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.

Honey Pale Ale Update

Here is a quick run down of how the fermentation has gone with the honey pale ale:

• the airlock pressurized 20mins after being installed and was activity bubbling within 2.5hrs. The safebrew t-58 yeast really moves fast
• the next morning the airlock was going off like a machine gun and co2 was pumpin yeast gunk throughout the carboy
• by day 3 the airlock activity had reduced greatly and all the gunk settled out at the bottom of the carboy
• on day seven I racked to the secondary which you will see below
  

Before dinner I racked the ale from the primary into the secondary. It has been exactly one week since brew day so it was time. The ale went into my new 11.5L(3 gal) carboy. I decided on the small carboy for a few reasons, lower cost to brew, I can brew more variety in a shorter time and it still provides a case and a half of beer. In the future I would like to do full 18.9 L (5gal) batches through. My thought is the 18.9L carboy would be nice for lighter beers and the 11.5L carboy would be nice for bigger beers.

I took a gravity sample and it came out at 1.022. I am not sure how much lower it will end up but I am looking for 1.010 - 1.008 before bottling.

After racking I had about 2L (0.5gal) that did not fit in the secondary so it was chilled in the fridge and now is being tasted. It tastes just like beer! Pretty cool result for my first crack at beer brewing. Its flavor is quite nice and clean with a good hop bitterness. Alcohol content at the moment is about 3.75% so it has a little ways to go and it is still needs to clear out. So far so good though.

I will secondary for 2 weeks and then proceed to prime and bottle. I will then bottle age for a couple weeks before consuming.

Honey Pale Ale Brew Day

Thursday evening I brewed my first beer, a partial mash honey pale ale. The recipe can be found at the following link. The process went well but it did end up take 4 hours and it certainly was a cooking marathon. I took lots of picture of the process so please bear with me:

I brought 15 liters (4 gal) of water to 74c (165f)

Added all the grain and gave it a good stir.

I then added ice until the temp lowered to mash temp of 65-68c (150-155f)

With the temp at the mash range I then maintained it for 60 minutes.

After the mash I strained the grain out with
a cheese cloth lined colander into a bucket.

The grain was then raised for a while so all the wort drainer out.

It then went back into the now rinsed pot, the pale DME was stirred in and then it was heated to a boil.

This was taken when the hot break occurred about 20 min after turning the heat on. At this point I set the timer for 60minutes and maintained the boil.

This was taken after the first hops addition.
0.5oz cascade hops was added at :60, :30 & :15

At :01 of the boil I added the last 0.5oz cascade hops
and the pound of honey.

With the boil done the pot went into an ice bath and was quickly brought to 21 c (70f).

It was then stained into a bucket. I tried a few things here. First with cheese cloth which quickly clogged then just with a stainer. Lots of hop reside was missed. Not sure if this is a problem? I guess I can separated it out when I rack to the secondary.

I then aerated the wort really well by transferring it between the pot & bucket about 5 times.

With that done it went into a carboy and then I topped it with water to 11.5 liters (3gals) and mixed well.

I then took a gravity sample which ended up being 1.050. After that the yeast was pitched into the carboy.

Finally here it is completed and on its way to becoming ale.

My Next Brew

With the Hard Cider bottled I am moving on to my next brew. This will be my first attempt at brewing beer and I will use a partial mash recipe shared by Red @ red-icculus.com. I was not able to source all the original ingredients and I added honey so the recipe is a bit of a hybrid now. I also decided to reduce the batch to 11.5 liters(3 gal). Here goes the recipe:

Honey Pale Ale

2 lbs Pale Ale Malt
2 lbs Honey Malt
1 lb Pale DME
1 lb Buckwheat Honey
2 oz Cascade Hops
1 oz Saaz Hops
Safbrew T-58 Yeast

• Heat 11.5 liters of water to 65-68c(150-155f), add grain and mash for 60 minutes well maintaining the temp.
• Strain grain out, add DME and bring to boil until hot break occurs then start adding hops.
• 0.5 oz of cascade at :60, :30, :15 and at :01 add the last 0.5 oz cascade and honey
• cool wort to 21c(70f) in an ice water bath and then strain into the carboy
• top up with water to about 12.5 liters, leaving extra for racking loss and aerate.
• pitch rehydrated yeast, install airlock and allow to ferment for 1-2 weeks.
• transfer to a 11.5 liter carboy, leaving little air space and install airlock
• allow to secondary for 1-2 weeks, dry hopping with the 1oz Saaz hops 5-7 day before fermentation is done.

This is my plan and I hope everything goes well. I am planning on starting the ale some evening this week. Pictures of the process will fallow soon after. Once the ale has fermented out I will be bottling in 750ml (25oz) champagne bottle with 29mm crowns.

At the following link are a bunch of pictures of brew day!

Bottled Hard Cider

The hard cider was bottled the evening of Dec 23rd. The process went extremely well for my first crack at bottling. Here goes some pictures of the process:

First off I dissolved 3oz by weight of honey in a bit of water on the stove and then added it to my bucket for carbonation. I then racked the cider from the carboy into the bucket, leaving most of the lees behind. Once siphoned I very lightly stirred the cider without aerating to mix the priming honey in and pool any lees left into the center.

With that done I then siphoned the cider from the bucket into sterilized bottles with a bottling wand.

From my 8 liter (2gal) batch I ended up with eight 750ml bottles & six 375ml bottles. Pretty good haul really.

The champagne bottles were sealed with a plastic cork and a wire hood. The hire hoods really didn't fit the bottles which caused a bit of aggravation. Any time I have opened a champagne bottle the hood always fit just under the rim and was not tight. These ones I had to bend into place to fit. Once I get to making a batch of wine I will get a good champagne floor corker so in the future I can seal these with proper corks & hoods.

The bottles have been hanging out in the broom closet in a lidded tote, encase of explosions! Thankfully no explosions yet. They have now been carbonating for about 5 days and all bottles have formed a bit of sediment in the bottom. This is a good indication that the carbonation is under way. I will let them go for two weeks and then store them in the cool basement.

One bottle is not quite full so it will be consumed right after carbonation. The rest I will let age for a while and I have been thinking of letting a couple age for about a year. There also has been some thought of labeling them. A draft label was sent to a local print place and I am just waiting on a price before deciding if it is worth it.

We are at dryness

It has been just over thirty days since starting this batch of hard cider. This evening I decided to take a sample and do a hydrometer test. The final gravity was plus or minus 1.000 so it has basically fermented to dryness. I will be bottling very soon, hopefully tomorrow evening. I have a mix of bottles so it will be going into 341ml crown bottles, 375ml champagne bottles & 750ml champagne bottles.

Here is my sample. The cider started out as cloudy brown cider and did clear quite well without the use of clearing agents. Taste wise it is excellent. It has a very clean, dry taste and best of all no off tastes. It does have a good amount of alcohol kick but it is not off putting. With some time aging in the bottles this stuff should be stellar.

Look for my bottling post coming soon....