For a change I got an all-grain recipe kit from Northernbrewer: St. Paul Porter. I have done this one before and it was pretty good. From the description: "An assertive black ale dominated by roast-coffee and chocolate character and hop bitterness." The recipe calls for 152F sach rest, but I went a little bit higher to make sure I have good conversion. That always seems to be a problem otherwise. Also, the package had 2oz of Cluster hops, whereas the recipe calls for 1.5oz. Oh well, am I going to throw the hops away? Not a chance.. Anyways, this is an exercise of getting some baseline, and I was really yearning for a nice dark and smooth brew!
BREW DATE: 03/27/2016
BOTTLING DATE:
GRAIN BILL: 10lbs total
-8.5lbs Rahr 2-Row Malt
-0.5lb English Chocolate Malt
-1lb English Medium Crystal
MASH-IN: 1 hr at 155F, Mash-out 10 min at 170F. Fly sparked with 175F water. I noticed there were lots of relatively long shoots, about 6-8mm, in the mash, floating to the top. That means the malting place must have let the barley sprout for too long. Usually one should start the malting process when the sprouts are 2-3mm long. Hmm, so much about Rahr..
HOP SCHEDULE:
-60min 2oz Cluster
-1min 1oz Cascade
OG: 13.8 brix for 12l wort filled up to 22l => alcohol content should come out at 4.0% but somehow that method always underestimates abv. Most likely it will be around 4.5%. Looks like conversion wasn't too great, I'd blame it on the long sprouts that I found in the mash.
YEAST: Wyeast 1187 Ringwood Ale
TASTE NOTES: As expected this one came out a little on the light side. Still great Porter, full malty flavors, solid foamy head and lingering notes of coffee and tobacco. Some residual cloudiness which I attribute to the oversprouted malt. Still quite nice.
