Baltic Porter

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Turricaine

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Jul 25, 2005
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Location
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Im planning a brew in a few days and the recipe is based on what I had in stock. Every batch is unique, please no harsh critcism only helpful tips/advise :mug:

Ingredients:

3kg Crushed Pale
250g Crystal grain
250g Black Patent grain
1.6kg Pale Extract
2 oz Fuggles at 60 min
Muntons Gold yeast
Promash calcs:

1.066 (assuming 75% efficiency)
SRM 26.2
IBU 29.9

Specs for "Baltic Porter"

Min SRG = 1.060; Max = 1.090
Min CLR = 17 ; Max = 30
Min IBU = 20 ; Max = 40

Each new batch is influenced by the last. My current batch is a mild oat ale. Annoyed with too many pale cloudy beers as a result of poor selection of adjuncts, I decided to dunk some black patent in and skip the non-barely aadjuncts. Also im adding the tin of malt extract as an experiment to get a strong alcohol content than my mild 3% brews. Finally I want to get a real hop bite to step on a few late additions that I have been doing in my weak ass brews.

I just realized that if I add a pound of demerara I can get the SRG up to 1.074. This is tempting!
 
I think im gonna brew this tommorow. Since noone has passed comment im assuming its been given the all clear.
 
BTW, I hope you know that Baltic porter style of beer should be fermented with lager yeast at low temperature.
 
I put this in my garage where I know it is cooler than in other parts of the house. Also note that the fuggles need 40 min boiling time, NOT 60min! (dont worry I found this out just in the nick of time).

I found out a major floor in my brewing today.

Namely that when I am mashing/sparging, I only end up with maybe 5.5 gallons of water that I boil down to 5 gallons.

Checking on promash I can see that I need to use more water in the sparge in order to achieve a decent efficency.

The thing is with the phils sparger I need 1 bucket to contain the sparge water, 1 bucket containing the grains, and a 3rd bucket to which I collect the wort. In total thats 3 x 5 gallon pales!

I use maybe 7 gallons total whereas according to promash I need maybe another 3 gallons!

The trouble is I have nowhere to put this extra wort, although if I was doing manual grain rinses and not the sparge arm I could collect more wort.

I have a demijohn that would allow me to collect maybe 1 gallon, which isnt enough, although I dont feel like investing in another pale or then it just gets ridiculous.

Anyway 2 gallons remaining, hmm. I'll figure this out somehow, it's just kinda like shocking how naive I was to just ignore the advise to collect 8 gallons as though it wont make much of a difference.
 
Ok I put this in the keg today after 7 days primary. I also got 12 x 0.7L brown flip-top bottles so I dont have a 2 week void between batches in the future.

As I took off the lid the first thing I noted was the smell was very much like bananas. This is probably associated with the high alcohol content since I dont notice this with the less potent brews.

The taste is moderately hoppy and liquorice but this works to accompany the brew and is not dominant or in anyway overpowering. The color is a dark brown but shys away from being dungeon black. When you look into the top of the fermenter it is black, but when you pour it, it is nowhere near the darkness of say a Dogbolter or a Guinness.

The second thing to note was the trub was very well settled with this yeast strain and formed a compact thick gelatinous bed on the bottom of the fermenter. It has a zingy flavor but not foul like it would have been if it was left for a long period of time.

Well, I still have to wait another two weeks which is a bummer. I'll give ya'll an update when it's ready.
 
Turricaine said:
As I took off the lid the first thing I noted was the smell was very much like bananas. This is probably associated with the high alcohol content since I dont notice this with the less potent brews.

The bananas really have nothing to do with the alcohol content, but everything to do with the type of yeast and the temperature of fermentation. It might fade out over time, though...
 
Im trying this now. There's not really anything wrong with it as such and I might do another partial mash on my next brew also.

Things to note:

* Possibly consider chocolate malt instead of brown malt at same ratio or blend thereof.
* Have got 500g (92% carbohydrate) Cane Molasses already in pantry.
* Use 6 gallons of water preboil intead of 5.5 gal used last time.
* Would not hurt to utilize the hops for a full boil instead of ~40 min.

Im tempted to switch the black-malt for chocolate malt and then drop the cane sugar / molasses idea. Then also to maintain the alcohol content by using 6kg pale malt and doing an AG instead of a PM. I would like to use 8 gallons preboil for this though.

Be warned: This is a very powerful brew but it is still a good recipe. It tastes like dandelion & burdock with a slightly tart aftertaste. I was also considering adding a stick of liqorish to this recipe but didnt for some reason (lack of experience maybe?). Im calling this brew 'Nightmare'.
 
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