Coconut Porter in the fermenter

I finally got around to brewing a coconut porter yesterday. I am not a big fan of fruit beers but this one has always intrigued me. I had a chance to try Maui Brewing’s Coconut porter a few weeks back and I think that really pushed this one to the top of the brewing schedule. I liked that porter, but I thought the coconut could stand to be a little more apparent in the beer. So of course I decided to brew it with a stronger coconut flavor.

Mash being recirculated.

Here is the recipe of the top of my head.

11 Gallon batch Coconut Porter

Malts:
16 Pounds Northwestern Pale ale malt
4 pounds Dark Munich malt
2 Dingmans chocolate malt
2 Golden naked oats
2 Crystal 40

Hops:
1 oz Calypso hops (12.9%) 60 mins
2 oz East Kent Golding (4.9%) 15 mins

Coconut:
Unsweetened shredded, lightly toasted on cookie sheet at 350 degrees. Each sheet spent about 5 mins in the oven and the coconut was flipped one time in that 5 minutes.

2 Pounds went into the 60 minute mash
2 pounds went into the kettle at flameout and was whirl pooled for about 10 minutes while chilling.

Draining the boil kettle with 2 pounds of coconut.

I mashed this one at 154, OG came in at 1.065, and I pitched US-05 yeast.

This thing smelled wonderful. The mash reminded me of a mounds or almond joy candy bar. It will be interesting what this tastes like when fermentation finishes. I am reserving the option to add some more coconut after fermentation, but it just depends on how it tastes.   

Pumping from the kettle to the fermenter

Brewing heavily

I have not posted on here for a while but I have been brewing quite a bit the past couple of months.
A couple weeks ago I received my portion of a big bulk grain order. All total about 600 pounds of barley.

So far I have brewed two 15 gallon batches from it. The first was a clone of Surly Cynic based on the recipe from the brew master Todd Haug. I put 10 gallons of that into my conical with WLP550. I put the other 5 in a carboy and pitched some WLP670 American farmhouse blend. I went ahead and filled a couple of bottles with this and sent it down to the beehive brew off competition.

I also brewed up a big cascadian dark ale. This is a big one that comes in at 9.5% ABV and something around 100 IBUs. This one is looking to be a great one so far. I am currently dry hopping it with some cascade hops.