Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Bourbon Vanilla Porter (AG)

uncleben113 said:

So I'm seriously considering entering this beer into a few competitions. I'm wondering what style I would call it though. It's listed as a Robust Porter on here but I'm not sure it technically is according to the BJCP guidelines.

The 2008 BJCP guidelines don't mention the use of adjuncts as being acceptable so I'm thinking I should enter it as a Category 23 - Experimental Beer

What do you guys think?

Note:This is hands down the best beer I have brewed to date. In terms of quality of beer and complexity of flavor, it's incredible. I highly recommend this one!

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I was knocked out with a 13/50 @ Celebrewtion this year when i entered into Robust Porter.
Same Beer, same Catogory i got a 39/50 with last year and placed. It really depends on the experience of the judging panel.

Specialty or Wood aged seem to be the way to go if you dont want to take your chances with inexperienced judges. It does fit the Robust Porter category but it does push the boundaries. If the Vanilla and oak'iness is subtle than go for it. If you can taste ANY whiskey go with Specialty...

jigidyjim said:

I haven't seen the judging sheets, but the results are up on the website. I got first place in the specialty beer category out of 17 entries :rockin: I'm looking forward to reading the notes and seeing the score!

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Wow congrats man! And congrats to the others.

How did you get your beer to the competition? Being in northeast LA, we don't have anything beer-related close at all and I'm going to have to ship. Did you go this route?

uncleben11 said:

How did you get your beer to the competition? Being in northeast LA, we don't have anything beer-related close at all and I'm going to have to ship. Did you go this route?

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There are plenty of competitions in the California bay area, usually held by brew clubs, so I usually pick one or two a year and just drop beer off for those. There are threads on here about how to ship, I've only done that once to enter an organic-only competition.

Oh ok. Well I'm going to find some boxes today and find a couple comps to enter.

uncleben113 said:

Oh ok. Well I'm going to find some boxes today and find a couple comps to enter.

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I went back and looked at my notes for my brew since it had been awhile. I had totally forgotten that the FG stuck at 1.030, and that I tried raising the temp to get it unstuck. It never went below 1.030 though... I thought that would be a disaster but I guess it ended up working out OK for me

Wow! I've had this in primary for a little bit over month and just took my first sample. This is unbelievable before the vanilla/oak/bourbon. I'm really excited to try the end result.

OG 1.076
FG 1.012

ABV ~8.4%

Forgot to mention that I used S-05 for the yeast.

NorthNJipa said:

has anyone tried cutting all of the grainbill in half to possibly get a really nice session porter?

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Wouldn't be a bad idea. Probably would be a pretty good mild.

NorthNJipa said:

it could still be a porter at 4.5% (75% efficiency) before bourbon added

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Sure, I wouldn't just halve all of grains though. You'd probably want to increase the specialty malt percentages.

But yes, if you keep it in the 4%ish range, I'd still call it a porter.

NorthNJipa said:

ah, your right, even though the percentages are the same for all the grains, the SRM drops to 21 (verus 31 in the orginal)

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And you probably want to bring out more of the un-fermentables in a smaller beer to keep it from getting too thin. You'll also want to increase the mash temp to mid/upper 150s IMO.

Id mash at 157 IMO if you want to make it a session, like others said mostly for the mouth feel for me though.

JoeBronco said:

Took 2nd at BABO with my version of Dennys OAKED BVP for wood aged beers, i blended 4 different types of whiskeys and oaked for a month...

James - I was one of the judges for that competition (I judged Fruit and IPA's). You did VERY well. Your beer was discussed and regarded very highly. I was also a steward at the BOS table. Your BVP, if i remember correctly ALMOST won best of show. It was in the top 4 out of 250 entries, the judging panel was torn. GREAT JOB!

Score sheets go out next week.

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Wow - that's awesome!

Great recipe + good techniques = mighty tasty brew!

What a phenomenal beer. I can't believe how well this has turned out.

I used S-05 for the yeast and used Indonesian Vanilla Beans from Whole Foods (Too expensive though).

I was very shocked to taste the beer after only ~24 hours of vanilla exposure to find that it was already at the level I wanted. I see others with 2 weeks in secondary.

By the way, I used two Indonesian Vanilla Beans that I split down the middle, then chopped the beans into about 6 parts, and exposed the gooey mess. Then I used a paint straining bag from Home Depot and placed them in the keg.

After 24 hours, I removed the bag and couldn't be happier.

After a few days and half a keg later, the Vanilla has died down quite a bit. I wonder if the Vanilla settles mostly at the bottom of the keg which would lend to much more Vanilla character at the beginning and less towards the end. Maybe I should shake up the keg before sampling while the beans are in suspension.

Either way, this is a great beer (Vanilla character or not).

I'm planning to make this as one of my Christmas/holiday beers and would like it ready to be popped on Christmas eve. I read that this doesn't age terribly well and is actually better younger, but I want to make sure it's done and carbed (bottled conditioned). From reading, it looks like:

primary: 3 weeks
secondary w/ vanilla: 1-2 weeks
bottle conditioning: 3 weeks + 1 week fridge
total: 8-9 weeks grain to glass

Does 9 weeks sound right? That would put brew date about October 20th. Sound realistic? Should I allow a few more weeks of cushion?

I'm having the same slow priming issues that others are having... how long did this take? I only bottled two weeks ago, but I have absolutely zero carbonation. I'll wait another 2-4 weeks before trying again. Used 5 oz priming sugar for a 5 gallon brew.

njk said:

I'm having the same slow priming issues that others are having... how long did this take? I only bottled two weeks ago, but I have absolutely zero carbonation. I'll wait another 2-4 weeks before trying again. Used 5 oz priming sugar for a 5 gallon brew.

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What's the temperature of the room where you are carbing the bottles? Somewhere in the 70-75 degree range I think is optimal.

I would probably gently 'shake' or at least disturb the bottles in some way (flip upsidedown) to rouse the yeast. I just bottled up a Zombie Dust clone and used a few growlers to 'speed up' the bottling day. I've been rolling the growlers every 2-3 days to make sure they carb up. Might be overkill, might help, who knows!

Good luck, Denny's VB Imp Porter was an excellent recipe. One I will definitely return to!

Riseabovebb said:

What's the temperature of the room where you are carbing the bottles? Somewhere in the 70-75 degree range I think is optimal.

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The room is between 68-70 degrees, I can try to move them to a slightly warmer spot.

Also, thanks for the tip on disturbing the bottles!

wowbeeryum said:

I'm planning to make this as one of my Christmas/holiday beers and would like it ready to be popped on Christmas eve. I read that this doesn't age terribly well and is actually better younger, but I want to make sure it's done and carbed (bottled conditioned). From reading, it looks like:

primary: 3 weeks
secondary w/ vanilla: 1-2 weeks
bottle conditioning: 3 weeks + 1 week fridge
total: 8-9 weeks grain to glass

Does 9 weeks sound right? That would put brew date about October 20th. Sound realistic? Should I allow a few more weeks of cushion?

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any input on this?

wowbeeryum said:

any input on this?

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I haven't read the part of this thread that says this beer doesn't age well, but I thought mine still tasted great 6 months later. I brewed it as an Xmas ale on Oct 8 and it was fine for Xmas... if you want to be sure you could allow an extra week or two in bottles, sometimes carbing big beers takes awhile.

jigidyjim said:

I haven't read the part of this thread that says this beer doesn't age well, but I thought mine still tasted great 6 months later. I brewed it as an Xmas ale on Oct 8 and it was fine for Xmas... if you want to be sure you could allow an extra week or two in bottles, sometimes carbing big beers takes awhile.

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I agree. High Abv beers and porters always seem to do better with age. Mine are over a year old and still tasting great.

Brewed this last night. Used pale extract with a partial mash. Accidentally used the same amount of C#40 as C#120 (didn't realize the recipe calls for less C#40), but that should be OK.

One interesting thing I did was I boiled some of the extract separately (to get it up to temp before adding to the main boil, i don't have many BTUs on the stove top). The extract ended up frothing, like a caramel/toffee foamy mixture. I let it go for about 30 minutes before adding it to the main boil. It was a gamble but I hope it adds a bit of complexity to the final brew.

I brought back 5oz of vanilla extract from a trip to the dominican republic. Going to use 2-2.5oz and see where it gets me. The vanilla smells amazing - it's like earthy, almost nutty. Yum.

Made 5 gallons with partial boil (i can only brew up 3 gallons at a time).

Malt & Fermentables

% LB OZ °L PPG
58% 8 ~ Light/Pale Malt Extract Syrup
16% 2 4 American Munich
10% 1 6 Brown Malt
6% ~ 14 American Crystal 40L
6% ~ 14 American Crystal 120L
3% ~ 6 Chocolate Malt

.6oz nugget @ 120min 14%
1oz UK Kent Goldings @ 10min 4.5%

1.076 OG, ~35IBU (roughly 55% efficiency for me using brew-in-a-bag)

Nottingham Ale Yeast

reduced ~ 3-4lb of pale extract in small saucer with a bit of water to create a frothy rolling caramel mixture. boiled for 30 minutes, added in last 15 minutes to boil. only time will tell if this was a good decision.

adding 2oz of vanilla in secondary (2-weeks), probably no bourbon.

Hey all,
I brewed the original AG recipe in this thread last night. I thought I was pretty dead on with the temperatures, but for some reason my OG was a 1.044. Any idea why this could have happened?

Thanks

Maybe bad crush?

Possibly, it was crushed at the shop and it seemed pretty good though. Thinking about it now, its possible the temp was slightly off (just got a new thermometer that might not be working too well) but could that cause such a large error?

how did you add the beersmith link

I just finished up brewing this. The pre boil gravity sample tasted great and came in at 1.057. With a 90 min boil it looks like the OG is going to be 1.074, but I'm still waiting for the foam in my test tube to die down, so it may end up a couple of points higher.

This is only my 4th or 5th AG batch, so I'm still figuring out my setup and how to use it properly. Because of this I started my 90 minute boil w/ 7 gallons and expected to get to 5.5 gallons. I ended up w/ 5 gallons so if I had hit my target size the OG would have been a little lower.

Edit: OG came out to 1.075.

Sshamash said:

Hey all,
I brewed the original AG recipe in this thread last night. I thought I was pretty dead on with the temperatures, but for some reason my OG was a 1.044. Any idea why this could have happened?

Thanks

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Update...

I just checked if my new digital thermometer was accurate and it seems to be 3 degrees off (low), could this be a possible explanation for the low OG? That would mean my mash was at around 146/147.

Thoughts?

I am still relatively new at AG...

I brewed this one a while back and it was by far the best beer I have brewed to date. I just found out the other day that it scored a silver medal in a homebrew competition down in Alexandria, LA.

Each beer was scored on its own merits as opposed to in each category but I got two judge scores of a 40 and a 35. The couple of guys I talked to from the competition had nothing but great things to say about it and I'm stoked to say the least!

Thanks a lot for the great recipe!

made this a while back. possibly the best beer i've ever made

I Just ordered everything to make this! Can't wait!

I'll be bottling for the first time on this one! Giving a case of it away to friends that got married recently! Hopefully it turns out...

wegz15 said:

Maybe bad crush?

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I think you are right. Sorry I doubted you. Just brewed the another batch of grains I got the at the same time as the previous one and the OG was again significantly lower than target.

Looks like I gotta get my own grain mill...


~Saul

I like having my own mill. you can participate in group buys and get malts for around $.60 a pound.

Just bottled. smells amazing like vanilla and bourbon (used 4oz/4oz, heavy vanilla light makers). tasted like a bit of dark coffee with a hint of bouron (vanilla mostly just in the smell). i kept getting whiffs while bottling and it was all i could do from just pouring the rest of the fermenter straight into my mouth. haha.

i even got 5 bottles out from the lower volume that most people don't mess with, just so i didn't waste it. they'll settle out and be my taste testers.

I brewed up my third batch of this beer last weekend, still in the primary. Bought a whiskey barrel from farmhouse and plan to do an oaked version this time.

I just brewed a similar beer today, and I'm a bit worried...

Used 6 lbs light malt extract
2 lbs of amber liquid malt extract

Steeped these specialty grains for 30 min in 160 degree water...
1 lb chocolate malt
1lb Chrystal 60 L
.5 dark crystal malt (bairds malt)

1 oz williamette
1oz fuggle

I probably should have used more malt and perhaps a different hop (since the two are almost the same and are pretty much finishing hops)...

But my OG is 1.036!!! What did I do?! What can I do to fix this?!?!?

Also, I am soaking 3 vanilla beans in 12 oz of makers mark... But can hardly smell any vanilla. (I cut them up and everything). Will this result in hardly any vanilla flavor? Should I wait longer for the smell? I plan on using them in the secondary. Or should I get some oak chips too?

Orrrr am I totally screwed anyway because of such a low gravity reading? Im awaiting a response before pitching yeast.

How much water did you use?

5 gallons

ericebel04 said:

5 gallons

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If your batch was 5 gallons your OG can't be that low with that recipe. You probably just got a bad reading. Did you measure after you topped off? If so, you probably got an unmixed sample.

Yeah I know, but I took measurements twice and got the same results. The first time was right after I shook the whole fermenter to aerate.

I called my buddy and he told me to add some sugar. So I dissolved 2.5 lbs of sugar in a lil water, and dumped it in. (I already pitched the yeast the night before at about 8pm, then added sugar at 11am.)

I just took the gravity reading at 5pm, and its been bumped up to 1.080! And fermentation is going steady too. Smells delicious!