Yet another all grain first time- Biermuncher's Black Pearl Porter

My friend's birthday is coming up this month, and even though time is short I thought I'd try and make him a batch of beer as a present. Why I decided to choose this exact moment to do all grain for the first time is beyond me... but really, how hard can this be?

The basics:

8lb pale (I used maris otter)
2lb munich
1lb crystal 30L
1lb chocolate malt
1lb oats

0.5oz fuggles 60 min
0.5oz fuggles 2 min

1 cup maltodextrin 20 min
4oz lactose boil 20 min

Safale SO4

I got all the grains from my LHBS today, and had em crushed. I was worried about being able to fit all the grains in my MLT (masterbuilt electric turkey fryer, with a mesh bag in it) so I split up the grains in case I had to do a partial mash. 2lb of the base malt and all the specialty malts went in. I lowered the strike temperature, as I didn't want to overshoot 158... it worked out well until I figured out that I could actually fit all the grain in. At that point, the temperature had dropped to 150. No problem, just flip on the heater. It's sitting at 157 right now, all snuggled up in a blanket to keep it warm.

Of course, the next challenge is going to be figuring out how the hell I'm going to boil all of this wort. I don't have enough horsepower to keep a full boil going on the stove here, so I think the MLT is going to go into duty to boil the rest of the runnings after I have sparged as much as I can fit in my BK. The nice thing about the turkey fryer is that it has a basket in it, with a hook on the edge. All I gotta do is lift it up, hook it on the edge, and let it drain once I have my last batch of sparge water in there.

I've got another 20 minutes to go on the mash, I'll post back with how it turns out!

Just did an iodine test on the first runnings... no purple!!

I think I ended up with over 7 gallons of boil volume... I might have sparged a bit too much. Fortunately, the final runnings are in a 3rd pot of their own, so I can just use whatever I need to get the right gravity.

I'm 20 minutes in to the boil... only 70 to go... it's gonna be a long night....

Ok, the pre-boil numbers. These are rough estimates because I didn't correct for temperature, and all the samples were a little warm (like 75 or so) when I checked the gravity.

4 gallons of 1.060 wort
2 gallons? of 1.030
1.5gal? of 1.020

I really don't know the volumes of the two other runnings. Those are just estimates. I'm gonna have to measure it once I get ready to put it all in the fermenter. I can't wait until I have a big enough burner to do full boils. This is a real pain in the ass!

5.5 gallons of 1.064 wort, in the bucket. I haven't calculated the efficiency yet, but I think it was decent. Man, I'm tired.

I did this beer last year. It's great. Make sure you give it a lot of time in the bottle. I still have some around and it just gets better with age!

MacBruver said:

Man, I'm tired.

Click to expand...

It gets easier. I can do it damn near in my sleep with swine flu now.

My AG days are down to about 5 hours of actual work. I have learned to start with the mash, and do all the cleaning and other task during mash and boil down time.

Well shucks. It has been stuck at 1.030 since last thursday. Pitching another packet of yeast didn't do anything. I'm wondering if the thermometer I used was off by a lot and I mashed at some ridiculously high temperatures?

I put your recipe in beersmith and it calculates an efficiency of 79.71%. Great efficiency for anyone, let alone your first run. The color of that beer has to be as close to black as you can get....

Excellent! I tried to calculate it myself but failed miserably. I think it's time to buy beersmith. It did come out pretty dark- not guinness dark, but pretty black. Now I just need to get it to finish fermenting! I think it is just crawling along verrrrrry slowly. I roused the yeast last night, and it's still bubbling.

Great choice the Black Pearl is the best beer that I have made, I let it sit in the primary for 3 weeks before racking to keg. It came out great, like irunxcjm said let it be for a couple of weeks and it will be fantastic.