Chocolate Maple Porter - November 2014
Two-gallon batch. All-grain. The recipe came from the Brooklyn Brew Shop book titled Beer Making Book. This was our first porter, and it's definitely going to be a dark beer thanks to the chocolate and black patent malts.
Ingredients
The ABV is suppose to be 6.5%.
- American 2-row
- Chocolate malt
- Caramel 15 malt
- Black Patent malt
- Fuggle hops
- maple syrup added at the end of boil
- Nottingham English ale yeast
- we'll use maple syrup for the bottling sugar
Notes
- brewed on Wed, Nov 26, 2014
- 60-minute mash
- 60-minute boil
- to help chill the work faster, we loaded the sink with bagged ice from the store
- we saved some of the spent grains to be used in pizza or bread baking
Wort
We tasted the wort that we used for taking an original gravity reading, and we both liked the taste. I think that this will be a good one.
Fermentation
Active fermentation seemed to occur on Thu, Nov 27 through Sat, Nov 29, 2014.
Photos
The mash.
After mash, drained grains before sparging.
The wort about to be poured back through the grains during sparging.
After the initial wort was poured through the grains, clean water that was warmed to 170 degrees in another pot was then used for sparging. Then I think that we poured all the collected wort back through the grains again.
Wort about to come to boil.
After boil and chilling wort, we took a gravity reading.
Wort moved to three-gallon plastic carboy.
Fermenter placed in the computer room, which is probably the warmest area on the first floor of our house. Still, the room temp is probably only in the mid to upper 60s.
This is active fermention, occurring on Thu, Nov 27, 2014, the day after brewing.
Bottling
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014, we bottled 21 x ~12 oz bottles. We tasted some leftover beer, and we liked it. This should be a pleasing beer after a few weeks in the bottle. We're excited about this one.
Tasting
Dec 21, 2014
On Sun eve, Dec 21, 2014, we drank our first bottle of the chocolate maple porter that we bottled five days earlier. It was unrefrigerated. At the moment, the bottles are being kept on our chilly basement floor.
The beer tasted good. It got better as it warmed in the glass. We were pleased. This should be a fine beer with more age.
At approx 6.5% ABV, it naturally "felt" lighter and less complex than our Junco stout. But the porter was smooth with a pleasant roasty, chocolate flavor.
I can see us quickly consuming this one over the next couple months.
Jan 1, 2015
We drank another, and it's getting better with age. This is a good beer. We're both pleased with it.
One bottle that we opened was over-carbonated, which I think was due to getting too much trub into the bottle during bottling.
Jan 11, 2015
I'll have to add this beer to my favorite list of what we've brewed thus far.
Jan 24, 2015
I consumed another, and it seems to be getting better with age. This is an excellent beer.