Brewday January 11, 2014

The Plan:
Brew a "Robust Porter" from Brewing Classic Styles. Unfortunately, I am only equipped to do partial boils, so I have to top off my carboy with plain water after boiling my wort.

All of the ingredients and my recipe book laid out nicely.
The jug is Star San. I don't remember what is in that glass.

The Problems:

• The recipe called for 1 lb of Munich malt extract and 8.6 lbs of light malt extract. My local homebrew store has liquid malt extract in units of 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs), so I used 1 can of Munich LME and 2 cans of light LME for a total weight of 9.9 lbs of LME (close to the 9.6 lbs from the recipe). One more point in favor of switching to all grain (I assume it is easier to store dry grains than half-used containers of liquid malt extract.
• Hops are sold in 1 oz packets - used 1 oz of each hop instead of the ratios given in the recipe. Hop AA% was a little higher, so the lower quantity of the first addition was about equal to the recipe's first addition (or so the guy at the store claimed after consulting a cool looking chart).
• Boiled over! ack! Huge mess on stove. Was able to clean it with sodium hydroxide spray oven cleaner on the porcelain stovetop. Took a while, had to let it sit, but eventually it came off easily. One more point in favor of brewing outside on a gas burner or at least getting a bigger kettle.
• I also burned the wort a little bit. I am not sure how it will affect the final flavor of the beer. I'll just pretend it's just a little bit more robust.

The Results:
Brewed on January 11, 2014
OG: 1.064 (target)
OG: 1.064 (actual)
FG: 1.015 (target)

Fermented in a 6.5 gal carboy. Not a whole lot of krausen - maybe 1 inch or so.

Checked gravity on 2/1/2014 - 1.22.
Bottled on 2/5/2014 with a final gravity of 1.022.

Also, don't try and make cider out of juice that has potassium sorbate in it, even if it is from a local cider mill. Not worth it...