Homebrewer03’s Weblog

Decided to get a brew on today as its been a while! I’m going for a popular simple Porter recipe as posted on Jims Forum by a contributor called Spearmint Wino. It won an award at the CBA show in Sutton so will nice to get it underway.

I’m getting into the darker styles of beers and want to get a nice porter racked off for when Autumn comes. The recipe is as follows;

Makes 25L

5000g Pale Malt
500g Chocolate Malt
265g Black (Patent) Malt

34g Northdown hops – boil for 90 mins
10g Goldings hops – boil for 10 mins
10g Goldings hops – steep after switch off

Hop and grain bill

This is the first time I’ve used my new digital thermometer – worth its weight in gold. I’ve never really been able to efficiently check the mash temp with a conventional thermometer. I’m now halfway through the mash and its holding at a steady 67.5C.

Hold that mash!

The recipe also calls for a whirlfloc tablet but I don’t have any so will use Irish Moss instead. Not sure if either are neccessary in a dark style beer where clarity isn’t going to be important. I’ll bung it in anyway!

Need a bigger mash tun!

I didn’t employ any liquor treatment other than the usual campden tablet as Porter should be well suited to our hard water.

That black malt is really....black

The run off

My boiler set up

I was reading an article today about light-struck beer, or ‘skunking’ as it is known amongst homebrewers.

Skunking is whereby the UV rays emitted by the sun will react badly with the natural oils in the hops to produce an unpleasant flavour. This is why beer is stored in either brown or green bottles; to block out the UV rays. I’ve heard that green isnt so great. Not sure how ales such as Newcastle Brown or Bishops Tipple can fare in clear glass. Maybe the brewers treat it to combat skunking?

Anyway, I’ve always been very vigilant where skunking is concerned, making sure I always use brown glass bottles and conditioning out of natural light.

The article was concerning skunking and fermentation. I realised that I always fermented in the brightest room in the house, sunlight floods in from early monring to early evening as its South facing. I must’ve been very lucky getting away with it as apparently skunked beer is foul tasting (either that or my palette isn’t fussy!).

As I’m using an opaque plastic fermenter for the first time I was convinced that two days in the sun-trapped room would’ve definitely skunked it. I immediately put a black bin liner over the FV and tasted a sample from the tap; seems OK to me. Maybe I’ve got away with it YET again!

After 6 days fermenting its down to 1021. I’ve given the yeast a bit of a rousing, even though Windsor yeast has fairly low powers of attenuation I was hoping for maybe the 1014 mark. I will resist the temptation to use either yeast vit or DBE at this stage! I really want a bit of body in this very promising porter.

The update is after pitching 6g of a spurious ale yeast that I found kicking around in the fridge it still stayed at 102. Yes, yes, yes I went back completely on my word and used a sachet of Dry Beer Enyzme; totally negating the benefits of Windsor yeast and no doubt losing any kind of residual sweetness I was hoping for. Well the DBE did the trick (as expected) and its bubbling away like a good’un now.

I used a small quantity of the fermenting porter to prime the Barley Wine I’ve had sat in demijohns since April. This 9.7% monster is now safely stowed away in bottles.

UPDATE: Not good news. I bottled the Porter a week after pitching the DBE. There were still a few bubbles surfacing but not much activity. I’ve seen this before in beer and still bottled. BIG mistake. I also bottle one in a plastic bottle so as to squeeze the sides to check for over-carbonation. Flicking the bottle made it rind like glass! These were bottle-bombs for sure.

I was hoping to save the batch by slightly opening the caps as to release pressure. They were too far gone and foamed up the second pressure was released.

Not a good feeling tipping 5 gallons of beer down the sink, but I’m glad I caught them when I did; wouldn’t fancy one of those exploding in the house, at the very best it would’ve been a re-decorating job – if the house was still intact.

Lesson learnt; don’t be in a rush to get bottling.