Planning an Experiment

[pr0cess]

In making my weekend brew (Porter) I started thinking about ways to isolate and experiment with brews. Next brew (next weekend or the one after, when the In-Laws are gone) I am planning to conduct a yeast experiment. I will use beersmith to come up with a reasonable 8 gallon recipe for a smokey porter, brew it in a 4 gallon batch divvy the wort to 2 fermenters and top off with water in the fermenters to 4 gallons each. I am pretty sure I will be using White labs 007 for one but I wanted to use a dry yeast for the second half. Any opinions on a good(ish) dry yeast for porters, or does style matter less with dry? Ideally I will be able to get it from midwest homebrew since they have some other stuff I want.

In the second stage of the experiment I am going to futz with addatives prebottling. I love Lea and Perrins Worchestershire(sp?) Sauce and I am pretty sure I am going to rack each batch into bottling in halves, do half with regular priming sugar and the second wih a bottle of L&P. Does anyone know how fermentable HFCS is? I am pretty sure thats the only sugar in the L&P I am guessing its fairly fermentable and I will be treating it like Corn Sugar when figuring out how much more priming sugar to add to the 2nd half of the bottling experiment.

-dylan

 

[Nanobru]

Go for an Irish Ale yeast (WL 004). Be wary of Worcestershire sauce, as it is very salty, and wouldn't think it would bottle condition a beer. Other ways to experiment include dry hopping half (EKG for the Porter would be great), adding adjuncts (sugar, fruit etc...), aging on oak cubes, and of course going Belgian by dosing with brett yeast.