Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
Sunday, we started up our first all-grain recipe THE BOURBON BARREL PORTER with a fresh new grain mill, mash-tun, wort chiller, and a whole lotta grains & hot water. Now the process for all-grain recipes is a little different than our previous recipes. With the malt extract kits, we basically took the malt extract (almost like syrup) and pour it into the boil… maybe steep a few specialty grains in for some distinct flavors… and then do our hour-long boil adding hops, etc. With the all-grain recipes, we basically have to make our own malt extract. We do that by taking about 8-15 pounds of various grains (depending on the recipe) and we have to pull the malt out of them. There are a few extra steps involved…
First up, we would run the grains through the mill… not to pulverize like a coffee mill or something… but hopefully to just crack the outer shell so that the grain’s innards are exposed… the thing we found out is that the particular kit that we got was all-grain recipe... they already cracked & crushed the grains for us... so our mill will get used another time...
While doing that, we heat up some water to fairly hot, but not quite boiling. Typically we want it to be in the 180-190 degree range…
Once everything is ready, we mix the hot water with the cracked grains so that the overall temperature will keep around 160-170 (again depending on the recipe).
This causes the grain’s innards to release the malt sugars that we need to make the beer. Too cold & it doesn’t really work… too hot & it doesn’t really work. We also want to keep the grains evenly saturated with water so that we can maximize the amount of malt sugars that we pull… so the colander helps a little with that. Also, the insulated cooler helps keep the temperature in the best possible range without losing heat. We keep this for about an hour… checking periodically to make sure that everything is good…
Next, we extract the wort (the malt sugars mixed with the hot water). How do we do this? In the bottom of the cooler, there is a false bottom that helps separate the liquid wort from the grains… you know, all the husks & stuff that you don’t really want to drink. There’s some technical “recycling” of the water involved to make sure that you get the most out of the wort, but you can read the specifics on that in a book if it interests you. Basically when we’re done, we have the wort ready for the hour-long hop boil in the pot…
We had a few hiccups along the way this first time...
and this is what happens... HULK SQUEEZE!!!
Little tip... Check the gasket on the spigot at the bottom of your mash tun... or rather, double check it. We tested ours with a little bit of water & no problem... but once we started adding a lot of hot water, there was an obvious leak & we weren't able to get any pictures due to the frantic nature of trying to save as much of the good stuff as possible... but trust us, it wasn't awesome. To sure up the spigot, we used some electrical tape (contact tape will work to) to make sure that the gaps between the metal spigot & the plastic cooler tub are minimized to keep it water-tight so that you don't lose the sweet, sweet juices & sugars of the wort.
After taking out the wort, we have the leftover husks from the grains in the cooler that we can then… I don’t know… throw away… give to cows, chickens & pigs… use for compost… make doggy biscuits… apparently there are also recipes online for these now “spent grains” so Dizzy made some bread... this particular recipe was about 75% Maris Otter and then the rest was a combination of grains that give off some great biscuity & chocolately tastes... so it was a shame to let them all go to waste, right?
After taking out the wort, we have the leftover husks from the grains in the cooler that we can then… I don’t know… throw away… give to cows, chickens & pigs… use for compost… make doggy biscuits… apparently there are also recipes online for these now “spent grains” so Dizzy made some bread... this particular recipe was about 75% Maris Otter and then the rest was a combination of grains that give off some great biscuity & chocolately tastes... so it was a shame to let them all go to waste, right?
Just a little egg, flour & water... and you've got
some of your own fine multi-grain bread with enough
fiber to clean out the dankiest of colons...
We'll keep you posted on the taste in the next entry.
And we also decided to share some with the neighborhood birds too... so we'll see how that turns out... and if there's a miracle, maybe I'll grow some of my own grains in the backyard... but they would've had to survive several hours in extremely hot temperatures to do so... but hey, you never know.
As mentioned, we have the wort ready now, so we do the hour-long boil adding the hops… and put it in the primary fermenter the same way as our previous batches. The only twist is this time, after the boil, we have a snazzy new stainless steel wort chiller to help cool the wort as quick as possible for the fermenter. With this being the first time, I didn't really have the correct setup ready to go... but it still helped a little bit, especially with the initial boil to about 120 degrees in just a few minutes combined with the ice bath.
Alright! Now we’ve got our Porter wort sitting in the fermenter… we’ve added the yeast… and now we wait a few weeks…
Mmm... sweet, dark, delicious porter wort...
“BUT WAIT!!! I thought this was supposed to be a BOURBON BARREL PORTER!!! I see NO BARREL and certainly NO BOURBON!!! What the French, toast? BLASPHEMY!!!” AH, you are quiet right… we have not reached that part of the recipe yet… but for that, you’ll just have to wait until next time… all the way in 2014.
Anyway, we had a LOT of fun doing this… so hopefully you had a LOT of fun reading about it. Also, if you like what you see, let us know… I’m still not 100% that anybody at all is reading this besides me & maybe Dizzy. Have a happy holiday season everybody!!! See you in 2014!!!
