Brew#1 - Sugary Bastard (Bourbon oaked maple porter)

I'm planning on cataloging my brewing here and with this first one I'll focus more on the process of brewing.  Later blog entries will center more on the creation of the recipe and what I'm hoping to achieve with it.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of brewing beer is the creation process.  The time spent looking at different recipes, different adjuncts, different ideas that can be compiled into a beer that is, more often than not, completely and truly unique.

I brewed a porter last summer/fall that I racked (transferred beer into a glass carboy for aging) onto cherries and it turned out to be a great beer.  The cherries gave it a sweet body that complemented well with the natural porter taste.  Needless to say it didn't last too long...

Fast forward to the last couple of weeks.  I wanted to brew the porter again but I didn't want to brew with cherries again but this time with different ingredients: maple sugar and bourbon.  Doesn't sound too bad, does it?

I started out with a basic porter recipe:


1/2 # 80 L
1 # Amber Fawcett
1/2 # Brown Fawcett
1/2 Chocolate Malt
6 # Light LME

I chose to go with a pretty basic recipe because I want the flavor of the original beer to be a base for the other ingredients to build off of.  Currently, my brewing method is "partial mash" which is code for a step above extract brewing but too scared to take the plunge into the deep end that is all-grain brewing, where I heat up a couple gallons of water to 153 degrees.  Once I've hit that temperature I remove the pot from the heat and introduce all my dry grains, wrap the pot in towels, and then set the timer for forty five minutes to let the grains leach out their sugars into the water.  Time to have a couple beers.  (I bought some in state double IPAs from Atwater Brewing and Arcadia Brewing at  the best beer and homebrew shops in Grand Rapids, Sicilianos.  They were good)

After the timer had gone off and a decent buzz had been achieved, I removed the grain sock and added the now darkened water to my six gallon brew pot that I was heating up on my turkey burner.  From there it was just a waiting game until everything came to a boil.  If you haven't figured it out by now, brewing is a game of back and forth between hurrying up and waiting.

Once everything was up to a boil, I added the Liquid Malt Extract (LME) and and one ounce of Styrian Golding hops and started my boil timer for a hour.  I added hops again at a half hour left and then added a whirfloc tablet (helps drop solid objects to the bottom of the bucket/carboy), another half ounce of hops, and sixteen fluid ounces of Pure Maple Syrup (Grade B) (!!!!) at fifteen minutes left on boil.

Once the timer went off I turned off the heat and moved the brew pot into an ice bath and added some ice that I had purified earlier in the week (not the best way but I don't have a chiller, so leave me alone) in an effort to get the temp down to the mid-seventies so I could strain out the loose grain left in the water into my brew pail and pitch my WLP002 (English Ale) yeast.  You need to reach that temperature range so the yeast won't be shocked.

Now it's just a waiting game (told ya).  I'm going to add some more maple sugar tomorrow and then leave it in the ferment bucket for two weeks, then transfer into my secondary (glass carboy) while racking onto bourbon soaked oak chips (hells yes) for another three or four weeks.  Then I get to bottle and wait a couple months for it to age into a great beer.

Until next time.