Pecan Porter Recipe

Okay, so I entered my first beer competition today I did horrible with a chocolate stout that ended up being some sort of chocolate lite beer... Oh well got like a 25 average scorre of 50... Anyhow the winner of the dark category was a Pecan Porter, and wow, this thing was amazing, just one 2oz sample had me tasting pecans for 15 minutes, this was amazing! So I am a novice at best at brewing beer, and I came across this recipe and am curious, is this a difficult recipe, it seems simple enough... And how would I go about carbonating this, it seems like there would be no yeasties left to eat any priming...
Sugars
8 ½ lbs. Dark Malt Extract


Flavoring Malts
½ lb. Caramel 120 L malt
1 lb. Organic American 2-row malt
½ lb. Chocolate malt


Hops
½ oz. New Zealand Pacific Gem hop pellets (bittering)
½ oz. New Zealand Hallertaur hop pellets (flavoring)
½ oz. Fuggle loose leaf hops (aroma)


Yeast
Nottingham Ale yeast or other basic ale yeast


Other Ingredients
3 cups crushed roasted pecans
1 tsp. Irish Moss

Directions for brewing:

First, allow your flavoring malts and one cup of roasted pecans to soak in 3 gallons of your heated spring water for 20 minutes. Do not boil these grains, as this can destroy some of the more subtle mashing processes. Best not to exceed 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

Next, strain the flavoring malts or take out the grain bag, and add the rest of your water to the kettle, and bring the whole liquid to a boil.

Turn off the burner and add your malt extract, stirring the wort thoroughly to ensure that the sugars do not get burned on the bottom of the kettle. Once the sugars have been thoroughly dissolved, bring the wort to a rolling boil and add the bittering hops and 2 cups of crushed roasted pecans.

Now, boil the wort for 30 minutes, stirring regularly. Then add the flavoring hops and Irish moss for 15 more minutes, and after that add the aroma hops and boil for five more minutes. Turn the burner off and cool the wort to room temperature or 75 degrees, whichever is hotter.

Now you can transfer the wort into your clean and sanitized fermentation vessel, prime the yeast and stir the wort with vigor. Now plant the yeast in the beer and store in a cool, dark room for one week, taking care to check on the airlock every day to ensure that the foam has not come up through the airlock. If you are using a blowoff assembly you won't have to worry about any airlocks.

After 7 days transfer your beer to a secondary fermentation vessel for the next two weeks, and then the beer may be ready to bottle or ferment. Always check that the beer has cleared somewhat or stabilized before bottling or kegging.

I don't know what you mean by a difficult recipe but it looks straight forward. Typical extract with specialty grains recipe. The grains I would keep around 155 (no more than 160) for 45 to 60 minutes. You are basically doing a partial mash as the 2 row can't just be steeped.

Why do you say there would be no yeast to carb with?

The last time I used carb tablets I had a delicious looking *sarcasm* muck at the bottom from the tablets somewhat dissolving but not being eaten up, and that was just ten days of fermentation with a dark chocolate stout, like I said though I am a novice at best with this im good at meads so the whole process is still very foreign to me.

I have been trying to enter this into beercalculus and it keeps timing out, also out of curiosity why would you need irish moss in this? Do you want a "dark" beer to clear?

darthbooger said:

I have been trying to enter this into beercalculus and it keeps timing out, also out of curiosity why would you need irish moss in this? Do you want a "dark" beer to clear?

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Just because a beer is dark doesn't mean it can't be clear. Take your favorite stout and hold it up to the light, most of them will be clear. Obviously it will be dark and hard to see through but it wont be cloudy.

It has been my (limited) experience that dark beers carbonate slower. I recently had a high gravity porter that took around 6 weeks to begin carbonating, and even after that the conditioning wasn't quite done. You can give the bottles a gentle shake to agitate the yeast and left over sugar.

So racking this to help it clear will not effect the actual ability to carbonate? Sorry for the noob questions guys, I do want this to turn out well, do you think by cutting the entire recipe in half it would effect this in any way?

darthbooger said:

So racking this to help it clear will not effect the actual ability to carbonate? Sorry for the noob questions guys, I do want this to turn out well, do you think by cutting the entire recipe in half it would effect this in any way?

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I don't see a need to rack to secondary. Keep it in primary for 4 to 5 weeks and you will be good. Cold crash if you want, that will help clear it

Do you have any experience with the carbonation tablets? If so would you recomend them over using regular sugar to each bottle?

No I don't but others on here have used them. When I bottle I like to use sugar. I just don't want to put tablets in every bottle. Plus I feel like you can get the exact carb level you want with sugar.

So do you rack into a new vessel at bottling then add the sugar to the whole thing?

darthbooger said:

So do you rack into a new vessel at bottling then add the sugar to the whole thing?

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Yes I like to make the sugar solution, put that into a bottling bucket and then rack the beer on the sugar. This way it mixes itself when coming into the new bucket.

Thanks I think I may try this recipe out... Hopefully I dont mess it up, pecans are expensive...

Soooo....I searched for Pecan Porter today and found this. Any word on how it turned out?