Bottling Day Pt. II

Got the “Dark Roast” Coffee Porter bottled — a big yield, 54 bottles, which I’m pleased about — and a friend came over to help, and brought a hydrometer, so I know the final gravity for this one: about 1.016, which is right around what I expected.  So with the standard assistance fee of a six-pack, I’ve got 100 bottles conditioning in the basement now: always a good thing.

Grove Street "Dark Roast" Coffee Porter II

On Saturday the 22nd, I made a new batch of the coffee porter I made about a year ago.  Of course, I couldn’t find any copies written down of my recipe, so I made up a new one from scratch.  I was going to use Challenger for bittering and Fuggles for flavor and aroma, but hop supplies are still hit-and-miss, so I ended up with Amarillo and Mt. Hood instead; we’ll see how those work out.  Ten cups of very strong brewed, fresh-roasted Sumatra Blue Batak peaberry will give it plenty of coffee flavor, and the roasted barley and chocolate and black patent malts will make it nice and dark.

The recipe is over here.

"Dark Roast" Coffee Porter

I bottled my not-very-cleverly-named “Dark Roast” Coffee Porter three weeks ago yesterday, so now is when it’s starting to get quite good.  It’s dry and dark, and the coffee flavor comes through clearly.  It’s not too heavy-bodied, has a good clean finish, and at about 5% ABV isn’t overwhelmingly strong, so if you like coffee, it’s a nice, easy drinking beer.  I’m quite happy with how it came out, and I’ll probably try something similar again either this season or next fall.

Current Brews Status

I checked on my two current brews last night. The barleywine — slightly modified from the “Big 10/20 Barley Wine” recipe at beertown.org — has been proceeding very slowly since racking off the ale yeast and pitching champagne yeast, but from its original gravity of 1.132 it was down to 1.092 when I racked it, and it’s now at 1.077. It’s got a ways to go yet, so I think I’ll need to make up a small starter of the champagne yeast to try to get it going.

When I racked the barleywine, I decided it would be a shame to waste its yeast bed, so I brewed a coffee porter (which for lack of a better name I’m calling “Dark Roast”) and put it in the same carboy on top of the old yeast. It was down from 1.060 to 1.022, or about 5% ABV, when I checked it last night, which I’m willing to consider good enough, so I racked it, and I’ll probably bottle next weekend. It tastes very good — nicely roasty, with a coffee flavor that’s distinct but somewhat subtle — so I’m quite pleased with how it came out. I’ll post the recipe I used for it a bit later; I’m thinking I may start putting up recipes as pages under the main Matters Zymurgical tab up top, rather than as regular posts.