"In Stock" Porter

I spent some time yesterday hovering over my grain bin, taking inventory of what I had in stock. I did this in order to formulate a recipe for the Porter I am making next. Here is what I have.

8 lbs. Pale Malt
2 lbs. Munich Malt
0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt
0.25 lbs. Crystal 80L
0.25 lbs. Crystal 120L
0.25 lbs. Black Patent Malt

This makes an 11.25 lb. grain bill, a target OG of 1.055, and an SRM of 29. I may add an extra ounce or two of the black patent malt late in the mash, right before sparging. Given my poor efficiency on my last brew, I may also throw in an extra pound of brewer’s malt depending on how confident I am feeling on brew day.

Normally, on a porter, I might prefer some Fuggles or Willammette in terms of hops, but I need to use what I have in stock before I buy any new supplies or ingredients. So . . .

0.50 oz. Yakima Magnum 15.5% (60)
0.50 oz. Northern Brewers 6.5% (30)
0.50 oz. Northern Brewers 6.5% (15)

This makes for 49.3 IBUs, and the beer should be fairly reserved in terms of up-front hop aroma especially (in contrast to the Victory Pale that will share tap time with this Porter).

In terms of yeast, I plan on throwing this wort on top of the yeast cake from my Victory Pale Ale when it is finished with primary fermentation. This much of the Nottingham yeast will create a quick and violent fermentation, which will be fine with me since I want to get these beers on tap soon.

By the way, I use Promash software to formulate all my recipes. This is an excellent recipe formulation, and I will make it the subject of a future blog entry.

Cheap Beer?

A colleague and a reader of this blog e-mailed this image to me yesterday. Pretty funny, I think. And it caused me to consider the price of my recent brew. Here is a break down of approximate pricing.

I bought my last bag of brewer's malt (50 lbs.) for $32.50 or $0.65 a pound. Generally, I buy specialty malts at prices ranging from $1.50-$2.00 per pound. Hops are generally $2.00+ per ounce, and my favorite Nottingham yeast strain is approximately $1.50 per satchet (used for two batches, generally).

Some quick addition yields an approximate ingredients cost of $15.00. This does not include water taken from my tap or propane used for boiling the wort. These things aside, my latest brew costs me approximately $3.00 per gallon (a bit under that, actually).

It's true! Gas is definitely more expensive than my homebrew!

Some pics from brewday

I promised some pics from this weekend's brew. Here you go.

I crush grains with my MaltMill Barley Crusher. The grain bill for this brew was very simple and quite small.

I missed my target mash temperature by about 4 degrees. This is typical for my first brew of the season, and the temperature outside was a bit colder this weekend than when I usually brew. You will notice my makeshift set-up in the sparging pictures. My biggest fear is of 6 gallons of 180 degree water spilling from my hot liquor tank on top. I watch it pretty closely, but I need to build a three-tiered scaffolding.

A "Come-Back" Victory Pale Ale

There are only a few pints remaining of the Cream Ale I made late last fall, and for the first time in quite a while I have no brew to replace it with. This means both taps will be empty for a while - a problem that at least one of my friends is letting me know about regularly.

To mark the return of brewing season, then, I put together a "Come-Back Victory Pale Ale" today. Here is the recipe:

6 lbs. 2 Row Brewer's Malt
2.5 lbs. Pilsen Malt
1 lb. Munich Malt
6 oz. Victory Malt
4 oz. Crystal (80L)
2 oz. Special B

0.5 oz. Galena 12% (60)
1 oz. Northern Brewers 6.8% (30)
0.5 oz. Simcoe 12% (15)
0.5 oz. Simcoe 12% (0)

Nottingham Ale Yeast

I am hoping that this will be an easy drinking pale, heavy on the hop flavor and aroma. The brew went fairly well today with the exception of a few boil overs. Final gravity was 1.043 (pretty low) on nearly 6 gallons of wort, so my efficiency is not what it usually is. This always happens on my first few brews of the year. I did take some pictures of today's brew, and I will post them when I get a chance.

Next up? Either a porter or a stout.

Welcome to my brew blog!

I have started this blog for two reasons. First, I enjoy writing about and thinking about beer. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I have found that I am miserable failure at keeping good brew house notes. I have lost more good recipes than I care to think about., so I envision this as a place where I can collect the recipes I use as well as some tasting notes.