SCHF Split Batch Porter

The brewsheet

In anticipation of this year's Southern California Homebrew Festival, taking place at Lake Casitas the first weekend in May, I set aside a Sunday to push my system to produce 10 gallons of beer with the plan on donating half to AHP Brewclub and the other to Brewcommune. When it came time to decide what to brew I had several ideas, would it be an IPL, a mild or bitter to be severed on cask or something completely new?

Last year took up 2 beers; an English-Belgian-American Double IPA that I called Scottland's Yard and a porter with 5 different kinds of peppers called Campsite Smoked Jalapeño Porter. Both beers were a hit and I got a lot of good feedback particularly on the Campsite Smoked Jalapeño Porter. It also happened to be the first keg to kick which I took as a good sign. I realized that I actually hadn't brewed a porter since then so I figured why not brew up a double batch of porter for this year as well



Assistant Brewer in training



If I was going to do it again I wanted to develop a base porter that I could use to create 2 different beers in secondary. To one half I plan on adding 4 vanilla beans in secondary and straight bourbon when I keg it, I am calling that batch BaseCamp Dessert and the other will become a porter with maple syrup, bacon and coffee called BaseCamp Breakfast. For BaseCamp Breakfast I have already added the first of 2 maple syrup additions by adding 18oz of maple syrup that I pasteurized while the main batch was cooling. The second addition will be used to prime keg. I will talk about what I will be doing to each batch more once I move them to secondary.

When it came time to brew the beer I started by making a starter of WLP007 that I could use one vial for all 10 gallons of beer.  My plan really was to make the primary of both beers pretty identical and really create two different beers in secondary so using the same yeast was a no-brainer.  I'm also hoping to be able to use the yeast from the Dessert portion to get a house culture of WLP007 going for this years Imperial Rhino Stout whose brewday is right around the corner. At around 7% the Dessert version is right at the upper limit for reusing yeast.

Overflowing with mash

Brewing 10 gallons of the beer required the most amount of grain yet, even with the addition of 3 lbs of light DME I used so much grain that when I put the top on the mash tun the volume it displaced poured over the side.  Still after 60 minutes I held a steady 154 temp, which was about 2 degrees under my target, and got full starch conversion. There was no way my stainless spoon was going to be able to handle the job so I few days before I brewed I used an Amazon gift card my brother gave me for my birthday to buy a 48" stainless paddle.  I had planned on buying a $10 wood paddle buy they had none in stock.  I love my new paddle, though I had to close the garage while stirring as I kept hitting it.

You might recall my frustration with the efficiency I'd been getting and more so to the point that even as I'd been lowering my efficiency I was still missing my target OG. I mentioned last time I brewed back in January that I had an idea where my problem was, my equipment settings.  Between then and now I spent some time looking at what variables others with similar equipment were using.  It turns out the default evaporation setting for a keggle (boil kettle made out of an old keg) was way off.  If I recall correctly it was set at almost 20% and when I looked online most people where getting 10%.  Adjusting this setting made all the difference in the world and I ended up with a 10 pt efficiency gain, pushing me into the 70s.  I also got to test out the refractometer that Shawn gave me when I bought his old grain mill. The flap is broken off but it still works great you just have to hold it in place.  I calibrated it against my hydrometer and ended the value in to the calibrate refractometer section of the brewing app I use.

Cheers

-SNB 

Updates
BaseCamp Breakfast aka Maple-Bacon-Coffee
BaseCamp Dessert aka Bourbon-Vanilla

Westbennetteren 12

The main inspiration Westvleteren 12
Thanks Kevin (kbm)

I've been toying around with the idea of brewing a Belgian nah Trappist-style quad since I first tried Shawn's. It was a pretty eye opening experience for me.  I was still under an anti-Belgian-style beer kick due largely to my own lack of understanding of what it meant to be a Belgian-style beer and the wide scope that one label was being applied.  Shawn's quad was fantastic and made me long to try the ultimate examples of the the style Westvleteren 12.

That day came during my late night beer session for My Funky Brother Brett (which is tasting awesome right now).  We'd had a really good night of brewing and beer so on a whim I decide to open a bottle I'd been saving for several months to share with Rick and Daniel.   Few beers have lived fully up to the hype that surrounds them, this one did.

Daniel then became inspired to brew his own version for his 2012 Anarchy Ale called Westy Southwest.  He even made his own candi syrup for it which is really cool. I think Daniel taking the quad plunge was the last bit of inspiration I needed to just go for it and hop on the Quadwagon, Shawn had also recently rebrewed his quad.

The ingredients

The inspiration for the recipe came straight from the supplier of the candi syrup I used Candi Syrup Inc. I'd come across them while reading a post on The Mad Fermentationist.  They're a US producer of candi syrups that got into manufacturing them in part to nail a Westvleteren 12 clone.  They have a lot of great looking recipes on their site including one for Westvleteren 12.  Reviewing the recipe against Daniel's and others I'd found online made the decision to go with it as the basis a no brainer.  The only changes I made was to drop a pound of the D-180 and replace it with a pound of the D-90.  I did this after reading the second page of the recipe where they talk about the process of creating the recipe and mention using D-90 and D-180 together.  The other change was a minor hop swap.

Again the main issue was finding a time to brew it.  I've been training for a half marathon and have been doing my long runs on Sundays.  On Saturday I take my daughter to Little Gym mid-morning which places a damper on my brew schedule.  To make it even more complicated my wife was also training for a half marathon and ran the Tinker Bell Half the weekend I brewed.

The solution I came up with was to use the mash time in my favor and brew on Saturday.  Having mapped out my brewday for the Double BIG IPL brewday back in December I knew when I would have to have the mashing going so I could take Syd to Little Gym.  From there it was a simple matter of working backwards.  

I borrowed some equipment from my buddy Marshall
to make brewing the second beer faster/easier

Par for my course as of late I was under OG despite taking a preboil gravity reading and using BeerSmith 2 to correct for temperature. I'm getting frustrated and might buy a temperature correcting refractometer. I'm following BeerSmith 2 instructions and have loaded my Keggle setup into for equipment. For the quad it wasn't the end of the world (-6 points) and nowhere near infuriating as the second running beer I'll talk about on Thursday.

I started the fermentation at 65 overnight and have been slowly ramping up towards the 80s.  I'll probably peak at 82 on Wednesday then start to lower back to 67F for 5 days before racking to secondary when the gravity hits 1.012.  Then it will be into the cellar at 50 for a couple of months.  Yes, I will be bottle conditioning this bad boy and plan on using Candi Syrup Inc's Simplicity to prime it with. I might even harvest some actual Westvleteren 12 bottle yeast for bottling.

Cheers

-SNB

Scott's BIG IPL - Alchemy Guild

The grains

After Christmas I took a few days off to hang out around the house and catch up on some projects.  One of the things I really wanted to do was spend a couple of days brewing, including a double brew day where I brewed up two recipes of Scott's BIG IPL.

The first of the IPLs I codenamed Alchemy Guild.  Alchemy Guild revisited the All Grain malt bill that I had come up with for Scott's BIG IPL w/Citra and returned to the hop bill of the original 2 versions.  I did this because I was somewhat let down by the way the Simcoe and Citra seemed to interact in the last batch.  I also dropped my efficiency down to 60% in hopes of nailing my targeted 1.078 gravity.

The IPL Double Brewday Schedule

I had to get a pretty early start on it as I was doing two batches back to back and I wanted to be done around lunch time.  To keep myself on track I created a gantt chart in excel outlining all the major steps and time I estimated each step would take.  The was to determine when specific pieces of equipment would be free primary the main burner.   From there it was a simple manor of working backwards for the other IPL, which I'll go into more detail on Thursday.

For the most part the schedule went really well, there were I few items that I had failed to take into account but I was able to make up the time at later steps (mostly by combining my batch sparges).

Almost par for the course with me and All Grain I came up a little under my gravity (1.073) which is getting pretty frustrating.  I need to spend some time really studying how people are mashing as well as take a look at some other factors I think are at play.  I'm going to stick with batch sparging as I've read it helps cut down time and most only experience a few additional points of efficiency yet an hour or two more time commitment.

Cheers

-SNB