Bourbon Vanilla Porter

Hello All,

I have "helped" friends brew beer usually during the mashing phase. I also have read a couple articles on how to begin brewing. But finally, I have chosen to begin brewing. For my first batch I bought a kit from the Brooklyn brew shop. I also bought a hydrometer and other essentials that they didn't include. The selected style of beer that came with the kit is chocolate maple porter, but I was wondering could I sub the maple for honey? Could I add vanilla, toasted french oak chips, and bourbon? If so, what would be some suggestions as to the appropriate time and appropriate amounts? This guy seems to have the bourbon down:http://www.brew365.com/beer_dennys_bourbon_vanilla_porter.php. But what about the oak chips, vanilla, and honey? I have a one gallon setup for anyone not familiar with the BBS kits.

For your first batch, I would consider making the kit as is and make sure you've got everything down.

To answer your questions, adding honey to beer is fine. For the oak chips, I would soak them in bourbon for a couple of weeks, drain and add the chips to secondary. Taste it occasionally starting at 3 weeks to gauge when to rack off the wood.

Pappers_ said:

For your first batch, I would consider making the kit as is and make sure you've got everything down. To answer your questions, adding honey to beer is fine. For the oak chips, I would soak them in bourbon for a couple of weeks, drain and add the chips to secondary. Taste it occasionally starting at 3 weeks to gauge when to rack off the wood.

Click to expand...

Pick a decent bourbon though. I used some cheap plastic bottle stuff once and it didn't come out like what I hoped for. Lesson learned!

If all you have done is "helped" people mash-in i would stick to the kit instructions and make sure you have the brewing process down before you start changing a recipe that could already be awesome.

Honey is 100% fermentable and will leave little if any flavor, it will also dry out/thin the body
Bourbon/Oak chips are a great addition but theres a very fine line between to little and to much.
Oak can add unwanted tannins and to much bourbon will make it thin/boozey

More power to you if you want to jump right in but kits are premade for a reason.
Brew a straight batch and get another for the additions to compare side by side.

Just got done brewing it, I set it up in the fermentor with a blow off which I'll switch to an airlock in three days. My OG was at about 1.080 just under 1.081. So I'm hoping for about a nine percenter as a lot of the posts I have read where the beer had a high OG usually came in at about 8%-9%.

I have decided that I will add the vanilla beans and 80ml of bourbon (I am using a tea steeper to for the chips) during the secondary fermentation.

I used .25 oz of toasted french oak, but how will I know if I need to add more or not? I'm not used to figuring out a bourbon's flavor profile. Do we have a forum for this or should I seek an outside source?

That's a hefty beer for your first go! How much yeast did you pitch and what kind?

I made a pumpkin beer that I added oak cubes and rum to. Filled a Ball jar with 2oz of American oak and roughly 16oz of rum the night I brewed, let it sit for about 3.5 weeks while the beer fermented, and let it sit about a month in secondary. Added all the rum as well. Bottled it last Thursday so hopefully it turns out good! Apparently bourbon goes much further than rum though so 16oz of bourbon may be too much.

I added about 4oz of maltodextrin at bottling to help beef up the body, since the rum did thin it a bit

It's day three of fermentation and it might be a little soon to worry but my Porter has a slight booze taste. No fruitiness just booze. I've read that this can be caused by high fermentation temperatures, but maybe I should wait longer? Is this a common rookie mistake and patience is a virtue or should I take temperature readings in my house and attempt moving the fermentor elsewhere? I have a mini fridge my wife and I haven't used in a while that I could possibly put it in. Advice?