Black Beauty Porter, 06/07

I haven’t brewed as much in the past few years as I used to; life keeps getting in the way, it seems. Besides which, as of this morning’s clean-out-the-basement (or at least, brewery area of the basement) initiative showed, I have at least 10 cases of homebrew already waiting to be consumed, a by-product of drinking mostly from the kegerator and being a solo drinker of 10-gallon batches. And most of that stash is strong (7%+) beer, not the session ales you can knock back 3 or more at a time.

So, here I was, Christmas Eve, behind in my brewing and getting low on quaffing drink... and I realized:  I hadn’t made my seasonal holiday ale in two years. That’s just wrong, especially when you consider its name:  Black Beauty Porter, named for my now-deceased canine friend of nine years who graces its label. So I figured, what better day to make a holiday ale than on a holiday itself?

It’s an extract-based beer, but it’s anything but simple. Modeled after Charlie Papazian’s “Tumultuous Porter” aka “Goat Scrotum Stout,” here’s the basic recipe:


             14 lbs Dark Malt Syrup Extract
             1 lbs Molasses
             0.5 lbs Brown Sugar
             2 lbs Crystal 40L
             0.5 lbs Roast Barley
             0.25 lbs Black Patent
             1 lbs Franco-Belgian Kiln-Coffee
             0.5 lbs Belgian Aromatic
             1 oz Cluster hops - Garden 5% BOIL 60 minutes
             4 oz Cascade hops – Garden 5% BOIL 60 minutes
             2 oz Cascade hops - Garden 5% BOIL 30 minutes
             1 oz Cascade hops - Garden 5% BOIL 5 minutes
             1 tsp Ginger powder
             2 ea Brewing Licorice, in.
             1.5 oz Juniper Berries
             500 ml Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

First I crushed the malts in my new mill setup described in my previous blog. It worked pretty well except that the bolt had to be driven into the Valley Mill’s turning wheel a little further in order to get things going. Hey, that’s what hammers are for.

I steeped the malts in 155F water for about 20 minutes, then rinsed and drained them into the kettle, topping up the water to about 9 gallons. When it reached boil, I added the extracts and the initial hops. Note that all of the hops I used were from my garden, so the AA%’s are all gross estimates. (In other words, I really have no idea as to their bittering contributions.)

The spices went in for the last 10 minutes or so. The Juniper berries I cracked with a rolling pin to help release their flavorings. I normally prefer to use fresh ginger but I didn’t realize I was fresh out until I was well underway.

I bottled and kegged it today. I ended up a little high on my volume, in part due to the shorter boiling time than usual (60 for extract vs. 90 minutes on all-grain) that I didn’t adjust for. I kegged a little over 8 gallons, bottled about 2 and probably spilled about a half gallon due to a last-minute makeshift change to my bottling operation. That’s a subject for a whole ‘nother blog, I think.

It came out well. It’s sort of a brown porter, more dark-brown with ruby tinges than the black you see in commercial porters or even the other ones I make. The molasses and extracts give it a bit of a caramelly taste and there’s a touch of citrus from the American hops. The Juniper berries add an interesting earthy bitterness and there’s an overall spiciness to the beer that should come out strongly in the nose.

The OG was about 1.050 and the FG was 1.018, a little on the sweet side due to the presence of all those unfermentables. I’m looking forward to having lots of this on draft in a couple of weeks when I have the boys over for poker.