AG #10 (sort of) - Ridiculous Robust Porter
Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:21 am
Well, that was an interesting experiment. I wanted to try out a few things so rather than do a full batch I decided to do an all-grain 4 liter batch.
The experimentation part was to try carbonate additions to a dark beer to see if I could hit pH 5.2 and also to try out a porter recipe to see how it tastes before maybe adjusting it for a full size batch.
I did the mash on the stove - the first success was that the pH strips gave exactly 5.2 pH with a super dark porter - so my water treatment attempt seems good so far. The hard part was trying to keep the temperature on target - particularly, the temperature seemed to vary wildly around the different parts of the pan. From 70deg on the bottom to 62 on top - weird.
Anyway, the mash seemed to work. The iodine more or less didn't go black (hard to tell with such a dark beer).
The rest was easy enough - boil for an hour, cool in the sink and pitch 6g of an 11.5g S-04 pack (rehydrated) into the wort.
So, the waiting begins...
It's kind of cool to just make up a small batch to test, but on the other hand it's just as much work as a full batch - dunno how often I will do this.
The experimentation part was to try carbonate additions to a dark beer to see if I could hit pH 5.2 and also to try out a porter recipe to see how it tastes before maybe adjusting it for a full size batch.
I did the mash on the stove - the first success was that the pH strips gave exactly 5.2 pH with a super dark porter - so my water treatment attempt seems good so far. The hard part was trying to keep the temperature on target - particularly, the temperature seemed to vary wildly around the different parts of the pan. From 70deg on the bottom to 62 on top - weird.
Anyway, the mash seemed to work. The iodine more or less didn't go black (hard to tell with such a dark beer).
The rest was easy enough - boil for an hour, cool in the sink and pitch 6g of an 11.5g S-04 pack (rehydrated) into the wort.
So, the waiting begins...
It's kind of cool to just make up a small batch to test, but on the other hand it's just as much work as a full batch - dunno how often I will do this.
