Booker's Porter

Saturday had all the trappings of a busy day: various Big Ten college football games on TV, finish labeling the 3 batches I recently bottled, a 5:30pm 2010 Dominican trip meeting, and the primetime Ohio State game vs. USC. I wanted to brew up a beefy porter to be ready for the cooler months too. So instead of cramming more into my Saturday, I went wild and enjoyed a night brew session on Friday.

I have been ordering a lot of supplies from Northern Brewer up in Minnesota. Flat $7.99 shipping no matter how much I order. A lot of a la carte ingredients and grains to formulate my own recipes. Well for the winter months, I wanted to do a robust porter and a spiced winter ale. These are higher alcohol brews and are definitely warming sippers for those "cold" NC nights. They require about 2 months of sitting to mellow out the fire and round out the flavors. As a result, to have them ready for cooler weather, I need to brew them now. Anyway instead of a la carte, for these styles I figured I'd give Northern Brewer's kits a try. Boxes with all the ingredients ready to go.

The recipe:

1.0 lb Simpson's Chocolate Malt

0.5 lb Simpson's Dark Crystal Malt

0.5 lb Simpson's Black Malt

2 lb Wheat Dry Malt Extract @ 60 minutes

6.3 lb Dark Malt Syrup @ 15 minutes

1 oz Chinook hops, 11.1% alpha acid @ 60 minutes

0.5 oz East Kent Goldings hops, 5.3% AA @ 15 minutes

0.5 oz East Kent Goldings hops, 5.3% AA @ 5 minutes

1 Whirlfloc tablet @ 15 minutes

Danstar Nottingham dry yeast

This was my first experience with adding malt late in the boil. Usually all the malt is added after the specialty grains steep and are boiled for the full 60 or 90 minutes. Adding LME with 15 minutes to go is a new one for me. We'll see how it changes things.

The beauty of this beer will be in the secondary fermenter. There I will add bourbon-infused oak cubes and a full PINT of bourbon. Toasty oak wood plus bourbon on top of a firm porter? This one should be good.

And as far as brewing at night in the backyard instead of during the day in the garage/driveway? Definitely much cooler, and easier to clean up. I might move brewing operations to the backyard more often...