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 PorterBatch 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.
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| 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.
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