AG#14 Fullers London Porter

[BrewerBen]

Hello All,

It's been a while since i posted a brew day and had a urge to brew a porter for Christmas, possibly a little late to mature properly so the ones i drink at Christmas will be purely for testing purposes.

The recipe is from Graham Wheelers new book so i wont post it here but i did a few adjustments to compensate for my efficiency and the 3.9%AA hops from barley bottom (excellent service - i thought i ordered a bit late for brewing this weekend).

Anyway here are some pics:

Grains all measured out:


Mashing away:


Hop's all measured out:

[WishboneBrewery]

How's it going, are you all done?

[Whorst]

I just did a London Porter recently. It's in the keg waiting to be unleashed on Thanksgiving. Did you use any brown malt? I believe mine had almost 7% brown malt. Turned out wonderful.

[BrewerBen]

All done now. I adjusted the grain bill for 70% efficiency but this time round i got 80% giving me a starting gravity of 1.060. It may now be under hopped but we'll see in a few weeks. I've never made a beer this strong before and in my haste i pitched 2 packets of windsor yeast and now i'm thinking i may have over pitched.

It had loads of brown malt in it, around 11%. I've only done one other beer with roasted malts in it and found it a bit much, i'm hoping with the brown malt and very little dark roasted malts it will be a bit smoother.

More pictures to follow but first i need a beer and some dinner.

[BrewerBen]

Now for the rest of the photo's:

PH reading:


First runnings being re-circulated:


First lot of hops for the 90 min boil:


Second lot of hops for 15 min's:


Draining the boiler once cooled:


Aireated Wort:


Leftover Hops and trub:

[smp465]

Hope you enjoy it as much as i am enjoying my recent fullers porter attempt. I don't brew many dark beers, but i am bombing through this one!

[BrewerBen]

It's fermenting away and is down to 1.030 gravity.

[Barley Water]

It's not like I am trying to get you all excited but I can almost guarantee that you will just love the stuff. I have a London Porter clone on tap right now and it is one of my very favorite beers. If I remember correctly, the O.G. on mine was 1.052 so yours will be a little stronger but then, around the holidays (with all the stress), more is better. I don't know what it is about brown malt but that stuff makes all the difference in a porter. I have a very good formulation for a robust porter that has done well in big competitions but I prefer the brown porter and I know it's the brown malt. Enjoy

[BrewerBen]

Hi, thanks for the comments. A trial jar taste certainly shows promise however i've just done another hydrometer test and the gravity is still at 1.030 so ive given it a gentle stir to hopefully get it going again. If that doesnt work i have a packet of S04 i can put in.

[BrewerBen]

Still fighting this brew, rousing the yeast didnt do anything and neither did adding some S04. In a last ditch effort i dropped it into another fermenter to aerate it in the hope of saving it before it goes down the drain.

[Dr.Evil]

Nice pics, Im sure itll be good in the end.

I have brewed this beer twice recently. The first was with White labs WLP004 (Irish) yeast grown in a 600ml starter. It was stil at 1020 after 2 weeks. I added 1 pkt Safeale S04 (hydrated), and thoroughly roused the existing yeast. After another week it was down to 1017 so I bottled it. The second batch has been fermenting 2 weeks with 2 packets Safeale S04 (hydrated). Despite being a vigorous fermentation initially, it was also stuck at 1020 yesterday. I have roused and will pitch a third packet tomorrow and leave for another week.

So it seems this brew is difficult to attenuate fully! Any one else any experience?

The good news is I "stole" some of the first batch whilst bottling. It was delicious, even very green. I hope the bottles dont go pop!

[garwatts]

Mine came in at 1.055 and down to 1.015. I made it for Christmas but it's too nice to wait
But it's odd how some brews won't get down to a reasonable FG
Two of my last three brews failed to get below 1.020 and 1.018 I just wish I knew why.
They weren't strong to start with. Both had OGs of 1.042.

[BrewerBen]

I'm still not getting any activity from this brew and is sitting at 1.028 still. I've almost resigned myself to tipping this away ,although i probably wont until i need the fermenter again just in case. I thought of using the dry beer enzyme but having used it once before i found the beer quite unpleasant.
I've also started to think what caused the stuck ferment, i've only had one before and that was an extract brew, so comparing with my other all-grain brews the only difference is i used Windsor Yeast for the first time and i normally brew Pale Ales with S04 or US-05. Does anyone know if Windsor isn't suitable for this kind of Ale?
I was expecting a higher finishing gravity then usual due to the strength and less attenuating Windsor but 1.028 is just far to sweet.
I guess nothing to do but plan the next one, i'm going to be alarmingly short on beer at christmas so will probably do a low gravity session ale in the hope that it will be ready.

[arturobandini]

Windsor isn't the greatest of attenuators and leaves lots of residual body. That's still fairly high for Windsor though, perhaps pitch a hydrated S-04 to try and finish the job?

Garwatts, are you mashing too high?

[garwatts]

Windsor isn't the greatest of attenuators and leaves lots of residual body. That's still fairly high for Windsor though, perhaps pitch a hydrated S-04 to try and finish the job?

Garwatts, are you mashing too high?

Possibly guilty of that...Can't think of any other reason. I'm using a different (larger) mash-tun now (40 litres) and it's fairly full each time. My last brew (done on Thursday) is currently at 1.014 and mashed in at 66C.