Trail Smoked Porter - My First Brew

gman122889 · 10-21-2011, 05:46 AM

So I just tasted my first brew tonight. It's a smoky porter. Fermented for 18 days. Bottle conditioned for a week...couldn't help but take a taste tonight with my roommate. It was amazing! Great smokey aftertaste. Definitely tasting those smoked malts that I steeped. Anyways, I decided to have a little fun and make my own label. Let me know what you all think:

I'm an avid mountain biker and outdoors guy so I plan on using pictures from my hiking/biking/other adventures on my labels. All the pictures to "tell a story" so I think that's going to be the catch phrase of my brewery "Every Beer Tells a Story" I don't really have a name for my "brewery" yet since I've only brewed one beer but I plan on making many more. Let me hear what you guys think!

Special thanks to Chris at Mile High Brewing Supply in Prescott, AZ for getting my started. He customized a recipe for me based on what I told him I wanted to taste and it was amazing! Gave me all the stuff I needed in a kit and even gave me a discount cause I told him he forgot to ring up something! Awesome Ma and Pa home brew shop!

**GodsStepBrother** · 11-07-2011, 09:53 PM

18 days later I say congrats! Looks cool gman122889, post a pic up of a pint.

gman122889 · 11-07-2011, 11:01 PM

Here's the first bottle...I figured out I made a mistake in my process. For the first brew ever I think one little mistake isn't too bad. I thought you didn't want to mess with stirring it at all when you were priming and bottling so I didn't...Oops! My priming sugar didn't get distributed evenly. First bottle I opened was the last bottle I bottled and it got the concentration of the priming sugar. It was quite the gusher. This was the second one I opened up. Still pretty fizzy! Other than the last few that I filled the rest have been pretty good as far as carb goes with a few crazy ones in there. That's why this one has so much head. It was tasty though! My LHBS owner said it was awesome!

**GodsStepBrother** · 11-07-2011, 11:09 PM

Hate you damn it, I am at work! Looks great, sometimes i can’t decide whether I want a white head or a brown head on my dark beers. They both look good, and yours looks good carb or under carbed, no worries.

The next time you bottle try adding your priming sugar to the bottom of the bottling bucket then siphoning your beer on top of it. When you put the tubing from you siphon place it in at an angle at the bottom of the bucket so the force of the beer coming in can stir the beer for you. I do this when I bottle and have never had a problem at all. On the plus side you avoid having to stick another object in your beer.

gman122889 · 11-07-2011, 11:23 PM

That's what I tried doing. I figured the action of the siphon would be enough to stir it. Another thing I did was try to get every last bit of beer out of it so I tipped the bucket and got an extra 3 bottles out of it...except all of those were pretty darn carbed! Some bottled ended up being carbed pretty well...others were a tad flat but still tasted good. Still have a case of 22's left. I seem to be turning some of my non dark beer drinking friends into dark beer drinking friends! Only problem is I'm giving it away and my friends are stingy. I'm in college. I need some funds to keep the brewing going!

**GodsStepBrother** · 11-07-2011, 11:37 PM

Weird stuff I have been doing that for years and have never had that problem. Might be the length of your hose (that’s what she said)

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Well whatever works for you set up.

gman122889 · 11-07-2011, 11:39 PM

I'm pretty sure thats what it was. My kit came with 4' and it barely got to the bottom of the bucket. I went and got an 8' hose from the LHBS for future. Got a pumpkin ale perking along in the closet!