I was selected to do a receive a partially discounted brewing kit from NorCal in exchange for a review. This post will serve as part 1 of the review, just a brief overview of brewing day.
The kit arrived promptly and was well packed. Unpacked the box and everything was there including a thorough set of directions compared to most other brew kits. The directions were very well laid out. Of course I decided to deviate from the directions just a bit, deciding to do a full boil.
Fired up the kettle late one afternoon to heat up the water in order to steep the grains that were included. Water needed to be below 165F
Turned off the burner and gave the water a stir. Temperature stabilized at 163F. Time to get those grains steeping.
After a 20 minute steep I realized it was getting dark - whoops, should have started a bit earlier
Fired down the burner and added the dry malt extract that was included. After giving everything a good stir I started to bring the hydrated DME up to a boil.
Added the hops and yeast nutrients as per the directions. Nothing too exciting to see during the hop & nutrient additions. Threw my IC into the kettle with 5 minutes to go in order to thermally inactivate any spoilage organisms.
After the wort boiled for 60 minutes I began to cool the wort. I put sterilized aluminum foil over my wort in order to help ensure no spoilage organisms get introduced at this step either. A batch of beer can be cooled in 30-40 minutes with a slow flow and a bit of agitation.
A 6 gallon PET carboy freshly sanitized with starsan, ready for the cool wort to be collected in.
Ended up with just a little less than 5.5 gallons of wort. Now time to hit it with 60 seconds of pure oxygen!
Now that the wort has been oxygenated and cooled it's ready to hit with the yeast. This kit came with Mangrove Jacks UK Dark Ale dried yeast. I've never used yeast from this manufacturer before so I just went ahead and followed the directions by pitching it straight into the beer without hydrating.
This is what was left over in the kettle after filling the carboy, having a pickup tube is nice
Time to pop the carboy into a temperature controlled fermentation chamber. First step is hooking up the probe to the carboy with some painters tape and then insulating the probe from the outside environment.
Placed in a plastic milk crate (to keep the carboy off the bottom of the freezer) an set the fermentation chamber to 67F - in my chamber this keeps the wort between 66F - 68F.
t+24 hours there was visible activity and a small krausen forming.
t+48 hours this beer was going nuts and it was time to to hook up the blowoff tube
3 weeks later it was time to bottle the beer. I boiled the provided dextrose with a pint of distilled water. Boiled for 10 minutes (to help remove any dissolved O2) and then added to my bottling bucket. Beer was racked on top. Yielded 48 beers.
The beer has been conditioning for quite awhile at this point (6-7 weeks?). When I first tried this clone (~2 weeks after bottling) I found the beer to be a somewhat unpleasant and harsh with an odd astringency. The bitterness was also a bit harsh which was probably my fault doing a full boil. The beer had also not developed very good carbonation.
The flavor has developed considerably since first bottling. I tried a bottle over the weekend and found it to have nice flavors of coffee, milk chocolate, caramel, and a bit of roast. The bitterness was much smoother and held up nicely to the sweeter flavors. The carbonation was much better although the beer does not form a very good head. I'm going to give it a little longer while and then I'll revisit this thread with a proper sensory evaluation and comparison to Deschutes' Black Butte Porter.
The kit arrived promptly and was well packed. Unpacked the box and everything was there including a thorough set of directions compared to most other brew kits. The directions were very well laid out. Of course I decided to deviate from the directions just a bit, deciding to do a full boil.
Fired up the kettle late one afternoon to heat up the water in order to steep the grains that were included. Water needed to be below 165F
Turned off the burner and gave the water a stir. Temperature stabilized at 163F. Time to get those grains steeping.
After a 20 minute steep I realized it was getting dark - whoops, should have started a bit earlier
Fired down the burner and added the dry malt extract that was included. After giving everything a good stir I started to bring the hydrated DME up to a boil.
Added the hops and yeast nutrients as per the directions. Nothing too exciting to see during the hop & nutrient additions. Threw my IC into the kettle with 5 minutes to go in order to thermally inactivate any spoilage organisms.
After the wort boiled for 60 minutes I began to cool the wort. I put sterilized aluminum foil over my wort in order to help ensure no spoilage organisms get introduced at this step either. A batch of beer can be cooled in 30-40 minutes with a slow flow and a bit of agitation.
A 6 gallon PET carboy freshly sanitized with starsan, ready for the cool wort to be collected in.
Ended up with just a little less than 5.5 gallons of wort. Now time to hit it with 60 seconds of pure oxygen!
Now that the wort has been oxygenated and cooled it's ready to hit with the yeast. This kit came with Mangrove Jacks UK Dark Ale dried yeast. I've never used yeast from this manufacturer before so I just went ahead and followed the directions by pitching it straight into the beer without hydrating.
This is what was left over in the kettle after filling the carboy, having a pickup tube is nice
Time to pop the carboy into a temperature controlled fermentation chamber. First step is hooking up the probe to the carboy with some painters tape and then insulating the probe from the outside environment.
Placed in a plastic milk crate (to keep the carboy off the bottom of the freezer) an set the fermentation chamber to 67F - in my chamber this keeps the wort between 66F - 68F.
t+24 hours there was visible activity and a small krausen forming.
t+48 hours this beer was going nuts and it was time to to hook up the blowoff tube
3 weeks later it was time to bottle the beer. I boiled the provided dextrose with a pint of distilled water. Boiled for 10 minutes (to help remove any dissolved O2) and then added to my bottling bucket. Beer was racked on top. Yielded 48 beers.
The beer has been conditioning for quite awhile at this point (6-7 weeks?). When I first tried this clone (~2 weeks after bottling) I found the beer to be a somewhat unpleasant and harsh with an odd astringency. The bitterness was also a bit harsh which was probably my fault doing a full boil. The beer had also not developed very good carbonation.
The flavor has developed considerably since first bottling. I tried a bottle over the weekend and found it to have nice flavors of coffee, milk chocolate, caramel, and a bit of roast. The bitterness was much smoother and held up nicely to the sweeter flavors. The carbonation was much better although the beer does not form a very good head. I'm going to give it a little longer while and then I'll revisit this thread with a proper sensory evaluation and comparison to Deschutes' Black Butte Porter.
