Home Brew Forum

started off 2015's first brewday with an attempt at one of my personal favourites: export india porter a la kernel

got the base recipe off the jims beer kit topic from a way back and scaled for my system, then changed the hopping to a more modern twist.

brewlength: 17L
Target OG 1.055
90 min boil
Target Mash temp: 66.7C
Target IBU: 68

Grain Bill:
3.04KG Maris Otter
670g Crystal Malt 120 EBC
600g Brown Malt
150g Black Malt

Hop Schedule:
90min: 4g Columbus 17.1
10min: 15g Columbus 17.1
10min: 20g Chinook 13.4
flameout/steeping 45g Columbus 17.1
flaemout/steeping 20g Chinook 13.4

First step was water treatment - I was targeting 100 ppm of residual alkalinity and adjusted with CRS



then weighed everything out, heated water to 75C and doughed in.. My Mash temp missed the target by half a degree too low. (came in at 66.1).. Not sure how much this will affect things. Did a 60 min mash and iodine check before sparging. Slightly Messed up the sparge and ended up using too much water, albeit leaving a fair bit of sugar in there.



Boil all went fine... Although without a refractometer I was unable to gauge my gravity until after the chill.



Resulting OG was slightly under the intended 1.055. I'm pretty sure this will have a minimal impact on flavour - but something to work on for next time!

I rehydrated a pack of US05, pitching into 150ml of water at 27C. I then cooled this to 20C and pitched it into the 17C wort. This went into the ferment fridge that was set to 17C.

I am not sure if there is a benefit to chilling the rehydrated yeast down to 17 vs 20.. I anticipate that the 3c difference shouldnt shock the yeast.. Anyone got a view on that?? I did get a considerable lag time (around 18 hours before the airlock was bubbling), and ended up pitching a second packet out of fear (the sachets had a use bay date of FEB 2015 - so not the freshest yeast).

On second thoughts, the lag time might actually be an illusion. It could be that at 17C US05 kicks off fairly gentle and most of the activity is at the bottom of the bucket with no visible krausen and no airlock activity - others might correct me on this!

all in all, went quite well, the wort tasted pretty good - v excited about this one.

update:

the beer seemed to stall at the start but once it got going I began to drive the ferment up by half a degree a day until it reached 20. I held 20 for 2 days and then dropped to 17 for 1 day and have now dropped it down to 10C to cold condition for a week before bottling.

The gravity is down to around 1.009 (ABV of 5.8% before priming) which is an attenuation of around 83% - not bad considering the quantity of crystal malt! Taste is v promising - I'm shitting myself about getting a late infection because this could be our best brewed batch of beer to date.

Looks great! Nice work.

Padalac wrote:update:

the beer seemed to stall at the start but once it got going I began to drive the ferment up by half a degree a day until it reached 20. I held 20 for 2 days and then dropped to 17 for 1 day and have now dropped it down to 10C to cold condition for a week before bottling.

The gravity is down to around 1.009 (ABV of 5.8% before priming) which is an attenuation of around 83% - not bad considering the quantity of crystal malt! Taste is v promising - I'm shitting myself about getting a late infection because this could be our best brewed batch of beer to date.

Seems to me you have judged this fairly well, surprised by your choice of yeast as US05 is not known to be that estery which you would want a bit of in a Porter. As for yeast rehydration and pitching temperatures, it doesn't look like you did much wrong. A spread of 5c is considered a limit to avoid the yeast expressing heat shock, keeping closer to 2 degrees is optimum. Your slow start could be due to temperature as that is quite low but it might be because of oxygen uptake taking a while, what is your aeration method?

Thanks Seymour & Orlando. The only aeration I'm doing with the dried yeast is pouring the chilled wort into the fermenter and then gently shaking the bucket once I've pitched the yeast and put the lid on. I read somewhere that up to around 1.050 aeration wasn't really necessary with dried yeast.

I know what you mean about the ester thing, but I was going for a kernel style porter and I know they use US-05/ I think I might do a repeat using a more english tasting yeast though.

Padalac wrote:Thanks Seymour & Orlando. The only aeration I'm doing with the dried yeast is pouring the chilled wort into the fermenter and then gently shaking the bucket once I've pitched the yeast and put the lid on. I read somewhere that up to around 1.050 aeration wasn't really necessary with dried yeast.

I'm such an idiot, I know that, quite right forgot you were using dried.

I know what you mean about the ester thing, but I was going for a kernel style porter and I know they use US-05/ I think I might do a repeat using a more english tasting yeast though.

Well I haven't tasted the Kernel's Porter so can't say but what I would say is that the difference between large scale commercial brews and the HB clone attempts are often chalk and cheese. My money would be on them starting with US05 but that now they top crop from one batch to the next, that will change the yeast as it genetically drifts to suit the environment it finds itself in. Anyone know the truth?

You might be right, although I know that some micros that use dry yeast just pitch new stuff every time and never repitch. Takes the risk away even if it makes inferior beer.

In the case of this beer, I think it could be a bit too well attenuated, and maybe another yeast would have done a better job. I guess this porter is pretty hop forward though, and to that end I decided tonight to up the ante, and dumped in 50g of Simcoe pellets. Then at least I am taking advantage of the yeast that is suited to hop-forward beers. I'm thinking we're gna have to do this beer again with something like west yorkshire or fullers strain though..maybe a slightly warmer ferment as well.

Forced carbed this beer yesterday in a king keg. It's pretty hoppy, and needs to mellow out a bit, but still a damn fine brew. Only thing I'd change I think is prolly to go for a lower attenuation. I don't know if its because my mash temp was a little under, or if I went with the wrong yeast, but this could have done with a tad more residual gravity.

how this turned up???
looks tasty!!
cheers

What a lovely looking beer have you tried any different yeast with it as on another brew website some one was using a yeast called 60 shilling heavy but unable to find it or any other information on it but yours looks good

Hey, yep this a great recipe - probably my favourite so far. I would like to try it with some other yeasts, maybe wlp 007

I made an export India porter closely modelled on the kernel version or the Barclay Perkins recipe it was based on. Used US05 but English hops, goldings, bramling cross and fuggles. One of the best beers I ever made