After our jaunt to IncrediBREW, Mike, Brian, and I had a tasting session of all the beers currently in kegs.  These beers included a Strawberry Blonde (which hasn’t been profiled in detail on the site yet), an Oatmeal Stout, a Belgian Tripel, a Scottish 60 shilling (/-) and my Maple Porter. 

A few of them weren’t really carbonated yet, but it was interesting to taste them in this early stage.  All of them were drinkable and I could go on and on about a few of them, especially the Oatmeal Stout, but this post’s focus is on the Maple Porter.

I was going to go through a large scale tasting description of the beer, but I think it’s too early to do that just yet.  So, I will keep it short.

Appearance:  Brown with some ruby tones when I held it to the sunlight.  It was cloudy, but it may clear up once the yeast settles.  No head since it wasn’t fully carbonated.

Aroma: Some maple, some roast, no hop aroma that I could detect. 

Taste: Smoky, fruity, with hints of maple here and there.  Brian could definitely taste the maple.  Mouthfeel was rich, but that may change with the carbonation.  Flavor was, umm, complicated.  There was a lot going on, but not enough roastiness that one would expect from a Porter.  There was some alcohol heat that I could detect.  Finish was lingering with maple notes.

After tasting it a few times, I was happy with my experimental beer.  Mike thought it was more of a Brown ale than a Porter.  I have to agree with him.  I probably should have had some chocolate malt in my recipe.   I am going to submit it to the New England Homebrew Competition to get some expert notes on it as well.

When it has matured a bit more, we will taste it again.  I can imagine this beer will taste good in front of a fire this winter.

Check out my Maple Porter recipe.

Check out the Maple Porter brew day post.

Check out the progress of other beers in our Brew Log category page.

I tasted the 60/- the other night. It’s fully carbed in the keg. Unfortunately, I think it’s pretty thin and lifeless. I didn’t achieve a good enough carmalization with the drawn off portion. I’ll still submit it to the NE regional comp, just to see if my assessment jives with other judges.

Next time I brew it I think I will substitute some of the roasted barely with chocolate malt and black patent and some crystal 80L. I think that will hedge my bet of getting some more dynamic flavors. I’ll also not rush the caramelization step. I know I rushed it this time.

On the last run I drew off 1 gallon of wort and reduced it to half a gallon. I know now that I will likely need to reduce it to a 1/3rd or even a 1/4 gallon to get good caramelization. I’ll have to extend the total boil time to 120 minutes too I think.

Just some thoughts to improve the brew for next time.

Comment if you have had similar experiences or have advice to lend.

Brew on!

I followed a partial mash procedure for this recipe. The American 2 row malt was placed in a gallon size ziploc bag and Mike and I crushed it using a rolling pin. Since there was 4 pounds of the stuff, we had to crush it in shifts. We placed the 2 row in 2 gallon cylindrical beverage cooler along with the caramel malt (I crushed that too) and the flaked maize (yeah, corn). 5.5 quarts of 160 degree water was poured into the cooler to reach the mashing temperature of 149 degrees. The grains sat in the cooler for an hour. After an hour was up, I took the cover off the cooler. Mike has a sweet strainer which I placed over the top of my kettle. I poured all the contents of the cooler into the strainer; the liquid past through to the kettle and grains stayed in the strainer.

Nice.

While the mash was resting, I heated 2 gallons of water in another pot to 170 degrees. I poured this water over the grains in the strainer slowly. Mike told me this step was called ‘rinsing the grains’. I filled the kettle with water to get it to the 5 gallon mark.

The boil lasted for 60 minutes. I added the hops at the beginning of the boil and with 15 minutes to go. We used the wort chiller to cool the wort to 70 degrees and I added the smack pack of yeast.

Primary fermentation lasted for 1 week and the beer was cold conditioned in Mike’s fridge for 2 months.

O.G: 1.040
F.G: 1.009

The beer was light in color, very clean tasting but more flavorful compared to say a Bud Light. It wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be, so next time I will boil it for 90 minutes. Also, I will probably use only Cluster hops in the future.

Check out the Cream Ale Style Profile.

Success!!!
I had posted before that my terminal gravity was disappointingly high after 10 days in primary, seemingly stuck at 1030.  I racked the beer over from bucket to glass carboy, moved it from the 68F fridge to my 74F basement.  Sure enough it started to ferment again, I even got a mini-krausen.

Well I am very happy to report that the gravity tonight was 1013!!!  That equates to an estimated ~10%ABV. Its tastes a little dry, but it definitely has a mild earthy black pepper tone as it should as a Tripel.  The color is surprisingly a little darker, but we’ll have to wait to see how it pours with carbonation in another week.

 This beer is definitely ready for the N.E. regional homebrew competition.

I brewed that Tripel up in what seems weeks ago (which it was).

I kept it comfortably fermenting at 68F for a week and a half.  When John and I (9/14/07) brewed up his Maple Porter I racked it over to secondary and checked the gravity with my hydrometer.  To my surprise despite having pitched a solid 1.5L starter and oxygenating the wort, my gravity was only 1030.  The taste was pretty good, definitely Belgian funky but not too much which is what I was hoping for.  However, it was still on the sweet side due to that 1030 gravity.  I moved the carboy to my basement where it was about 74F, figured since I still had plenty of yeast in the solution it would maybe start to ferment again at the higher temp.

It started bubbling again a day later.

Now more than two weeks later the yeast has settled and the bubbling is done.  I’ll be taking a gravity reading tomorrow night hopefully and see where it stands.

If that hasn’t lowered my gravity to 1015ish then I may try some champagne yeast and put it in bottles straight like that.  We’ll see where the gravity is tomorrow night and I’ll post my results and strategy from that evaluation.

Oh yeah, that reminds me that I promised John to rack his Maple Porter to secondary when I got back.  Beer chores and more beer chores…. such a demanding hobby.

Here is a picture of the beer with the blow off tube earlier during fermentation.  The second photo is of my partially complete log sheet for the Belgian Tripel.  It’s not the best quality photo but I’ll be putting together a separate post about my record keeping in the future and I’ll link a copy of the file then for anyone who wishes to use it or modify it.

The Maple Porter I brewed on September 14 is still in primary fermentation and will stay there until Saturday.  Usually I would keep a beer in the fermentation bucket for just a week, but because this one had such a high specific gravity after the boil I think the extra week will better for it. 

 Plus, Mike is away in Colorado this week and I can’t get to it since it’s locked away in his garage…so it’s not like I have a choice.

The maple porter is fermenting nicely.  The air lock is clacking like a freight train.