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!
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| Malted Grains, Honey, Hops and Yeast. Just add water! Instant Beer! |
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.
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* 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.
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| Error Hops Nugget hops before the boil. *sigh* |
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| Not the same picture as the one to the left. 30 min Nugget hops. |
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!
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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.
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