Chocolate Hazelnut Porter

 

 

 

60 oF

Adj

Orig

Alcohol

SPGR

1.017

1.017

1.067

 

Potential A/V

 

2.1%

8.8%

6.7%

 

Ingredients

·         1 lb. Munich

·         1 lb. Crystal 40L

·         1 lb. Crystal 75L

·         ½ lb. Carapils

·         ¾ lb. Chocolate

·         ½ lb. Black Patent

·         1 oz. Kent Golding Hops (Bettering Hops)

·         1 oz. Willamette Hops (Flavoring Hops)

·         1 Whirfloc tablet

·         8 oz. Unsweetened Cocoa Powder.

·         2 oz. Willamette Hops (Aroma Hops)

·         White Labs Pitchable Liquid Yeast – English Ale Yeast WLP002

 

Brewers Log

 

Beer Date 09292007:   <Day 1>

Bought the kit from morebeer.com http://morebeer.com/view_product/18423/102144. It sounded good, and a friend has made this basic kit before and sait that it was good. so I gave it a shot.

 

Washed out brew pot and threw filled with 2.5 gallons of  bottled spring water.

Poured grains into two muslin socks. This time I chose to not mix them grains all together. They were somewhat mixed already, but it just seemed like that was an unnecessary step I had been adding.

·         1 lb. Munich

·         1 lb. Crystal 40L

·         1 lb. Crystal 75L

·         ½ lb. Carapils

·         ¾ lb. Chocolate

·         ½ lb. Black Patent

This time I just place the muslin socks in at the beginning. I turned the burner on high and got quickly got the water in the 160oF  range and then turned it very low to let it sit around that same tem for a ½ hour wile the grains steep. This seemed like a little more grins then before and the muslin socks were really full, perhaps I should have used 3 socks. Tied them off with string and tied to the handle so the grain bags couldn’t touch the bottom of the pot.

After a ½ hour of cooking in the  160oF – 170oF range I pulled the grains out by lifting the string and letting as much liquid drain as I could. Like the stout, the drippage was a deep, dark brown or black thick liquid, resembling motor oil. As before Dave enjoyed drinking some of this by mixing with ice tea.

As the temperature approached boiling we added the malt extract. I think we made a mistake here in our approach, so I will work on my form next time I have both liquid and dry malt extract. The recipe called for 8 lbs. English Light (liquid extract) and ½ lb. Light DME (dry extract). We removed the pot from the burner and went ahead and added the liquid first, pouring it in phases and stirring it in so there aren’t thick clumps. Then after the liquid extract was mixed in nicely we added the powdered extract. I think we should have done the powdered first because all the liquid brought the temperature way down and the DME didn’t dissolve very well. It clumped up and clung to the spoon. It took a long time to dissolve and mix in the DME.

Mixing in the extract really brought down the temp, it got down to ~170oF and therefore took a while to heat back up. We let it come to a boil before adding the hops. This batch really foamed up when it got close to the boil. It foamed up so much that I actually started moving the pot off the burner, and at that same time the wort reached it right point and it just faded away and started boiling. I added the bittering hops and set the timer for 1 hour.

  • 1 oz. Kent Golding Hops (Bettering Hops)

As it boiled we continued to stir every 3-5 minutes to sufficiently mix in the hops.

After 30 minutes of the boil, I added the flavoring hops (other recipies have added flavoring hopps at 45 minutes, but this one called for 30 minutes). The hops were added and stirring continued.

  • 1 oz. Willamette Hops (Flavoring Hops)

It was funny to hear how Dave pronounced the word ‘Willamette’. My high school was little more then a stones throw away from the Willamette River, so it never really occurred to me that somebody might not know how to pronounce it. 

After 40 minutes of the boil it was time to add the clarifier. Not exactly sure what this is, but from what I have read this attaches to protein molecules in the beer and the precipitate out of the solution. I am guessing that this means it attaches itself to the suspended molecules in the beer and the fall down and turn into sediment with the dead yeast.

  • 1 Whirfloc tablet

The tablet had an odd effect that I wasn’t expecting. A few minutes after adding it the water level in the boil rose significantly. Not nearly as high as when it first came to a boil, but high none the less.

After 56 minutes of the boil I began to add the unsweetened cocoa powder (directions stated for the last few minutes of the boil). It was a little tricky trying to quickly mix in the poweder, a bit stuck to the spoon. Perhaps a whisk would have been easier.

  • 8 oz. Unsweetened Cocoa Powder.

At 59 minutes I added the aroma hops (as specified by the directions).

  • 2 oz. Willamette Hops (Aroma Hops)

After the boil was complete I moved the cooking pot to the sink and backed 2 bags of cubed ice around the pot. I stirred every few minutes spread the cooling liquid through out and in 20-25 minutes I had the wort to < 80 oF.

Beforehand I sanitized the strainer, no I used that to dip in to the wort to scoop out the hops and any thick particles that we do not want to ferment. This took awhile because there was a lot of stuff suspended in the liquid. I dipped the strainer and waited for the liquid to drain out. I developed a swirling technique that seemed to speed up the process. It swirled the clumpy goo in the middle and opened more of the mesh for the liquid to drain through. I did this for a while and then had Jim help me by pouring the wort into the strainer and draining into the bottling bucket. This took a while because we continued to strain out a lot of goo. But we eventually got it all.

Now to siphon the wort into the carboy. There were some minor difficulties in keeping the siphon going with the extra thick wort, but we eventually got it all into the carboy where we began adding water (2.5 gallons) and vigorously shaking. We lost quite a bit of liquid volume what I am guessing is a combination of evaporation in the boil and what was left of the goo that I strained out. Looked like we were a good ½ to 1 gallon short of the 1 gallon mark in the carboy. I didn’t have another jug of spring water, so we grabbed 3 ~16 oz bottles of water from my cupboard and added those.

Next I poured a slight bit out to take a temp and specific gravity reading.

 

72 oF

Adj

SPGR

1.066

1.067

Potential A/V

8.65%

8.77%

Agitated it a little further and then pitched the yeast and gave a few more shakes to distribute the yeast as much as possible.

  • White Labs Pitchable Liquid Yeast – English Ale Yeast WLP002

Capped the carboy with a hose going into a bucket of water. This will keep air from coming up the hose into the carboy, but will allow gas to easily escape without clogging the air lock if there is a great deal of activity.

While cleaning up I looked at the small sample I used to measure the SG, it had a very distinct layer of sediment at the bottom. This could be interesting to siphon out of the carboy, if there is this much sediment without any dead yeast, I can only imagine what it will be like in 2 weeks.

 

Beer Date 09302007:   <Day 2>

Nothing much to report, sat idle all day, at night time I saw the beginnings of some bubbles forming on the surface.

 

Beer Date 10012007:   <Day 3>

Starting to see a little fermentation activity.  A little bit of foam on the top and slow bubbles in the bucket. A bubble floats up every couple seconds or so. By end of day there was much more activity with a few bubbles coming per second.

 

Beer Date 10022007:   <Day 4>

Bubbling has slowed down to every couple of seconds, and they are not too forceful, went ahead and put on the airlock. Bought a new type of airlock, it is just a single piece but has a tube with a couple of bents so there is a compartment for water to sit in. As the gas pressure builds up it forces the water up the tube until the gas is directly uner the water and the CO2 can escape. Looks like this without the ripples.

 

 

 

Beer Date 10102007:   <Day 12>

Despite my attempts to not take mid fermentation SPGR readings, I had to break down an do it. It still appears to be rather active with bubbles coming up every 45 – 50 seconds. Bottling day is rapidly approaching and I want to know if it will be safe to bottle. Everything I have read indicated that it should have a stable SPGR reading for 4 days before bottling. So I took a reading.

 

 

xx oF

Adj

Orig

Alcohol

SPGR

1.024

1.025

1.067

 

Potential A/V

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beer Date 10132007:   <Day15>

Ahhhh…. Today was a good day. Jim and Cristina’s wedding went very well, we unveiled the Oatmeal Stout and everybody really enjoyed it. The only bad thing is that the Chocolate Hazelnut Porter is still fermenting, and cannot be bottled tomorrow L

 

xx oF

Adj

Orig

Alcohol

SPGR

1.022

1.023

1.067

 

Potential A/V

 

 

 

 

 

Beer Date 10172007:   <Day19>

 

68 oF

Adj

Orig

Alcohol

SPGR

1.022

1.023

1.067

 

Potential A/V

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beer Date 10262007:   <Day 28>

Ohh how time flies. It wasn’t quite ready to bottle at two weeks, and have been jam packed for the past week and still do not have time to deal with this. Went to home brew depot and picked up another carboy and racked the porter into the secondary fermenter to buy a little time. There was an incredible amount of sediment in the fermenter, we are talking 4-6 inches. It was painful to stop cyphoning out the beer when I did, but I was starting to siphon out the very sludge that we are trying to avoid.

 

Beer sat in the primary fermenter for 4 weeks, I have read that it shouldn’t for more then 3 weeks. I am hoping that this is not a major problem K

 

Beer Date 11102007:   <Day 43>

Bottling tomorrow, I went ahead and pulled the fermenter out of the cooler of water and took a specific gravity reading.

 

60 oF

Adj

Orig

Alcohol

SPGR

1.017

1.017

1.067

 

Potential A/V

 

2.1%

8.8%

6.7%

 

Beer Date 11112007:   <Day 44>

Finally bottled the CHP. Brought some of the fermented wort to a boil with the sugar and mixed in the bucket. Added the hazelnut extract to the bucket later. I believe I read somewhere that you don’t heat up the extract and add it later. No dead soldiers in bottling, got 34 bottles out of it. lost a lot of volume due to sediment, but it looks like a strong beer. We’ll see how it comes out. A little concerned that the sugar amount might have been too much since there were so many fewer bottles. time will tell.

 

Beer Date 12092007:   <Day 72>

Have now had a couple of these beers, they are okay but I will not make this again for myself. It doesn’t necessarily taste like something went wrong with the batch, I just don’t care for the taste that it has.