Posts
Monday, January 4, 2010
Vanilla Porter: Stage 1 Fermentation
-- A Taste from TheInkFlowsLikeWine.com
Last night I brewed up a wonderful batch of vanilla porter and from what I can tell it went quite well. This being the 2nd time I've brewed at home, and the 3rd time overall, I felt much more confident about the process and really started to enjoy it more. This recipe is my first with two stages of fermentation, and I'm kinda dreading siphoning the beer twice, it's not something I'm too good at and I worry about ruining the beer. But I'm looking forward to seeing how this comes out. I really want to put together a solid recipe for a vanilla porter, so I bought some beans and I'm working off of this recipe below, taken from the wonderful Beer Recipator. It took awhile for me to really find a recipe I liked and could tinker with later, but this one is supposed to be a good basic porter recipe overall, so I'm hoping the vanilla will be a good focus for it. I'm not adding the amaretto it mentions or the water from Lazaretto. I also used a different yeast, the Edinburgh Ale WLP028, as the one mentioned below wasn't available at my local brew store.
Lazaretto Vanilla/Amaretto Brown Porter
Porter with vanilla bean in 4 gallons and amaretto liquoer added to last gallon. Base beer is an extract version of St. Chuck's Porter by Bill Pierce.
| Brewer: | Christo | Email: | - | |||||
| Beer: | Lazaretto Vanilla/Amaretto Brown Porter | Style: | Brown Porter | |||||
| Type: | Extract w/grain | Size: | 5.2 gallons | |||||
| Color: |
| Bitterness: | 28 IBU | |||||
| OG: | 1.056 | FG: | 1.015 | |||||
| Alcohol: | 5.4% v/v (4.2% w/w) | |||||||
| Water: | Lazaretto Creek - or what's 100' below it. | |||||||
| Grain: | 12 oz. American crystal 60L 12 oz. Belgian Special B 8 oz. American chocolate 4 oz. Belgian biscuit 4 oz. Flaked barley | |||||||
| Steep: | 155° | |||||||
| Boil: | 60 minutes | SG 1.049 | 6 gallons | |||||
| 6 lb. Light dry malt extract | ||||||||
| Add Irish Moss at 15 minutes | ||||||||
| Hops: | .5 oz. Centennial (9.0% AA, 60 min.) 1 oz. Willamette (5% AA, 30 min.) | |||||||
| Yeast: | Wyeast 1728 | |||||||
| Log: | Primary 8 days. Secondary 8 days. Slit fresh vanilla bean added to secondary. Racked 4 gallons to keg, added 50 ml Amaretto liquer to priming sugar mixture for remaining gallon. Reduce priming sugar by 1/4. Can also add almond/vanilla extracts or Amaretto extract to taste and use normal amount of priming sugar. | |||||||
| Tasting: | The base beer is one of the best porter recipes you can make. The vanilla was quite nice after it aged about 2 months - a little too forward at the first tasting. The amaretto really didn't do it for me in this beer - just kind of muddied up the flavors. And even with less priming sugar, the liqueor added too much carbonation. | |||||||
So... 7 days to go till changeover, getting excited already! Hope the new year brings good brew to all!
Enjoy!
