Practice, Practice, PORTER!

Let's talk about brewing beer.

My brewing partners, Tom and Jason, stopped by after a trip to the brew supply store to cook up a London Porter. This is a style we haven't made before, but we were looking for a full bodied beer that will pair well with the falling leaves and cooling temperatures. The recipe is a partial grain/partial LME (Liquid Malt Extract) variety that lets us have a little flexibility (grains) while saving a bit of time (LME).

Tom enjoys a little left over grains - fiber-licious!

The process takes just over 3 hours not counting the trip to the store. Steep the grains, add the LME, bring to a boil, add hops over the course of an hour, cool it down, dump it into the fermenting vessel, "pitch" the yeast, cover and your done.

During the process we have a little time to discuss our next purchase - a kegging system! Bottling isn't that difficult, and it does make it convenient to split our batch among one another, but putting the beer into a keg allows for only a few days wait to drink. And, lets face it, having a keg of homebrew is just plain cool!

A peek at the Porter once it's been transferred to the secondary fermenter -  notice the hops and "trub" that the siphon helps filter out.

This batch will be very tasty. How do I know? Well, one of the benefits of being the one to transfer to the secondary is that I get to take a little sample to measure the specific gravity. A calculation of the difference between the specific gravity reading before pitching the yeast (OG) and at the time you bottle it (FG) gives you an approximate alcohol content.

Since we're going to put this batch into our new 5 gallon keg system it should be ready to drink a few days after we transfer it. We'll tip one for you!