of sorts I guess.

Taken well bring 5gal of wort to a full boil. Hmm looks good!

Taken at hot break and after the first hop addition. My brew pot is just under 6gal so I was a little worried about boil over. The hops went in slowly and all went well.

Taken at flame out after a 90min boil. The wort was reduced from 5gal to a little over 3gal.

The wort was then cooled and I took a gravity sample. OG on this porter was 1.070, the original recipe projected 1.078. I think my efficiency was not to shabby. I did think about doing a third mash which probably would have brought it up the few points, live and learn.

Coming up next will be a post on its fermentation thus far.

Vanilla Bourbon Porter Malt Grain

I had laid out all the malt's for my porter and thought they looked so good I had to take some photos of it all. Here they go:

5lbs Canadian 2-Row Malt

1lb Brown Malt

1lb Chocolate Malt - 1/2lb was used in the porter

1lb Crystal 77 Malt - chewed on some of this, excellent caramel flavor

2lbs Munich Malt

*I am going to start working on the brew day post tonight and hope to get it up in a day or two

Vanilla Bourbon Porter Recipe

Here goes my first attempt at an all grain brew. I roughly adapted this recipe to a 3 gal batch from the original 5 gal recipe. This brew is a little pricey at about $50 once you add vanilla & bourbon, that price includes only the used portion of the vanilla & bourdaon bottle by the way. With that said it is still about half the price of a similar retail product so lets just call it a once in a while home brew treat.

Vanilla Bourbon Porter
batch size: 11.5 liter (3gal)

5 lbs 2-Row Malt
2 lbs Munich Malt
1 lb Crystal 77
1 lb Brown Malt
1/2 lb Chocolate Malt
1 0z Magnum hops (bittering hops)
1 oz Saaz hops (aroma hops)
Safale US-05 dry yeast
2 oz pure vanilla extract
8 oz bourbon

I don't have a sparging apparatus so I am going to fake it with this all grain brew. Here is how I have thought it out so far:

• Mash grain in 3 gallons of water at 150f for 60min. Well mashing, heat 2 gallons of strike water to 150f and hold temp. After mashing pour wort off to a bucket well reserving the grain in the brew pot. Now add the 2 gallons of 150f strike water to the grain and mash again for 30min. Pour wort off, remove grain and add the 5 gals of wort back into the brew pot.
• With all the wort in the brew pot bring to a rolling boil. At hot break add 1oz magnum hops and continue the boil for 60 min. Watch that the pot does not boil over and stir occasionally. At :10 of the boil added the saaz hops.
• With the boil done put the pot in an ice water bath and quickly bring the wort temp down to 70f.
• Once cooled strain the wort into a bucket. Then aerate the wort really well by transferring it between the bucket and pot about 8 times.
• Now transfer the wort to a carboy, pitch rehydrated yeast and allow to primary for 2 weeks
  
• After the primary fermentation rack off the lees to a secondary fermenter and allow to ferment until it is finished, 2-3 weeks.
• With fermentation done make a priming solution by dissolving 3oz sucrose with 2 cups of water and heat to dissolve. Now add the cooled priming sugar, vanilla & bourbon to a bottling bucket. Rake the porter onto the solution and lightly stir. Proceed to bottle and bottle condition for at least 2 weeks.
  

Brew day photos to follow soon, hopefully tomorrow evening.

Bottled Honey Pale Ale

Last Monday I bottled the Honey Pale Ale . It had fermented for about a month and ended up finishing with an FG of 1.020. I was hoping it would ferment out further but it would not budge even after repitching some EC-1118 yeast. For bottling I first dissolved 3oz by weight of sucrose in 2 cups of water. That went into a bucket and the ale was racked onto the sugar solution. I then gave it a light stir and then proceeded to siphon the ale into the bottles.

I bottled into 750ml (25oz) champagne bottles. It really made bottling fast and they were relatively inexpensive to purchase. Free would have been better though! They have 29mm crowns so I had to get a 29mm bell for the wing capper as well as 29mm crown caps.

Now for the pièce de résistance, the first glass of Honey Pale Ale with bubbles. At the time of this picture the ale had been carbonating for 6 days. It had carbonate quite well but it will be even better in another week. It pours with a big head that really holds its form for a while. The taste is really good. It has a nice hoppy bitterness, even at 1.020 it is not overly sweet and ABV is around about 5%. All in all I think my first beer turned out great, who knew it was so easy to brew! I look forward to tasting it after it has aged in the bottle for a month or so.

The next brew coming up will be a Vanilla Bourbon Porter and it will also be another 11.5 liter (3gal) batch. I have all the supplies on hand and hope to get to it this week or next. Coming up soon will be the recipe post.