#IHP2014 - St Stephen's Porter 1834

Bron stirring for me while it heats to
mash out

For the last four or five years Velky Al, aka the Homebrew Womble, has organised the International Homebrew Project. It's a great idea: a bunch of people around the world brew a historical recipe and then post their results. This year the beer was a Porter brewed in Norwich in 1834 by St Stephens Brewery. I think most people participating brewed on February 15 so I'm a little late on this one but I'm glad to participate this year rather than read along jealously as in previous years.

I love the idea of brewing historical recipes but I haven't actually gotten around to brewing the 20 or so recipes I've got. I tried the Barclay Perkins EI Porter last year but I got sick and someone tipped it out when we moved house. It was tasting delicious before that and I'm a bit sad that I never got to taste the finished product. Anyway, I want to brew these kinds of beers more often but I somehow never do so it's good to have something like this to bring me to it. I've also got a 1914 Courage Imperial Stout planned for later this year.

This porter uses the three basic malts that most 19th century porters seem to have used: pale, brown and black malt. It also uses lashings of Fuggles, up to 82 of your Earth IBUs which the balance value formula says will take this beer into Imperial IPA territory in terms of hop/malt balance despite the relatively high FG. I've gone for WY1028 as the yeast because that's what I had on hand. It's probably a higher attenuating yeast than is ideal (the original finished at 1.022) and I haven't used it before so I'm not sure what to expect but I'll ferment it at a fairly low temp so I imagine it won't be too expressive.

The brewing itself was nice and straight forward if a little longer than normal. But the smell! It's worth brewing for the aroma alone. During the mash it was a crazy mix of Milo, coffee and burnt toast and then opening the packet Fuggles to that floral and tobacco hop aroma was happiness. As I was chilling it there was an intense chocolate covered raisin and pipe tobacco thing going on. It was strange but nice. I kept coming back to it. It's totally different to anything I've brewed before. It's hard to reign in my excitement about this one!

My turban looking grain bag draining
after mash out

St Stephen's 1834 Porter (20L batch)
OG: 1.066 (1.065 measured)
FG: 1.018
IBU: 82
EBC: 79.5
ABV: 6.4%


Recipe
72% Maris Otter
21% brown malt
7% black malt

60 IBU of Fuggles @ 120 min
22 IBU of Fuggles @ 30 min

WY1028


Method
Mash:

• Mashed @ 69C for 120 minutes with a 78C mash out
• 4g CaSO4, 5g CaCl2 to increase the calcium but keep everything else pretty balanced

Boil:

• 120 minute boil
• 120g Fuggles @ 120 minutes
• 60g Fuggles @ 30 minutes
• Whirlfloc @ 10 minutes

Fermentation:

• Oxygenated for 90 seconds
• Pitched an estimated 280 billion cells
• Fermenting at 17C until it's 80% complete, then increased to 20C to finish off

25/02/14 - Brewed

Brewday: Kimberly, a Brown Porter

Room has been made, a fridge has been picked up and beer has been brewed. Finally! I've been desperate to brew for a couple of months and there are like 15 recipes that need to be brewed this minute.

My Brown Porter, sadly there's only room for one at a time in the fridge

Because we live in a cruel world where I can't brew 15 beers at the same time I chose to brew a Brown Porter. It gave me the chance to use the brown and crystal malts I roasted a while back. I called it Kimberly because that's the name printed on the oven I used to roast the barley. Why name an oven Kimberly? Who knows but now it's been passed on to my beer.

It was such a joy to experience the small pleasures of the brewday again. To open the bags of grain and hops and inhale the roasted goodness. The brown malt has mellowed nicely, the crystal malt smelled like fruit toast, all raisins and sweetness and roasty malt. I've never used Victory malt before and cracking the bag unleashed cookie dough upon my senses. Fuggles is nothing new to me but man it was nice to smell those delicious hops.

I also got to use my stir-plate for the first time. It stirs.

The recipe: Maris otter, brown malt, crystal malt, victory malt and chocolate malt. Fuggles hops. WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale.

It's amazing how much of a relief it is to have the fridge set up. I hadn't realised before how much I was worrying about the fermentation when it was at ambient temperature. It's so easy with the fridge. I can be confident that the yeast is getting it's best possible shot and I'm free me to brew and brew and brew. Now I'm more or less properly set up. With the stir plate and fermentation fridge I can control temperatures and treat the yeast properly so there's no excuse for not producing good beer. My aim now is to brew a stack more and try out styles I haven't tried before as well as trying to master a few.

Up next: ANZAC Day Export Stout redux, a Saison and another American IPA.

Brewday: ANZAC Day Export Stout

I've been itching to brew with Huw and Jason, my regular co-conspirators and today was the day. We also roped in Benny who we've been wanting to have along for a while.

We brewed an Export Stout, pinched but with minor changes from The Mad Fermentationist who in turn pinched it from Oregon's Pelican Pub and Brewery.

For my version of the recipe, I changed the hops to Fuggles and a small amount of Northern Brewer since I'm still trying to use up some leftovers. I also read somewhere about an old school technique for brewing Stouts: adding a portion of the black malt directly to the boil. I've given that a go and we'll see how it turns out.

We did some brewing. It was pretty relaxed and everything worked out well with no problems. Jason showed us his skills with the weber, cooking pork belly and a pork roast. That stuff was amazing.

We also drank the last remaining bottle (a growler) of one of our past efforts, a Nelson Sauvin Pale Ale. It was past its best but still fun to share. I also brought out some of my Berliner Weisse, Galaxy Pale and Imperial Stout.

Loving using glad wrap as a lid which lets me stickybeak the whole process

Laughs, brewing and good beers. It was even better after such a long time stuck in bed. I'm totally trashed now and will probably be paying for it for a couple of days but it's totally worth it. I was going to take some photos but I was having too much fun and forgot.

Extra Special

I've had glandular fever and been bedridden for the past two months. Not so much fun. In my current state I'm unable to brew but my wife Bron volunteered to brew for me. That's true love right there.

The first beer she did under my direction was an ESB. My favourite ESB, actually one of my favourite beer experiences ever, was at Redoak. Everything was perfect, it was a warm day, I was dodging class with a good mate and I was just discovering the possibilities of craft beer.

That ESB was a revelation to me, one I'll probably be chasing for the rest of my life.

For the brew I was limited to a partial mash because I don't yet have a pot big enough to do a full 23l all grain batch. I was aiming for a deep copper colour, assertive bitterness and some restrained fruitiness. I've used East Kent Golding hops a bit before so I went for Fuggles for something different. I went for a liquid yeast this time and propogated the yeast on 'slants' so I can bring my costs down. I'll post about that another time.

The Hargreaves Hill ESB. Delicious.

Recipe on Hopville.

OG: 1.055
FG: 1.017
IBU: 47

2kg Marris Otter
2kg Light DME
200g Crystal 120 EBC
100g Crystal 270 EBC

50g Northern Brewer @ 60 min
40g Fuggles @ 20 min
40g Fuggles @ 0 min

Wyeast 1968 London ESB

5/2/12 - Brew day. Went off without any drama.
6/2/12 - Pitched the yeast. Ferocious fermentation.
12/2/12 - Airlock is still, I'll leave it a few days and then get it into bottles.