#23 Black Butte Porter (clone #2)

One of my favorite styles of beer is Porter, and I don't think there's a better time to drink Porter than the fall. Although I'm a bit late with this brew, as it won't be ready until mid November, I'm glad to get to brew a beer style I love so much.

Black Butte has been one of my favorite Porters if not one of my favorite beers since I had a couple with my girlfriend out in Portland, Oregon. Unfortunately due to lack of distribution out to the East Coast, I haven't had it for quite a while and cloning the brew is the only way to come up with a beer that at least begins to compare with such a great beer. I brewed a clone of this beer last fall with the Wyeast 1968 London ESB strain, and it was one of the first beers I think I brewed that I was really happy with. I plowed through the keg with my dad and was sad to see it go then, so I'm hoping this brew will at least match the previous attempt.

The current recipe for this clone came from Can You Brew It? on the Brewing Network. It looks very similar to the recipe I went with last year with only a British Chocolate replacing the Black Patent I used last year. Since I was unable to find this lower Lovibond British Chocolate as described in the recipe, my local homebrew store owner suggested some dehusked black malt to give the color of a Robust Porter without an over the top roast quality to the beer. I really love what dehusked black malt does in a beer so I'm hoping it meshes well with the other specialty grains and hops.

Black Butte Porter

Batch Volume (Gal): 6.0

Pre-Boil Volume (Gal): 6.5

Total Grain (Lbs): 13.79

OG: 1.060   Anticipated FG: ~1.012   

Anticipated ABV: ~6.33%

IBUs: 37.5

SRM: 26.4

Brewhouse Efficiency: 73%

Boil Duration: 95 min

Grain                                                  (Lbs/oz.) (%)

Malteurop North American 2-row    10.6     76.9

Wheat Malt                                            1.4      10.2

Crystal 80                                              0.7        5.1

Cara-Pils Dextrin Malt                       0.42       3.0

Chocolate Malt                                     0.42       3.0

Dehusked Black Malt                          0.25       1.8

Hops                      (AA%) (IBU) (Oz.) (Boil[min])

Galena                     14.1    30.3    0.5         90

Cascade                    6.0     6.0      0.5         30

German Tettnang   3.5     1.1       0.5         5

Yeast

Repitched 100 mL of thick, dry, clean 1968 London ESB yeast slurry from Ordinary Bitter

Water

Ca: 117 Mg: 2 SO4: 42 Na: 27 Cl: 66 HCO3: 183

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion   5 min 150 F (aimed for 154-155 F), raised up to 155 F at 15 min for remaining 45 minutes of mash, 10 minute mashout at ~165 F

In Mash: 4 g CaCO3, 2 g NaHCO3, 5 mL of Lactic Acid; pH ~5.4

  added 5 mL of Lactic Acid at 15 min; pH ~5.2-5.1

Overall the brewday went fairly well. I would have preferred to hit a mash temp of 154-155 F for the entire 60 minute mash and has a pH of 5.1 as well. The low mash temperature may not necessarily result in an overly dry beer; the usage of carapils dextrin malt should provide a bit more dextrin sugar in the finished beer, and the 1968 yeast strain is fairly flocculent resulting in a strain that is a relatively low attenuator. This should leave a little bit more of a body to the finished beer if the yeast fails to eat all the available sugars. I think the beer should turn out fairly crisp however due to the malts, salts added, and the pH of the mash I eventually hit. I was a little worried upon tasting the mash runnings; I could taste lactic acid fairly easily. I think the large additions of CO3 and HCO3 likely buffered the Lactic Acid additions, thus leaving me with the high pH to start with. Hopefully the lactic acid flavor will not be apparent in the finished beer.

The mash after a 10 minute mashout at 165 F

I also failed to watch the sparge close enough and ran off too quickly, but luckily I collected only a bit more wort than I had hoped to collect, a mistake that only increased my targeted OG by three points and decreased my targeted water profile by a few ppms in each ion concentration. I don't think this will have any detrimental effects as I've done this a few times before. 

What I am worried about is the fact that I had no oxygen to aerate my wort with once it came time to ferment the beer. Apparently I was sold a disposable oxygen tank that had no oxygen in it. I'm not sure if it had a leak, was empty when I got it, or what the deal was exactly but there was no oxygen to put into the wort. I had to resort to my method of aeration that I haven't used (for good reason) for the past two years at least of brewing. I aerated using a pyrex dish to splash the wort for about a minute; hopefully this won't result in any infection. In addition to the splashing, as I do with every beer, I also splashed the wort as I transferred from the boil kettle to the fermenter. The most I can hope to have put into the wort is 8 ppm of oxygen, not the amount I usually can with oxygen, but hopefully the yeast are healthy enough to ferment this beer well regardless.

In order to repitch the 1968 yeast strain I had to transfer the Ordinary Bitter into a keg. My goal was to partially imitate cask conditioning of this particular beer, so I added about three ounces of priming sugar during the transfer. The 1968 yeast was such a strong flocculator however, that I was worried there would be too little yeast to naturally carbonate the beer in the keg. I added a few mL of yeast from the bottom of the fermenter to ensure I could produce the necessary secondary fermentation. I'm really excited for this beer to condition and carbonate soon as I think it'll make for a great session beer, just in time for some colder weather.

#22 Ordinary Bitter

It's been a long wait for the Belgian Tripel to finish fermentation, and now that it's finally wrapping up activity, I was able to start the new strain of Wyeast 1968 London ESB yeast in an Ordinary Bitter. With all the additional sugar added and the high gravity of the Tripel, it took a while for me to see activity slow and was hesitant to take the beer out of the fermentation chamber too early. I think I'll let it settle out at basement temperatures and bottle it when I get a chance in 750 mL cork and cage bottles while saving the Trappist High Gravity strain for either a Dubbel or Dark Strong/Quad brew later this fall.

The Krausen on top of the Ordinary Bitter
after about 16 hours

Out of the yeast strains that I have used so far in my brewing, the 1968 London ESB strain is by far my favorite. If there was one strain I had to select as my "house" strain, the 1968 would be the one I would go with. I used it last fall to brew a Porter (Deschutes Black Butte clone) and a strong ESB. Both came out fantastic with a slighly sweet finish, very silky, malty, nice fruit flavors, and just overall great beers for fall and winter drinking. This time around I want to use the strain as much as possible, and I'm hoping to step this strain up starting with the low gravity Ordinary Bitter, then progressing to a Porter, and finishing with the same strong ESB recipe I created last year.

"Double-dropping" the Ordinary Bitter
into a second fermenter

Last summer I brewed an Ordinary Bitter with the Thames Valley strain and after hearing about the "Double-Drop" method of fermentation used by the brewers at Brakespear for their Ordinary Bitter, I chose to do the same. Although I made the beer undrinkable with an overzealous addition of gypsum salt, I could taste a nice, unique, and what I thought to be English fruit and malt character in the beer. This could be due to the yeast alone, but I'd like to see what the double drop does to this year's Ordinary Bitter. The beer's been at about 66-67 F overnight and has formed about an inch of Krausen. After "droping" the beer into another fermenting bucket, the beer and active yeast were able to separate from any trub that made it into the fermenter from the boil kettle. I splashed the first gallon of the wort coming from the fermenter into the bottom of the new fermenting bucket, adding additional oxygen into the wort to allow for a unique fermentation. The theory is that adding additional oxygen after fermentation has begun will allow for additional growth of yeast, additional ester production and thus those fruity flavors, and will put yeast cells on different cycles of aerobic metabolism, anaerobic fermentation, and conditioning. I'm hoping this yeast responds well to this process and if not, I'll likely give this beer another shot either before or after brewing up the Porter.

I also plan on trying to serve this beer in a way at least partially resembling a traditional English cask. I'll transfer to the keg, with priming sugar (and hopefully some finings if I can get some before that time), allow that to carbonate and condition, and either serve with a small amount of CO2 at my basement temperature, or serve from the kegerator at slightly colder temps.

Ordinary Bitter

Batch Volume (Gal): 6.0

Pre-Boil Volume (Gal): collected 4.0 of wort, 

     topped up to 6.0 before boil

Total Grain (Lbs): 8.34

OG: 1.036   Anticipated FG: ~1.009   Anticipated ABV: ~3.54%

IBUs: 32.9

SRM: 13.6

Brewhouse Efficiency: 70%

Boil Duration: 95 min

Grain                             (Lbs/oz.) (%)

Pearl (British) 2-row         7        84.0

Crystal 120                       15 oz.    11.5

Special Roast Malt           6 oz.     4.5

Hops                          (AA%) (IBU) (Oz.) (Boil[min])

East Kent Goldings   4.5      25.4    1.25         90

East Kent Goldings   4.5       7.5      0.8         30

East Kent Goldings   4.5        0      0.75          0

Yeast

Pitched Wyeast Activator packet of 1968 London ESB yeast directly into wort

Water

Ca: 100 Mg: 2 SO4: 205 Na: 10 Cl: 29 HCO3: 45

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion   60 min 150 F (aimed for 152-153 F), 10 min mashout at 165 F

In Mash: 5 g CaSO4, 0.5 g NaHCO3, 1 mL Lactic Acid; pH ~5.1-5.2

In Boil: 3 g CaSO4, 1 g CaCl2

Relative to my experience brewing the Tripel, this brewday went great. The only number that I had hoped to hit but failed to was my mash temp. I'm not sure this will be a huge issue for the final beer since there are many variables that could have produced a more dextrinous beer even before I had a lower mash temp, so I'll just have to see how this beer ferments out. I also could have done with a bit more yeast (1.2 packets of yeast or made a starter instead of just pitching one) but I'm sure this beer will ferment fine with the yeast I added. If anything it'll make for a beer that is a bit fruitier and finishes a bit higher, which with my lower than desired mash temp, could be a good thing.

The new "hands-off" grain mill setup

After a few brews with plenty of frustration due to my grain mill, I think I've finally found a happy medium between wet and dry milling. I realized that I have been using a bit too much water to condition my malt before milling and that has just turned my malt into dough on the rollers, causing them to bind up and in essence creating mush instead of grist. I only used about 100 mL of water for this particular grain bill (the suggested rate is about 100 mL per 11 lbs of grain) and it worked beautifully. With some additional time for the grain husks to absorb the water I sprayed before milling, the grist was crushed very easily without having to stop halfway through milling and without any dough buildup on the rollers. The grist looked just as great as it has when I've wet milled properly as well; very pillowy with the majority of grain husks left intact and the starch ground into both large and smaller particles. Hopefully this wet milling process will work with some future brews as wet milling is something I'd really like to continue using as part of my brewing process.

Once this Ordinary Bitter ferments (hopefully within the week) I plan on brewing a Porter with the 1968 strain and then possibly continuing the Trappist High Gravity strain with another strong Belgian ale. It'll be good to have another beer on tap (or "cask") as my supplies of homebrew are dwindling and I need a sessionable beer before football season is over.

Fermentation Control Upgrade

The Ranco two-stage controller holding the Belgian Tripel fermentation at 69 F

The fermentation chamber has done a fantastic job of holding the proper fermentation temperatures for the past few brews, however I realized that sooner or later, I would need a controller and a method of heating the ferment if I hoped to get the process of fermentation under the control I have hoped for.

The AC unit so far has been great at holding fermentation temperatures steady. Depending on where the beer is in the process of fermentation, I would simply let the analog thermostat of the AC unit cool the chamber to a few degrees below my targeted fermentation temperature. The cooling of the AC would equilibrate with the heat produced by the yeast during fermentation, and result in a constant temperature. This process worked well, but necessitated frequent checking of the beer's temperature, which could only be viewed by opening up the chamber and looking at the temperature strip on the side of the carboy (in the process, releasing the cold air from the chamber). 

The AC unit was also made more inefficient by the fact that without a controller, there was no way of having the unit turn on only when needed. The unit was constantly running and was more often than not simply circulating air inside the chamber with the fan inside the unit. Rarely would the AC unit kick on to cool the fermentation. It was obvious that much of the time the AC unit was on it was simply wasting energy.

The most significant concern I've had with respect to the fermentation chamber was that as the weather has gotten colder, the need for cooling has decreased while the need for heating has increased. The chamber has been doing a decent job of insulating the beer from these colder temperatures, but I'm sure that soon the heat created by fermentation will not be enough to heat the inside of the chamber.

After doing a bit of searching, I found a great fermentation control system on MoreBeer.com. The controller is a Ranco digital two-stage controller which allows either two cooling units, two heating units, or my current arrangement, one heating and one cooling unit to be turned on and off according to the temperature of the fermentation. I currently have the probe taped to the side of the fermenter and insulated with some cloth, but I think it's registering a slightly lower temperature than the actual fermentation temp. 

Along with the controller purchase, I also bought a thermowell that will solve this issue. The thermowell is a stainless tube just wide enough to hold the temperature probe of the controller. The thermowell will be immersed in the center of the fermenting beer and offer a more accurate temperature reading. The difference between the exterior fermentation temp (as I have been reading it from the fermentation strip on the oustide wall of the carboy since I began brewing) and the internal temp of the fermenting beer will be very small since the volume of fermenting beer is fairly low, but I'm anal and this should offer me the best temperature reading I can get.

The probe (grey cord) measuring ferment temp, the FermWrap (black cords) heating the ferment

The piece of equipment I chose to heat the fermentation is the FermWrap. The wires of the FermWrap split into a grid of coils in a plastic sheet, much like the way in which a window defroster for the back window of a car works. The plastic sheet wraps about 3/4 of the way around the carboy and allows for heating directly to the side of the carboy. So far it appears that it is a quick and efficient method of heating the ferment. The only time I have seen either the AC or FermWrap turn on (other than when I am stepping up temp on the controller) the FermWrap came on for a few minutes to heat the ferment back up one degree and quickly shut off after. Overall I am ecstatic with this particular purchase; I think it is likely the most valuable brewing equipment purchase I have made. It should allow for brewing of any ale style I can think of, and with some tinkering I have planned in the future on the AC unit, it could even allow for me to begin brewing lagers in cooler months. The thought of a Baltic Porter or DoppleBock during the winter has me excited to see if I can achieve lagering temperatures with my new fermentation chamber setup.