Bourbon Vanilla Porter (AG) - Page 16

**Lil' Sparky** · 02-23-2010, 12:26 AM

Yeah, put it all in there. You want the little black dots, the oils, everything.

Beavdowg · 02-23-2010, 08:01 PM

Do you just dump in the chopped up vanilla beans or do you have to try and sanitize them somehow?

egurney · 02-23-2010, 08:16 PM

I'm soaking mine (along with some oak cubes) in the bourbon (Jack Daniel's actually) to sanitize. Going to dump everything in.

Beavdowg · 02-23-2010, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by egurney

I'm soaking mine (along with some oak cubes) in the bourbon (Jack Daniel's actually) to sanitize. Going to dump everything in.

I was going to use this recipe for a Vanilla Porter and leave out the bourbon part. So, do we have to sanitize the vanilla before we put it in, and if so, how?

thanks

**Lil' Sparky** · 02-23-2010, 10:04 PM

You don't have to - I never have. But if you soaked everything in a an ounce or two of bourbon or vodka, you wouldn't taste it in the end.

timobkg · 02-24-2010, 02:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrgstiffler

I bottled this a week ago and just sampled a bottle. Absolutely amazing. This is the best beer I've brewed so far and it could still use at least a month to age. I posted my recipe a few posts back, but I changed a few things when I brewed. Here's what I did:

Here's my recipe:
5.75lb Extra Light DME
3lb Dark LME
1.5lb Chocolate Malt
.5lb Crystal 120L
.5lb Brown Malt
1oz Chinook (60 Minutes)
.5oz US Golding (15 Minutes)
.5oz US Golding (5 Minutes)
1 Whirlfloc Tablet (15 Minutes)
1.5tbsp Pure Vanilla Extract (Secondary)
12oz Maker's Mark (Secondary)
Danstar Nottingham

A few notes:
-I steeped at 155F for 30 minutes.
-I added the Dark LME with 15 minutes left in the boil.
-I primed with just under a cup of brown sugar.
-OG = 1.070
-FG = 1.020

This is an extremely smooth beer with no flavor really overpowering another. The flavors from the darker malts as a whole are not as pronounced as I would like though. I'm going to brew this up again soon as a partial mash and let it age for awhile. This is absolutely a great beer. Only a week after bottling and I already love it. It's going to be VERY difficult not to touch the rest of the batch.

I'd like to try making this, but I'm confused about this part: "I added the Dark LME with 15 minutes left in the boil." Can someone explain what that means?

**Lil' Sparky** · 02-24-2010, 03:50 AM

I've never done an extract brew, so take this with a grain of salt...

From what I understand, a lot of extract brewers add the extract late in the boil, like with 15 mins left in that recipe. I think it allows you to get more hop utilization when you're not doing full boils, and maybe something to do with minimizing how much the sugars are caramelized during the boil. Hopefully someone else can verify.

timobkg · 02-24-2010, 03:58 AM

If I understand you correctly, that means to add the extract with 15 minutes left in the hop boil?

I've not heard of that before, but it sounds interesting.

Beavdowg · 02-26-2010, 12:10 AM

What is Brown Malt? I can't find it in my BrewPal software.

thanks

Beavdowg · 03-01-2010, 09:46 PM

Sparky,

I'm getting ready to brew this up this weekend but have another question. In the beginning of the recipe you give a 60 min. boil time but then in your comments before the recipe you say that it should be boiled for 90 minutes to get the gravity up. So which is it, 60 or 90 minutes?

thanks