Currently on draft: Black Death Stout

I'm currently enjoying a batch that just came of age this week. Black Death Stout is from an ingredients kit at Oak Barrel here in Berkeley, CA. Here are the ingredients used:

• 6 lbs. Dark Liquid Malt Extract
• 1 lb. Dark Dry Malt Extract
• 4 oz. Crystal Malt (40L)
• 4 oz. Black Patent Malt
• 4 oz. Chocolate Malt
• 2 oz. flakey barley
• 1.5 oz. Nugget hops (bittering)
• 1.5 oz. Fuggle hops (finishing)
• 1 tsp. Irish Moss
• White Labs' Irish Ale yeast (WLP004)

Let's just say I think it turned out OK.

Colonial Honey Porter report

After 8 days in primary and 6 days in my serving keg (the last 4 with pressure for force carbonation), the Colonial Honey Porter (see recipe and instructions here) was ready for tasting. I pulled out my small tasting glass to give it a try.

As you might have guessed, it turned out great. One of the great things about home brewing is that your batches are ALWAYS better than any beer you can buy, as long as you use quality ingredients and make a reasonable effort to keep things sanitized. The only (very minor) issue with this batch is that I would have liked for it to have a bit more of a chocolate taste, so maybe I'll use more chocolate malt next time -- I'm thinking 6 oz. instead of 3. I can't say it wasn't pleasant having to fill my small tasting glass three times to come to this conclusion.

All in all, honey porter is a great beer -- a good porter has all the nice characteristics of a full dark beer, and the hint of honey makes it all the better. It's probably my favorite beer to make at this point (this is my second honey porter). My kegerator has been empty for about a month now, but with this new batch ready to go, I'm expecting the usual influx of friends to help with the tasting.

RailsBock

Cooked up a batch of American Bock in early May and did a slow fermentation in my newly purchased Sanyo 4910M kegerator. It took a couple of months total with the slow lagering, but it was well worth the wait. I was shooting for something Shiner Bock-ish in character and hit the mark. Less than a gallon left in the keg now. =(

Railsback Bock:

7lb Pale 2-Row (Cargill)

1lb Crystal 120 (Crisp)

Liberty hops (Bittering)

Willamette hops (Finishing)

Whitelabs Pilsen Lager liquid yeast
Ferment at 55 degrees for 2 weeks, then transfer to secondary and lager at 45 degrees for 3-6 weeks (the longer the better, I kegged it at 3 weeks). Chill to 38 degrees and carbonate to 10.7psi.

Mmmm... bock....

Kevin Railsback

Posted by Kevin Railsback at 09:53 PM | Comments (0)

Colonial Honey Porter

This is based on a recipe for Colonial Honey Porter in the Brewmaster's Bible:

• 6 lbs. light malt extract
• 3/4 lb. Munich malt (cracked)
• 1 lb. medium crystal malt (cracked)
• 6 oz. black malt (cracked)
• 3 oz. chocolate malt (cracked)
• 1 lb. honey
• 10 HBU's bittering hops (Cluster or similar type)
• 1/2 oz. Mt. Hood, Liberty, or Hallertauer aroma hops
• 10-14 grams dry ale yeast or Wyeast 1028, 1084, 1056, or 1098
• 3/4 cup corn sugar for bottling

Nothing is ever perfect, so I had to make some subsitutions at the home brew shop. They had all the grains I needed, but they were out of Cluster hops, so they recommended Northern Brewer as a replacement. I needed 10 HBU's -- what the heck is that?

There's a good explanation here, but HBU's are Homebrew Bittering Units. To put it simply, the HBU's are computed by multiplying the alpha acid percentage of the hops by the number of ounces. If you needed 10 HBU's and the alpha acid percentage of your hops was 5%, you would need 2 ounces (5 percent times 2 ounces = 10 HBU's). The alpha acid percentage for Northern Brewer whole hops was 7%, so I used 1.42 ounces -- well, I rounded it up to 1.5.

I also chose an excellent yeast from White Labs: the British Ale Yeast.

After that, I did the following:

• Put about 3 gallons of water in my kettle, suspending the cracked grains in a hops bag until the water just began to boil (the wort was quite dark at that point)
• Stirred in the malt extract and the honey -- kept stirring for a few minutes to make sure it dissolved into the boiling water
• When the wort was boiling again, I added half of the Northern Brewer bittering hops (suspended in a hops bag)
• After 15 minutes of boiling, I added the second half of the Northern Brewer bittering hops.
• After 15 more minutes, I added a teaspoon of Irish Moss
• After 15 more minutes, I added the aroma hops and turned off the heat.
• 15 minutes later, I transferred the wort to a 6-gallon carboy and added cold bottled water to the carboy until it the liquid was 12 inches high (which is 5 gallons in my carboys)
• At that point, the liquid in the fermenter was the right temperature for the yeast, so I poured that in, put on the airlock, and began the long wait.

As I write this, this batch is bubbling nicely in primary fermentation. I'll report back in a couple of weeks with the verdict. This batch has a can't-go-wrong feel to it.