With Mike posting the recipes of the beers he is going to brew this weekend, here is my autumn brew for 2007.  I am bringing back the extract, baby, yeah!  So all you beginners can follow along with me.

Maple Porter

Ingredients:

5.5 lbs Light Dry Malt Extract
1.5 lbs Crystal Malt (60 degrees lovibond)
1/2 lbs Black Patent Malt 
64 oz Grade B Maple Syrup
2.5 oz Styrian Golding Hop Pellets

Step By Step 

I will crush the Crystal and Black Patent malts and put them into a steeping bag. Since I have a kettle that can handle a full 6 gallon boil, I will let them steep in that volume of water. (If you just have a big pot, let them steep in 1.5 gallons of water or whatever you can handle on your stove top). To steep, I’ll place the bag of grains into the water and heat it up to 170 degrees.   Once it hits that temperature, I will take the bag out and hold it over the kettle until all the liquid has flowed out of the bag.  I won’t squeeze the bag or force liquid out of it in any way because everything I have ever read has told me not to do that for fear of yucky flavors in my beer.  No squeezing!  No tannins!

I guess tannin flavor is bad in beer.

Once the bag is out, I’ll be turning up the heat and bringing the liquid to a boil.  After the boil is reached, I will add all of my Light Dry Malt Extract and 1 ounce of my hop pellets.   These additions will kill my boil (wah), so I will wait until it comes up for a boil again.  When the boil comes back, I will set my stop watch.  I want to get a rolling boil going for 60 minutes. 

At the 30 minute mark, I will add 1 more ounce of my hop pellets.

At 15 minutes left to go, I will add the last bit of my hop pellets and all of the maple syrup.

When the hour is up, I will kill the heat and cool down the wort to fermentation temperatures…around 70 degrees.

I will transfer the wort to my fermentor and then add my yeast.

Thoughts

I like porters. I like maple syrup. I have never had a maple porter before, but something about it shouts “Autumn in New England” with the maple leaves changing colors and the crisp air blowing through them.

I chose Grade B maple syrup because:

• It has a strong maple flavor
• It’s used mostly in cooking
• You need to use a lot in brewing to taste it
• Using a lot means buying a lot, which means $$$$

So, I am trying to get the most maple flavor for my buck. All the beer recipe calculators were thrown off by my maple syrup addition, so I backed off the malt extract a bit. I am hoping that the maple syrup gives me enough fermentable sugars to compensate for the reduced malt amount. (I would normally have at least 6 pounds of malt extract in a recipe.)

The hops I chose used often in the Porters.  They are produced in Slovenia…so a little variation on the theme of this English style ale.  I am hoping the amount will balance out the sweetness of the malts and syrup.

The yeast strain I chose for this recipe I used before for a Porter I made two years ago and I was happy with the results.  It made for a beer with a nice, soft finish.

Not sure how this beer is going to taste and Mike doesn’t like maple, so I might get stuck with a lot of bad beer.  Here’s to being optimistic!  I hope to brew this beer some time in September.

See comments (#4)  for updates to this recipe.