Monday, August 29, 2011

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

















Tuesday, August 16, 2011

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.





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