Author: stoutmaker

Rhubarb apple cider

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Rhubarb apple cider
1 lb table sugar and 1 lb brown sugar
 
Mixed it with 3.5 lbs thawed frozen rhubarb from this spring. Let it sit over night to pull the rhubarbiness out 
Strained it all out and rinsed with the apple juice. 
Dumped all the liquid (2 1/2 gallons total juice) into my 3 gallon Carboy along with 1 packet of US 04 yeast. 
Airlock it, and we let it go. I’ll take a look in a month. 

Building my Porter

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Porter. Stout. Brown. Which is it? Its one of those “I know one when I taste one” Be beer snobby all you want, I don’t care. I know better.
 
If you wanna call it a Porter go ahead, it will fit into that category somewhere. One of the descriptions says it basically lets the brewer decide the characteristics.
I really do like the “know one when I taste one” line because I think in every Porter drinkers mind, they have a certain taste that makes a Porter stand out.
 
Recently the kind of Porter I came to know and love has been scarce, maybe even extinct. Today the Porter is more or less regulated to a base beer for spicing or fruiting. It seems every style is heading down that path now that Craft Beer is on every corner. Can’t be happy with a good solid beer any more, its gotta stand out.
 
All right enough of the blabbering.. What I wanna do here is make that good solid Porter that I cannot find any more. In my head, a Porter is roasty, but not like your modern dry stout. More like black patenty roasty but less ashtray. Sweet, but not like a Brown sweet. Enough to cut the roasty. Hopping is where I think most Porters of today fail. They either are so low hopped that they feel sweet, or shoot up over the top into American Dark Ale territory. A body thats there, but not distractingly full. Medium/rare like.
 
Here is what I came up with:
 
Iron Porter – 5 Gallon  To be bottled
6%
47 IBU
 
9 lbs 2 row
12 oz choc malt
4 oz black patent
1 oz roast barley  (really, I dont know why I leave this in)
8 oz 80L crystal
1 oz centennial @60
1 oz Williamette @10
 
mash 152 and 05 yeast
 
I have gotten away from bottling my Stouts and I feel I’ve lost part of an experience. This, particular recipe shall always be bottled.
 
 

Leo review

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This Saturday we will be bringing the APA Leonardo (Leonardo – 9stripe Brewing)to the meeting for the style of the month.

The purpose of our clubs style of the month is to let everyone bring in their version of a certain style for everyone to taste. This way you can get feedback and get some ideas about what works and don’t work.
I gotta say, this Leonardo will fit into the “what don’t work” slot.
I do not know where it went wrong really. I was using the hop burst technique of throwing all the hops in late. But using enough to keep the bittering where it should be.
I have used this a lot recently and it has worked great. This time however. I ended up with a beer that is not only, not nearly bitter enough for an APA, it has almost no hop taste or aroma.
I chose to use chinook and centennial. Perfect hop choices for this style. According to beersmith, if I throw them in around the 12 minute mark, I will end up with 40 IBU. Perfect for the style. And 12 minutes is perfect to get all the flavor out if them.
In reality what I got was in my estimation, about 15 IBU. And very little flavor. This beer would make a decent blonde or maybe cream ale. But certainly not an APA. Not even close.
It’s so far off that I even considered the possibility that I had used the wrong hops. But I went and checked the garbage can. And there were the packages of 13.2% chinook and 10.7% centennial.
It’s a drinkable beer. Just not what I wanted. But now to figure out what went wrong. After having great results before, then this one being way off, I’m not sure where to begin. But this will need a re brew