American Porter Bee Cave Brewery Robust Porter

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I plan on making this again, following the recipe exactly, but adding some bourbon barrel char in secondary. I am unsure of its potency yet, so I am unsure how much I will add, but I am going for a modest amount, not overpowering. Anyone else done this or something like this?

The bourbon barrel char I will be using is actually chunks of wood 1/4 - 1/2" in size scraped off the inside of real barrels, no extract or anything.
 
My "ToeJam" version (extract with grains steeped in pantyhose) has come out great. OG was 1.072 and FG was 1.021 and now in the bottles for 3 weeks. We tried a couple and tastes smokey with subtle coffee and chocolate notes. Very dark but clear. The head was small but lasted throughout the glass and left a nice lace behind. It can only get better. I am saving it for the the big Balloon Fiesta in Oct. Should be wonderful by then. (I hope I can leave it alone that long ... patience is not one of my strong suits.)
 
Mine will be going into the bottles in the next few days, I can not wait until it is ready to try.

Had some issues brewing this one, but It will be brewed again for sure.

Tim
 
On the recipe, do you add the 8oz. of malto dextrin at 20 minutes into the boil or left in the boil?

And I am guessing the northern brewer and cascade hops both stay in the boil for the full hour?
 
Has anyone made this recipe using Wyeast 1098 in place of the nottingham. I know wyeast is less attenuative, and it may come out WAY too sweet with the MD also, so I should prob stick with the notty.

IXVOLT, I found a HUGE difference in the bottle turnaround when I went to a 3 week primary vs a 2 week primary for whatever reason.
 
jacksonbrown said:
Ed, Question about this brew. I just hooked it up to the gas this past saturday and drew my first sip last night. It was very, very sweet. Unpleasantly so. The only change I had made was to use MO as my base. Also, my hydrometer broke that day so I didn't get an OG reading. But my 4 brews leading up to it had gotten 92% eff, and I had forgotten to reset BeerSmith from 75%, so I think I ended up with an OG around 1.085. My FG was 1.021 and I'm fairly certain I didn't have a stuck fermentation.
SO... back to my question (yes, I did have one). Is this supposed to be a sweet porter? I've never used malto dextrine before and am wondering if the sweetness could be a result of that. I realise that with a FG of 1.021 it'll be sweet regardless, but this, as I said, is just not pleasant. I'm hoping some extra vols will ease that up somewhat, but if you have any ideas I'd love to hear em. Thanks!

EDIT: I don't know if it's an aging thing too, but it's been 9 weeks since brewday.
Click to expand...

Perhaps past due, but I figure I should give an update. This came out great!! I ended up bringing it to a new year's eve party and we had it floating by 3am. Took a couple months but everything came together flavor wise very nicely. In fact, me and three other club member are brewing this up for our club's holiday party as a comparison. We'll be keeping the gravity high, at 1.085 again, because I like how that worked out :)
 
I am on my third version of this recipe. I am intending it to be my holiday ale.

So, I'm mashing in and I add 1/2# black patent. Whoops. Then I think....Oh hell, let's have some fun. I throw in 1/2# instant oatmeal, and I'm going to up the cascades to a full ounce at bittering.

The color will be close to a 50.0 so I call it now my Pitch Black American Oatmeal Stout.

Oh yeah, and I missed my mash in temp by 6°F!!!! Gotta love beersmith assuming your grains are 52°F.

I'm anticipating a much improved efficiency due to a newly engineered mash tun manifold, so I may skip the malto dextrine. I'm hoping for a 1.070+ beer.


Muahahaha!
 
Just racked this to secondary and added the Vanilla. My FG was only 1.015 @ 68deg F.

Reading through other posts, I guess my FG wasn't too far from others. I was hoping for closer to 1.010, but I may like the fuller bodied beer afterall.

I tasted the sample, and it was very very good. Lots of roasted notes with a tail of chocolate.

Trying to decide if I want to keg or bottle this batch... ????
 
IXVolt said:
Just racked this to secondary and added the Vanilla. My FG was only 1.015 @ 68deg F.

Reading through other posts, I guess my FG wasn't too far from others. I was hoping for closer to 1.010, but I may like the fuller bodied beer afterall.

I tasted the sample, and it was very very good. Lots of roasted notes with a tail of chocolate.

Trying to decide if I want to keg or bottle this batch... ????
Click to expand...

What was your OG?
 
Right now I am an extract brewer because of my limited equipment and my knowledge. But in the past few weeks I have been reading and researching like crazy to build up the courage for an AG brew. I am getting very close and I think this will be my first AG attempt.

For starters, my equipment is a 7.5 gallon brew pot, and a 10 gallon mlt. I just downloaded the demo for beersmith and have been playing around with this recipe. I would just like you guys to review my plans before I begin.

I am going to use basically the same recipe, except without the black patent because my lhbs doesn't carry it. And I plan to use 1 extra lb of 2 row just to make up for my assumed lower efficiency. My big questions are involving the mash since I have never done one before.

So, here is what I got out of beersmith.

Add 18.14 qt water at 165.9
-hold mash at 154 for 60mins.(just to make sure I don't drop bellow 150)
batch sparge round 1: Sparge with .83 gal of 168 water
batch sparge round 2: Sparge with 3.63 gal of 168 water

Just to make sure I'm reading this right, I add 18.14 qts to the empty mlt, then add the grains, let it sit covered for 1 hour, then drain .83 gal out, and put it back in the mlt, and then drain out all of the liquid out, and add the 3.63, and drain that back out?

I have tried to read as much stuff as I can, and watch as many picture and video tutorials as I can but I just want to make sure that all my mash steps, amounts, and temps are right.

Thank you very much for any help.
 
Just bottled 5 gallons of this last weekend. My OG was kind of low, 1.056, finishing at 1.012. I did add 4 cups of cold steeped (starbucks breakfast blend) coffee to the primary. It tasted great out the primary, very chocolatly, deep rich body with a hint of coffee. I'll let you know the final verdict in a few weeks!
 
bigred said:
Right now I am an extract brewer because of my limited equipment and my knowledge. But in the past few weeks I have been reading and researching like crazy to build up the courage for an AG brew. I am getting very close and I think this will be my first AG attempt.

For starters, my equipment is a 7.5 gallon brew pot, and a 10 gallon mlt. I just downloaded the demo for beersmith and have been playing around with this recipe. I would just like you guys to review my plans before I begin.

I am going to use basically the same recipe, except without the black patent because my lhbs doesn't carry it. And I plan to use 1 extra lb of 2 row just to make up for my assumed lower efficiency. My big questions are involving the mash since I have never done one before.

So, here is what I got out of beersmith.

Add 18.14 qt water at 165.9
-hold mash at 154 for 60mins.(just to make sure I don't drop bellow 150)
batch sparge round 1: Sparge with .83 gal of 168 water
batch sparge round 2: Sparge with 3.63 gal of 168 water

Just to make sure I'm reading this right, I add 18.14 qts to the empty mlt, then add the grains, let it sit covered for 1 hour, then drain .83 gal out, and put it back in the mlt, and then drain out all of the liquid out, and add the 3.63, and drain that back out?

I have tried to read as much stuff as I can, and watch as many picture and video tutorials as I can but I just want to make sure that all my mash steps, amounts, and temps are right.

Thank you very much for any help.
Click to expand...

Can anyone confirm or correct anything here?

Thanks
 
What you should do, since you have the space in the 10 gallon mlt, is just do one batch sparge. Don't do a round 1 and round 2, just combine them into an entire batch sparge. So, yes add the 18.14 qts first with your grains and mash for one hour. Then drain that into your boil kettle after the hour, make sure you vorlauf first (check the wiki page). Then, add your 4.46 gallons of remaining water into your mash tun (stir like crazy). Cover and let that sit for about 15 minutes. Then, vorlauf again, and then drain that remaining bit into your boil kettle. That should leave you with about 6 or 7 gallons into the boil kettle before the boil. You will lose a gallon or so during the boil to evaporation.

Couple tips that have helped me:
1. Preheat your mash tun
2. Using your example, beersmith tells you to first add your 18.14 qts at 165.9 degrees. I would get your water closer to 200 degrees before adding it to your grains. I have found this helps me hit my mash temp around 154 degrees. You can always add a some ice cubes to cool it down, but heating it up takes more time.
3. Cover your mash tun with some blankets during the mash and during the 15 minute sparge.

No need to work up courage to do it. I jumped into AG after a few batches of extract brewing. Only done a few AG batches so far, but each one helps me learn something new. Just jump right into it. Oh, and plan on your AG brew day taking about 7-8 hours. Hope this helps.
 
dmbnpj said:
What you should do, since you have the space in the 10 gallon mlt, is just do one batch sparge. Don't do a round 1 and round 2, just combine them into an entire batch sparge. So, yes add the 18.14 qts first with your grains and mash for one hour. Then drain that into your boil kettle after the hour, make sure you vorlauf first (check the wiki page). Then, add your 4.46 gallons of remaining water into your mash tun (stir like crazy). Cover and let that sit for about 15 minutes. Then, vorlauf again, and then drain that remaining bit into your boil kettle. That should leave you with about 6 or 7 gallons into the boil kettle before the boil. You will lose a gallon or so during the boil to evaporation.

Couple tips that have helped me:
1. Preheat your mash tun
2. Using your example, beersmith tells you to first add your 18.14 qts at 165.9 degrees. I would get your water closer to 200 degrees before adding it to your grains. I have found this helps me hit my mash temp around 154 degrees. You can always add a some ice cubes to cool it down, but heating it up takes more time.
3. Cover your mash tun with some blankets during the mash and during the 15 minute sparge.

No need to work up courage to do it. I jumped into AG after a few batches of extract brewing. Only done a few AG batches so far, but each one helps me learn something new. Just jump right into it. Oh, and plan on your AG brew day taking about 7-8 hours. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for the reply, I have read about the vorlauf and I plan to do it, just didn't include it in the write up, and also plan on pre heating the mash tun. The single sparge sounds good and simple, so I think I will follow your advice. So far I have only done 1 canned kit, and 2 extract brews. All of them went smooth, but each time I think I could be doing better by doing all grain and I feel that I'm prepared to do it now, and looking forward to it.:mug:
 
Good luck and have fun!

Also, you can change your options in beersmith so it will tell you to just do one batch sparge. Down under the "mash profile", under "batch sparge options", make sure all those boxes have a check mark in them. Then, hit OK and preview your brewsheet and there should just be one batch sparge now.

:)
 
Hi Ed,
Thanks for the recipe. I tweeked it a little bit to get an OG of 1.088 and just racked it onto 8 oz of Hershey's Cocoa powder and 2 vanilla beans. The specific gravity at racking (3 weeks in primary) was 1.024. I noticed on page 7 of this thread that you said that the maltodextrin makes the beer finish artificially high. If that is the case, how do you know what your true ABV is since the measured FG isn't a true measure of attenuation? Or am I just missing something? For what it is worth I had to use 2 packs of SafAle-04 since the latest batch of Nottingham was infected (per LHBS).
Thanks
 
dmbnpj said:
Good luck and have fun!

Also, you can change your options in beersmith so it will tell you to just do one batch sparge. Down under the "mash profile", under "batch sparge options", make sure all those boxes have a check mark in them. Then, hit OK and preview your brewsheet and there should just be one batch sparge now.

:)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, I was looking around to try and figure that out.:mug:
 
Just got back from my LHBS. I've got all the stuff to make 10 gallons! Brew on my friends, brew on!
 
Well, I've got 30 mins left on the boil. Heres what 10 gallons of Bee Cave Brewery Robust Porter looks like!

DSC00002.jpg


Alright, I've got 11 gallons in the fermenters right now. I'm done cleaning up and am now relaxing. It has been a long day, but totally worth it. I'll be keggin some of this up in a couple of weeks, so I'll be posting some pics for you guys shortly.

Thanks a lot for the recipe Mr. Edwort!

Happy brewing,
J
 
I have no photos but I also brewed 11 gallons of this today. Looks tasty, thanks Ed.
 
LeeF said:
I have no photos but I also brewed 11 gallons of this today. Looks tasty, thanks Ed.
Click to expand...

What kind of efficiency did you get? Also, what was your gravity pre & post boil (if you took them?)

Here are my #'s

Pre boil 1.056
Post boil 1.070

I have one at room temp with wyeast 1099 I made with a starter that took off after about 45 mins in fermenter!!

The other 5.5 gallons is in the ice cube (cooler) at a water temp of 65* with that one I rehydrated a packet of nottingham.

I also have a 1/2 gallon growler with some (the amt that didn't fit into carboys) with some wyeast 1099, but I didn't use a starter with that, so it hasn't taken off yet.

All in all, this was a great brew. I have high hopes for this one!
 
I'm not sure of my efficiency. I only took a post boil gravity. I guess I could figure out the efficiency by subtracting the gravity points contributed by the Malto Dextrin and work back to my preboil volume and gravity. I'll post it later.

Post boil volume and gravity were
10.5 gals and 1.075

Both are in a fridge and I'm going to ferment at 65F.

The wife wants to give these as Christmas presents. I may have to hang on to a few.
 
Assuming Maltodextrin gives 40 points/pound/gal, I subtracted 0.004 from my post boil gravity. Calculated my pre-boil gravity knowing my pre-boil volume and got 75% efficiency into the kettle.
 
Almost had a sticky mess this morning. When I woke up the primary lid was swollen up and the top of the lid barely contained the blow off liquid that came out.
 
Specs said:
Almost had a sticky mess this morning. When I woke up the primary lid was swollen up and the top of the lid barely contained the blow off liquid that came out.
Click to expand...

SAME HERE, but I wasn't so lucky. I put old pillow cases over the top of my carboys and buckets that have holes cut in the top for the airlock to pop through. I do this from experience. Yesterday I was tired and didn't feel like cleaning all of the old junk out of my blow off tubes, so I just put airlocks on my 2 fermenters. The fermenter that is at room temp/used starter had the lid popped open and the pillow case was soaked with porter! No big deal. I was just 5 mins late to work this morning due to cleaning all that junk up.

Since that one had already blown off, I just cleaned the airlock and put it back on. Meanwhile, I sanitized my blow off tube and put it onto the other fermenter. I knew I used blow-off tubes on primary fermenters for a reason. This is a reminder to myself I guess.
 
This is an amazing beer. Just tapped my first (of many to come!) keg last weekend. It was a HUGE hit with all the dark beer drinkers at the party.

Thanks again Ed!
 
I brewed this right at a year ago as my first all grain beer. I way overshot the OG, I think it was 1.078 if I remember right, it came out to about 8% by the time it was done.

After filling the keg, I had a half gallon still and I put into a growler with some coffee grounds and let it set a few days. Anyways, I still have a couple of those bottles, I think it would be a good time to try another one out.

Thanks Ed!
 
I also had to switch to the blow off. Woke up to a small mess this morning.
 

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