March 15, 2016: Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter

It was Tuesday! Jess was in class, Alex was in daycare, the sun was shining, and Dave took full advantage to brew. The selected beer was a simple Imperial Porter from Experimental Homebrewing (Beechum and Conn, pg 122) as a combination dry malt extract (DME) and grain brew (see below for malt extract/grain bill).

The milled grains were steeped at 70 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. 6 lbs of DME was dissolved and the sweet wort was boiled for 60 minutes. Hops additions were at 4o and 10 minutes. Wort was cooled to 20 degrees Celsius and the wort was inoculated with a 1.1 L of a 36 hour starter culture. Wort was aerated with oxygen for three 30 second intervals. The Speidel 30L HDPE fermenter was transferred to a 20 degree Celsius incubator. Original gravity was 1.083.

During fermentation, specific gravity readings were taken at approximate 12 hour intervals and graphed. The final gravity achieved by fermentation was 1.010, reached by Thursday evening. On Saturday, we decided that we would transfer the Imperial Porter to a secondary fermenter and add vanilla bean (usually we just use our keg as our bright tank). Bourbon will be added at kegging, so the final beer will be a Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter.

What went well?

• The starter culture gave led to a vigorous fermentation. Happy yeast make good beer.
• Our set up. Everything went smoothly on Dave’s second brew on the system. Hoses weren’t falling on the ground and everything was consolidated in a single location.
• The extract kit with specialty grain steep was easy. Doesn’t mean we are giving up whole grain, but when you need to save some time or perhaps your mash tun isn’t quite big enough to handle doubling the grain bill, DME as substitute for the base malt is easy.
• Taking the gravity at intervals. It is nice knowing how the fermentation is progressing.

What went poorly?

• Missed capturing some information (hop alpha acids %, weights, yeast lot number, amount of water used) but we are working on a spreadsheet to capture all the data. Yes, there are programs, but why go electronic when there is good old paper and pen?
• Not that this went poorly – we are just going to have to wait ~ 2 to 3 more weeks before we can taste. Patience. Bah!

Recipe

• 6 lbs DME
• 2.75 lbs Munich Malt (10L)
• 1.6 lbs Brown Malt (70L)
• 1.38 lbs Chocolate Malt (350L)
• 1 lb Crystal Malt (120L)
• 0.5 lb Crystal Malt (60L)
• 0.75 oz (?) Magnum Hop Pellet (40 minutes)
• 0.5 oz (?) Progress Hop Pellet (10 minutes)
• Whirlfloc (10 minutes)
• 2 vanilla beans, scrapped (into secondary) and chopped (into secondary)
• 375 mL Bourbon (into keg)
• Yeast: Wyeast 1056