Brew 1 - Alice Porter
Brew 1 - Alice Porter
Brew day: 16th November 2019
Bottling day: 22nd November 2019
I was first introduced to a Live version of Alice Porter whilst on Honey Moon in Edinburgh during a visit to BrewDog at Lothian Road. I couldn't turn down a beer that shared a name with my Daughter and it turned out that the beer was incredible. Chocolate, Coffee, Milk all in a smooth and strong Baltic Porter. For me, a real 5-star beer that I really wanted to try again.
A few weeks later, I stumbled across the recipe in the freely shared DIY Dog recipe book and decided this as my first all grain brew.
BrewDog, despite their critics, make their malt bills freely available to all and encourage people to recreate their most famous brews - you can find the recipe book here. I had used the recipe book before when we had attempted to recreate Punk IPA a few months previous and found the information contained within it enough to get started.
The recipes are tailored to 20L batches; I only intended to make around 10L. A little bit of simple math (divide by 2...) and I had my malt bill.
I ordered the malts, hops and yeast from a company based in Northern Ireland - Get 'Er Brewed - having been recommended them.
The malts arrived pre-crushed, hops vacuum sealed and the liquid yeast in a cool pack. All arrived within 5 days of ordering which was impressive considering the distance it had travelled.
As you can see, my Daughter (Alice) was keen to get stuck in and help Daddy make some beer that very weekend.
So, Saturday arrived and we set about making the very first all grain brew at Woodville. The first job was to get our strike water to around 65-70°c which was then added into our make shift mash tun (a 24L cool box). We added the malts into the bag and left it with the lid on for about 75mins (I ordered mine here from the Home Brew Shop in Farnborough and it arrived really quickly).
Once the mash was ready, it was a deep dark brown colour. I transferred it into our stock pot and began the 'boil' using a gas hob. It took a little bit of time to reach a running boil but once going, the gas gave me good ability to control the rate of the boil throughout.
At this point, I added my first hop variety (Magnum) followed by East Kent Golding (EKG) at 30mins and then finally, another sprinkling of EKG and some Sorachi Ace for flavouring (according to BrewDog, the this gives the beer a vanilla flavour).
At flame out, I was able to transfer the stockpot into the kitchen sink filled with ice water to enable a more rapid cooling process which took around 30mins before the wort was cool enough to transfer by siphon into the fermenter.
Up to now we were plain sailing - this is where we hit our first hitch. I use a filter bag over the end of the syphon sediment trap to filter out any large particulates. As the wort siphoned from the stockpot into the fermenter, I noticed the flow was being impeded by the quantity of sediment. I got there eventually, but this is something that will need a remedy for future brews.
By now, the wort had cooled nicely to below 30°c and we were ready to add our yeast. I had never encountered liquid yeast in brewing before (having only ever used dried yeast in small packets). The yeast I had purchased was contained inside a 'Smack Pack' that I had set up about 3 hours prior to this.
The smack pack works by hitting a small activator inside the pouch that releases a small amount of priming sugar and activates the yeast inside. 3 hours was enough to get the yeast going and the packet had swollen nicely as the hungry cells had hoovered up the sugars and begun to produce CO₂.
I found the liquid yeast a daunting prospect at first having heard about others who had needed to activate them 24hrs before brewing using more complex set ups. In all, the yeast worked really quickly and soon converted the sugars into alcohol - much faster that most other yeasts I had used in the past and will definitely look to use Smack Packs again in the future.
The final product was perhaps a little underwhelming - about a gallon/5 litres of wort sat in my fermenter for around 3-4 hours work but the sense of achievement was key.
My process had worked well and I had managed to hit my Original Gravity target of 1053. The nano-brewery was officially up and running.
About a week later, I measured gravity and found that I had hit my next target (1013 - in fact it was probably a bit lower - so a bit stronger than planned!) and was able to get bottling. I love bottling as a process - reusing old bottles (sterilised of course!) is truly sustainable.
I added about a teaspoon of priming sugar (caster sugar) to each bottle before capping (yellow caps for this beer) and left the bottles to sit for a few weeks before the grand reveal and tasting.
Obviously, the beer was no where near as good as the original but it had a really distinct flavour that I really enjoyed - almost like a smokey whiskey entwined with coffee and chocolate.
The use of caster sugar as a priming sugar provided a really good head to the beer that lasted well into the drink. I think this is a technique worth using again.
Feedback was really good and on the whole the beer was a real success. I intend to brew it again in the future, perhaps increase the batch size. You can judge a beers quality by how disappointed you are when it is all gone - and I certainly felt sad to pour the last bottle of this one.
Certainly a recipe to try again in the future!
Brew day: 16th November 2019Bottling day: 22nd November 2019
I was first introduced to a Live version of Alice Porter whilst on Honey Moon in Edinburgh during a visit to BrewDog at Lothian Road. I couldn't turn down a beer that shared a name with my Daughter and it turned out that the beer was incredible. Chocolate, Coffee, Milk all in a smooth and strong Baltic Porter. For me, a real 5-star beer that I really wanted to try again.
A few weeks later, I stumbled across the recipe in the freely shared DIY Dog recipe book and decided this as my first all grain brew.
BrewDog, despite their critics, make their malt bills freely available to all and encourage people to recreate their most famous brews - you can find the recipe book here. I had used the recipe book before when we had attempted to recreate Punk IPA a few months previous and found the information contained within it enough to get started.
I ordered the malts, hops and yeast from a company based in Northern Ireland - Get 'Er Brewed - having been recommended them.
The malts arrived pre-crushed, hops vacuum sealed and the liquid yeast in a cool pack. All arrived within 5 days of ordering which was impressive considering the distance it had travelled.
So, Saturday arrived and we set about making the very first all grain brew at Woodville. The first job was to get our strike water to around 65-70°c which was then added into our make shift mash tun (a 24L cool box). We added the malts into the bag and left it with the lid on for about 75mins (I ordered mine here from the Home Brew Shop in Farnborough and it arrived really quickly).
Once the mash was ready, it was a deep dark brown colour. I transferred it into our stock pot and began the 'boil' using a gas hob. It took a little bit of time to reach a running boil but once going, the gas gave me good ability to control the rate of the boil throughout.
At flame out, I was able to transfer the stockpot into the kitchen sink filled with ice water to enable a more rapid cooling process which took around 30mins before the wort was cool enough to transfer by siphon into the fermenter.
Up to now we were plain sailing - this is where we hit our first hitch. I use a filter bag over the end of the syphon sediment trap to filter out any large particulates. As the wort siphoned from the stockpot into the fermenter, I noticed the flow was being impeded by the quantity of sediment. I got there eventually, but this is something that will need a remedy for future brews.
The smack pack works by hitting a small activator inside the pouch that releases a small amount of priming sugar and activates the yeast inside. 3 hours was enough to get the yeast going and the packet had swollen nicely as the hungry cells had hoovered up the sugars and begun to produce CO₂.
I found the liquid yeast a daunting prospect at first having heard about others who had needed to activate them 24hrs before brewing using more complex set ups. In all, the yeast worked really quickly and soon converted the sugars into alcohol - much faster that most other yeasts I had used in the past and will definitely look to use Smack Packs again in the future.
The final product was perhaps a little underwhelming - about a gallon/5 litres of wort sat in my fermenter for around 3-4 hours work but the sense of achievement was key.
My process had worked well and I had managed to hit my Original Gravity target of 1053. The nano-brewery was officially up and running. About a week later, I measured gravity and found that I had hit my next target (1013 - in fact it was probably a bit lower - so a bit stronger than planned!) and was able to get bottling. I love bottling as a process - reusing old bottles (sterilised of course!) is truly sustainable.
I added about a teaspoon of priming sugar (caster sugar) to each bottle before capping (yellow caps for this beer) and left the bottles to sit for a few weeks before the grand reveal and tasting.
Obviously, the beer was no where near as good as the original but it had a really distinct flavour that I really enjoyed - almost like a smokey whiskey entwined with coffee and chocolate.
The use of caster sugar as a priming sugar provided a really good head to the beer that lasted well into the drink. I think this is a technique worth using again.
Feedback was really good and on the whole the beer was a real success. I intend to brew it again in the future, perhaps increase the batch size. You can judge a beers quality by how disappointed you are when it is all gone - and I certainly felt sad to pour the last bottle of this one.
Certainly a recipe to try again in the future!
Overall beer rating: 4.5/5 (not bad for a first all grain!)
Ingredients
Malts: Extra Pale, Munich, Crystal 150, Special W, Carafa Special Malt Type I, Flaked Oats, Torrified Wheat.
Hops: Columbus (Sub for Magnum), East Kent Golding (substitute for First Gold), Sorachi Ace
Yeast: Wyeast 1056 - American Ale (Liquid smack pack)
Batch size: 6 Litres (13 bottles - various sizes)
OG: 1053
FG: 1013
ABV: 5.2%
Ingredients
Malts: Extra Pale, Munich, Crystal 150, Special W, Carafa Special Malt Type I, Flaked Oats, Torrified Wheat.
Hops: Columbus (Sub for Magnum), East Kent Golding (substitute for First Gold), Sorachi Ace
Yeast: Wyeast 1056 - American Ale (Liquid smack pack)
Batch size: 6 Litres (13 bottles - various sizes)
OG: 1053
FG: 1013
ABV: 5.2%
Brew Efficiency = 39%
Notes: #48 in DIY Dog Recipe - replace First Gold hops with East Kent Golding.
Notes: #48 in DIY Dog Recipe - replace First Gold hops with East Kent Golding.
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