Brewing the White House Honey Porter

Earlier this year President Obama, apparently inspired by American homebrewers doing their thing, joined the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (both brewers themselves) and started to become interested in producing beer at the White House. This culminated in the announcement that the White House was making it's own honey ale and honey porter with the honey produced on the premises, pictures of the President hoisting a glass of the honey ale, and cheers of "Here Here!" from homebrewers across the nation.

Then, about three months ago, an online petition began to circulate and gather signatures from people who wanted the recipe for the White House's honey ale and honey porter recipes. The grain-speckled masses clamored for the recipe used by our nation's President. Something about it caught my imagination as well, and I got interested in the petition as well. And, like a champ, the White House received the petition and published the recipes for the honey ale and honey porter for other homebrewers to check out! Government at it's finest, if you ask me!

It turns out that the White House recipes are extract with specialty grains. That's awesome, and it's the most accessible way for everyone interested to brew these recipes - from experienced brewers to new folks testing the homebrew waters. Co-brewer Mark and I have been doing all-grain for about six months now, though, and we both really enjoy the process, so I was happy when Reddit user hotelindia posted his recipe converting the White House Honey Porter to an all-grain. Fast-forward to yesterday, and it was our turn to try out the national porter!

Malted Grains, Honey, Hops and Yeast.  Just add water!  Instant Beer!

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day here in Durham, NC, and Mark came over to the ol' homestead to brew up a batch.  He wasn't all that interested in this recipe specifically, but as he pointed out: "I can't say no to brewing and the beer drinking it entails."

So for ingredients, we went with hotelinda's grain bill, the Nugget and Hallertau hops from NorthernBrewer's recipe (with an increase from .5 oz Hallertau at flame out to 1 oz Hallertau), 1lb of Clover Honey from a local beekeeper, and 2 packs of American Ale yeast from Wyeast.

First up: cracking the whole grains.  Last time we did this, with the West Indian Pale Ale, it appealed to the old-school miller in me.  Well, cracking the grain still appeals to the miller in me, but the right-arm on me is getting tired of hand-cranking the grain mill.  The mill I've got now is easily convert-able to drill-power, though, so I think our next batches will just go that way.  I'll save the hand crank for decoration in my bar, whenever I get around to making one.

This is, unfortunately, where I made the first of the few mistakes during this brew day.  I pitched 1lb of Chocolate malt and 1lb of Black Patent Malt and ground them up well, and then followed up with a couple of pounds of 2-row Malt.  It was then that I realized only 7 oz of Chocolate and 4 oz of Black malt should be going into the recipe.  AHH!

I did my best to push the 2-row out of the way, and then scooped about half of the dark malts out of the pot.  Well, the volume should be about right, at least, even if the ratio of Chocolate to Black malt is more like 50/50!

Since we've only cracked grains once before, I'm still a little curious as to whether or not we're getting a good crack from the grain mill.  It feels to me like we're not cracking the grain enough, but everything I read says to make sure the hulls stay intact to help with sparging.  Even considering that, though, I fear that maybe we're not doing a good enough job here.  We ended up with grain that looks like the picture at right.  Maybe I'm just being paranoid.  Perhaps the next time I visit Fullsteam for a few beers, I'll ask to see how their grain looks.  That's probably the best way to learn.

After milling all the grain, we started up the propane burner and began heating the water for our mash.  Our last three (!) batches have been woefully lacking in final volume.  We were clearly doing something wrong with our calculations, and being still somewhat new to all-grain brewing, I assume it had to do with managing the grain absorption and loss to the mash tun.  I sat down Saturday afternoon (the day before this brew) and did some experimenting.

First, I filled the mash tun until it began to drain, and wrote down how much was left in the tun when the draining stopped.  It's not perfectly accurate, since the weight of the grain will push more liquid out of the tun, but it's a good starting point, and we're better having too much wort than not enough.  After that, I filled the brew kettle with 5 gallons of water and boiled it for 60 minutes.  After the boil was done, I measured the amount of water left in the ton to get an idea of the evaporation rate from our equipment.  With those two numbers in hand, I calculated the amount of water desired to reach a final volume of 5.5 gallons in the carboy and wrote an article detailing the process of calculating the water requirement based on formulas from Brew365.

After figuring all that out, we decided we'd need about 10.75 gallons of water total to make 5.5 gallons in the carboy, with 3.75 needed for the mashing process.  Knowing this, we filled the hot liquor tun with 5 gallons of water and proceeded to heat it to 175 degrees, trying for a mash temperature of 154 degrees.

After heating the water, Mark pushed for using 4 gallons of water for the mashing.  I think he was basing it off of a slightly thicker mash ration than what I had thought (I planned for 0.3125 gal/lb grain).    We didn't actually get 4 gallons into the mash tun before the temperature was too high for the mashing - we'd calculated it a little too high, I guess.  It worked out, though, because I added a little water from the hose to cool it all down to about 154 degrees, and we ended up with just over 4 gallons in the tun, and set the tun aside for a nice long 60 minute mashing.

And our beer break!  What's a little homebrewing without some beer to accompany it.


* Not Pictured: Ayinger Oktober Fest-Märzen, New Belgium's Lips of Faith Kick

Mark and I split these six beers over the course of the brew - about seven hours - as is our usual practice.  The first three were Oktoberfest beers we wanted to compare.  I'm a big fan of Spaten's Oktoberfest - I think it might be one of my favorite "quaffable" beers.  We enjoyed Flying Dog's Dogtoberfest, Ayinger's Oktober Fest-Märzen, Shmaltz Brewing Company's Coney Island Freaktoberfest, Bell's Porter, New Belgium's Lips of Faith Kick, Harpoon's Catamount Maple Wheat, and Bell's Kalamazoo Stout.  Check out the Brew Day Beer Review for my thoughts on these guys.

As the mash ended, we drained out what was now the sweet wort into a temporary container, and mistake number 2 became evident - we'd not heated any water for the sparge.  We covered the wort container and lit the propane tank to heat about 7.5 gallons of water - the rest of what we needed to bring the final volume up to 5.5 gallons.

I'm not sure what that does to the sparge process, sitting around for about 45 minutes again, but the mash tun certainly kept up the temperature while we were waiting! Just before we began to sparge again, the temperature was still up in the 150's - even 160's in places, so we may have had slightly high mash temp.

Either way, a short 10 minute batch sparge later, and we were draining the rest of the wort into the kettle.  The next step in equipment-improvement will be a different spigot for the mash tun and a hose to assist in this process.

Error Hops
Nugget hops before
the boil.  *sigh*

Not the same picture
as the one to the left.
30 min Nugget hops.

Finally, we were on to the boil!  60 minutes, with hops at T-45 minutes, T-30 minutes and flame out, and honey in at T-10 minutes to sanitize whatever might be in there from it's creation in the wilds of Bee Country.

Aaaand they say things come in threes, right?  This is where I made the third mistake of the day.  We lit the propane and I set my timer for 15 minutes, and then confidently added .5 oz of Nugget hops into the kettle - despite the fact that it had yet to start boiling!  ARG!!!  So, we might have a slightly more hoppy porter than we planned.  (I really need to think my actions through a little better next time.  I don't know WHERE my brain was this time.)

Things cooled off more quickly than we were used to this time - the benefit of cooler weather.  A few short minutes of cooling and sanitizing and we were ready to take a gravity reading.  We ended up around 1.040.  I was kind of guessing it would be higher, but I don't really have any facts to back up that guess.  I'm truly not sure what gravity we should have achieved.  Hopefully 1.040 is it!

Boil, baby, boil.

Local Clover Honey

COPPER!  MORE COPPER!

1.040-ish Original Gravity

Pitching Yeast In The Dark

Finally, we finished up the day in the dark, siphoning off the wort from the kettle and pitching two packages of Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast.  The carboy is now sitting quietly in my office and hopefully the yeast is enjoying all the sugars in the honey and malt, and doing what yeast do: making the White House Honey Porter.

Brew Day Beer Review #1

- In which Mark and I brew the White House Honey Porter, and try six new beers with a semi-Oktoberfest theme.

---

So Mark and I gathered at my house and started off the mash for the White House Honey Porter, and then tucked into some new beers through out the rest of the brewday.  Up to bat today were:

• Flying Dog's Dogtoberfest
• Ayinger's Oktober Fest-Märzen
• Shmaltz Brewing Company's Coney Island Freaktoberfest
• Bell's Porter
• New Belgium's Lips of Faith Kick
• Harpoon's Catamount Maple Wheat
• Bell's Kalamazoo Stout

First up of the three was Flying Dog's Dogtoberfest.  I enjoyed this one as well.  It's certainly a good, clean beer with good flavor - and easy to drink.  I'd give it better praise if this were a full-on review, but at the very least, go try some.  You'll like it.

Second up for the day was Ayinger's Oktober Fest-Märzen (Not Pictured).  I had higher hopes for this one than it actually lived up to.  It was OK, but tended toward more sweetness than I was expecting.   It did have a very German flavor to it, which I found worked in it's favor.  Not bad, but nothing special.

Third, we went for Shmaltz Brewing Company's Coney Island Freaktoberfest.  The do well to label it "Not an Oktoberfest - a Freaktoberfest".  I didn't catch anything in the style of Oktoberfest.  Knowing that, I reset my expectations, and tried it out.  "Freak" is accurate, at least.  It pours red - as in grenadine red...I held up a bottle of grenadine next to my beer and they were the same - with a red foamy head.  I don't know how they get that.  Certainly not naturally from any grains, I would think.  It was not good, either.  I don't know what they were going for, but it's not a beer I'll be going for again.  Shmaltz, I like your stuff, but damn guys.

As the day got later, we moved on to Bells' Porter.  This was a good beer too, and representative of the quality I've come to expect from Bells.  It was a little roasty without being overbearing.  Robust without  toeing the line with the Baltic style.  I enjoyed it and will certainly get some more.

After the porter, we moved on to New Belgium's Lips of Faith Kick (Not Pictured), a pumpkin-cranberry blended with oak-aged beer.  Mark had held on to this one for about a year and it was still great.  I think the sour mellowed a bit, as I remember it being more puckering.  This was a very pleasant cranberry semi-sour with just a hit of pumpkin leftover.  I really enjoyed it and it was a great palate cleanser; crisp and refreshing.

Next up we tried Harpoon's Catamount Maple Wheat.  Harpoon has been surprising me with some really good stuff lately, and this one was no exception.  Solid wheat with a touch of sweetness from the maple.  The maple flavors really came through but it wasn't too overpowering, and the sweetness was balanced well by the wheat flavor.

Finally, as the sun was gone and the wort approached it's last 30 minutes of boil, we tried Bell's Kalamazoo Stout.  Much like the porter, the Stout was solidly tasty, tending to lean away from the bitter and roasty line in favor of drinkability.  Again, a good beer from Bell's, and worth trying if you haven't had it.

So that wraps up the Brew Day Beer Review #1 from the ol' homestead.  Here's to the White House Honey Porter, may it turn out well and please the masses.

Calculating Water Usage in All-Grain Brewing

Ok, so we've made the jump to all-grain brewing, and almost all of our batches have come out short of the intended volume of 5.5 gal.  I realized going in that water management was going to be a bigger deal than when we were doing extract brewing, but I honestly thought I could ballpark it.  That turned out to be an incorrect assumption.

Last time, Mark plugged everything into Beersmith and we did considerably better than we'd done before, but we still came out short.  Beersmith has all the math, but it couldn't correct for the fact that we didn't have any numbers for how our actually equipment functioned in real life.  Today, I set out to change that.

I decided to work backward to make the math a little easier on my beer-addled brain.  I started with the brew kettle.  We're brewing in a keg-turned-kettle that holds 15 gallons of liquid.  We'll generally will need to boil something over 5.5 gallons, so we can account for loss from evaporation.  To figure out how much, though, I needed to boil 5 gallons of water for 60 minutes to see how much we actually lose from this setup.

5 gallons of water and an hour later, I had my answer.  Given a rolling boil over our outdoor gas burner  for 60 minutes, Mark and I lose (!!) 1.75 gallons of water.  Well, no WONDER we've been short!   That's almost a 25% loss to evaporation.  To end up with 5.5 gallons of beer in the carboy we need to start the boil with no less than 7.25 gallons of wort.

(Note: I suspect my numbers may be a little of, because the rule of thumb loss to evaporation is 10%!  More testing needed.)

Next, I took the mash tun and poured water into it until it began to drain from the mash tun's spigot.  It's not a perfect calculation, because in the real world, we'll be adding grain to the tun and it will effect the amount of wort that ends up left in the tun.  This would be a good ballpark to start, and for each batch after today, I can measure what ends up left in the mash tun, and begin to take an average for future batches.  It turns out that without grain, .75 gallons of liquid end up left in the mash tun after draining (without manual intervention - we can tip the mash tun and lower that to about .5 gallons).

Ok, so this gives us some constants to start with.  So, here comes the math:

(Note: This is a slightly adjusted version of the Calculating Mash Water Volume guide from Brew365)

Assumptions

Loss to grain absorption = 0.2 gal / lb grain
Loss to mash tun = 0.75 gal
Loss to evaporation = 35 % / hr
Shrinkage = 4%
Mash Thickness Ratio = 0.3125 gal/lb

*Shrinkage is the loss of volume due to cooling from boiling to 60 degrees.  It's a minor factor, but we'll consider it, because BEER.

Desired Result

12 lb grain (for this next batch - will vary)
5.5 gal final volume (can also vary, but it's what we go for most right now)
60 min boil (again, can vary, but the next batch will be 60)


Mash process Loss Calculation

Taking the assumption that we lose .2 gallons of water per pound of grain, and that leftover wort in my mash tun totals .75 gallons, we can calculate the expected loss of water to the mash process with 12 lb of grains.

Mash Loss =  mash tun loss + (grain absorption * lbs of grain)
Mash Loss = .75 + ( 0.2 * 12 )
Mash Loss = .75 + 2.4 = 3.15 gallons


Evaporation Loss Calculation

To find the percentage evaporation loss, the formula is as follows:

Evaporation Pct = 100 - ( post boil volume * 100 / pre-boil volume)
Evaporation Pct = 100 - ( 3.75 * 100 / 5 )
Evaporation Pct = 100 - 75 = 25

25% loss to evaporation based on my equipment's performance.  As stated earlier, that's a good bit above the 10% generally accepted evaporation.

Full Kettle Loss Calculation

So, now that we know the evaporation loss, we can calculate the total loss of liquid in the kettle.

First we need to get the Evaporation Loss and Shrinkage Loss factors.

Evaporation Loss Factor
ELF = 1 - (Evaporation % * ( boil duration / 60 ))
ELF = 1 - (.25 * ( 60 / 60 ))
ELF = 1 - (.25 * 1)
ELF = 1 - .25 = .75

Shrinkage Loss Factor
SLF = 1 - Shrinkage %
SLF = 1 - 0.4
SLF = .96

Now on to the total Kettle Loss:

Kettle Loss = ((Batch Volume + Loss to Trub*) / ShrinkageFactor) / EvaporationFactor)

(Note:  Loss to Trub isn't something I'm worried about, but you can subtract it if you like)

Kettle Loss = (( 5.5 + 0 ) / .96 ) / .75 )
Kettle Loss = 5.73 / .75  = 7.6 gallons

Total Water Needed Calculation

Ok, so knowing the above, we can calculate the final total amount of water needed for our batch.

Total Water Needed = Kettle Loss + Mash Process Loss
Total Water Needed = 7.6 + 3.15 = 10.75 gallons

Alright, so now we have the total water needed, we can see how much we need for mash water and how much we can use for sparging.  Here, we use the generally accepted mash thickness ration of 0.3125 gallons water / lb of grain.

Mash Water = (Mash Thickness Ratio * Pounds of Grain )
Mash Water = ( 0.3125 * 12 )
Mash Water =  3.75 gallons

So, FINALLY, our last calculation:

Sparge Water = Total Water Needed - Mash Water
Sparge Water = 10.75 - 3.75 = 7 gallons

So there you have it.  Using the formulas and method from Brew365's Calculating Mash Water Volume guide, and assuming our equipment's 25% evaporation loss, a 60 minute boil and 12 pounds of grain, Mark and I will need 10.75 gallons of hot water, 3.75 to be used in the mash and 7 for our sparging.

Looks like it'll be a long heating time in the hot liquor tun for our next batch, the White House Honey Porter!

Brewing Jamil's Evil Twin, A Hoppy Red Ale

Mash, sweet mash.  Smells like Grape Nuts, but it's destined for something even better.  BEER!

Mark came over - heck, two weeks ago now...  I've got to get these brew posts up quicker than I have been - for a good brewing session.  The weather had been poor the day before, but Sunday dawned true to it's name - warm and sunny.  A great day to brew some beer.

Heating the water in our HLT

Mark decided to pass on the imperial stout recipe for this batch and instead made a snap decision to try a batch of Jamil's Evil Twin, a pretty hoppy red ale.  It's a relatively popular recipe, so you can find a bunch of variation online, but they all tend toward nicely hopped, sweet-ish red ales, and that's what we were shooting for.

We skipped the grain-cracking step this time, despite me enjoying it as much as I did when we made the West Indian Pale Ale up at the river.  Partly because the mill was broken by some curious, but less than gentile, friends that weekend, and partly because, hey, they'll do it for you at the homebrew shop.

Mashing in with a real manifold

After heating our strike water to the calculated temp (assisting us in this was Beersmith, a homebrewing software Mark purchased between this brew and our last - and let me tell you, it was worth it.  Check it out sometime...) we poured a little bit into the mash tun to pre-warm it, then dumped in the big sack of crushed grain followed by the rest of the water.

This was the first time we'd tried pre-warming the mash tun, and I think it really helped.  We lost less heat to the cold sides of the mash tun than we'd seemed to have lost in previous attempts.

Hitting the temps right on

Oh, featured at left is the REAL manifold for our mash tun, you know, when I don't leave it in Durham when hauling all our stuff up to the mountains for a brew session next to the river.  Despite Mark's quickly-rigged replacement manifold working so well last time, we decided to go ahead and use the real one this time.

Anyway, we hit the desired 152 deg. right on and settled in for a nice long mash while the grain and hot water did it's thing in the mash tun.

On pretty much every brew day, Mark and I take the opportunity to sample some new beers obtained from our local supplier, Sam's Quik Shop.  It gives us something to do while we're waiting on the mash, and we both enjoy trying out new types of beer, or new releases from breweries all over the place.

We tried four new ones this time.  First up was the Traquair House Ale.  I liked it, but I don't think it was worth the price ($7/bottle).  It's not what I'd come to think of Scottish ale, but I've had only a few, so I don't know, really, if I am 100% sure of the style.  It was fine thought, and I'd liked it enough try perhaps try a clone, since homebrewing is considerably cheaper than $7 a bottle.

We followed that with Avery Brewing's Hog Heaven.  Tasty.  The hops balanced the barley wine flavor well.  I would definitely get it again, but that said, it was a solid middle of the road beer.  It wasn't surprising, but it was good.

Ah, next though: Clown Shoes Clementine 1.5.  Clown Shoes can make some weird beers, and they can make some good beers.  Well, this one is EXCELLENT.  You should try it. Citrus-y and very tasty.  I really enjoyed it, and would like to drink it again, in quantity.

The final beer of the day was Antigoon by the Three Musketeers Brewery (and Rober Wiedmaier, apparently).   Good, tasty Belgian-style.  Certainly worth drinking again.  The label is where it's at, though, featuring a drawing of a tiny dude CUTTING THE HAND OFF A GIANT.  10/10 for style!

Sparging

Checking the second
sparge temperature

Right, so , we drank a few beers (not all four - had to save some for the boil, right?) and then the mashing was complete and it was time to sparge.  Sparging is a place where I think we could improve our technique.  Right now, we batch sparge, drain the wort right out into the kettle, and drop some more sparge water in for 10 minutes or so, before draining again.  I know this nets us a much less efficient batch.  I'm not really sure how we could improve it at the moment.  Our current equipment is designed for batch sparging.  However, with two keggles (keg-kettles), I think we're approaching the possibility of setting up a rudimentary recirculating infusion mashing system (RIMS).  I need to acquire a pump from somewhere, and do a little drilling, but I think we're pretty close.

A rolling boil to release all the hoppy goodness from the hops

My biggest worry is about how to best heat the wort as it recirculates.  I'm not entirely sure how folks do this part.  Adding heat directly to the mash tun seems to be the way, but I keep reading about potentially scorching the mash bed - bad bad bad.  So perhaps putting the heat to a copper line and running the beer through it is the way to go?  Who knows.  I see more research in my future.

After the sparge we moved on to a 90 minute boil.  This long boil was combined with a lot (a LOT) of hops, both for bittering at the beginning and for aroma at the end.  Doing a 5 gallon batch in a 15 gallon keggle is great for removing any worry of a boil-over.  The only drawback comes in during chilling - the chiller is smaller than the keggle, so our in and out lines were bent at a weird angle.  I don't think it effects function much, but it gives the OCD in me a chance to just ... *shudder*.

What followed was the standard chilling, transfer to a carboy, and yeast pitching, all of which I failed to capture for posterity, but at the end of the day we have the image at left - beautiful, beautiful wort and yeast, slowly becoming what I hope to be a really nice, tasty beer.  We've got a few weeks of fermenting ahead of us, then it's in to the keg with this batch, for (a little) aging.

As always, we ended up with a TON of spent grain, but I'm getting tired of this.  The green (giant - yes yes...I'm tall.  Get your laughs out now.) in me twitches every time I dump 12lb of grain out into the garden.  Despite being good plant food, I can't help but think I could come up with a better use for it.  An attitude which lead to this:

Saving the Spent Grain for a
TOP SECRET SPECIAL PROJECT

What's this, you ask?  Stay tuned for details!