Monkey on the Main Line Porter

Another Sunday afternoon, another beautiful day for brewing.  Today’s brew is recipe I found from my favorite (mostly because the ship really fast) brewery supply store.  They call it Monkey on the Main Line Porter.  I am sure it is intended to closely resemble some major micro brew variety but I cannot figure out which one it is.  For this brew I am incorporating honey (Florida Orange Blossom Honey) and molasses (backstrap molasses).  I elected to treat them the same as the base malts vice the specialty malts.

Recipe:

Amber DME - 2 lbs
Dark DME - 4 lbs
Backstrap molasses - 8 oz
Florida Orange Blossom honey - 8 oz

Specality Malts

English Chocolate Malt - 3 cups
Crystal 120L - 3 cups

Hops

Palisades 6.7 α (bittering) - 1.75 oz (60 minutes)
Cascade 5.8 α (flavoring) - 0.5 oz (15 minutes)
Fuggles 4.1 α (aromatic) - 0.5 oz (2 minutes)


This batch started with 2 gallons of tap water and the 6 lbs of DME in the brew pot.  I started heating the brew pot very slightly as I warmed the mixture of molasses and honey allowing it to pour easier (30 seconds in the microwave).  I’d still recommend a spatula of some kind for scooping the remaining mixture into the brew pot.  I say this only because half way through watching me struggle with my spoon, my wife brought one out to me so I could get the rest of it out without hurting myself.  After the DME fully dissolved I made sure to rub my spoon against the bottom of the brew pot to ensure there wasn’t a heavy amount of honey/molasses caked onto the bottom of the brew pot.  I added the bag (I use a combination of nylon and muslin bags based on whichever is easiest at the time) of specialty malts and heated to about 160 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes.  Following that was another slow approach to boiling (approximately 20 minutes) and then I pulled the malts and added the bittering pellet hops.  Even though they were in pellet form I went with a nylon bag this time to hopefully reduce the amount of filtering I need to do once the process is completed.  When I pulled the malts from the wort I again placed them into a strainer directly over the brew pot, this not only keeps more heat in (increased efficiency is always good stuff) but it allows the malts to drain over the remainder of the boil and make sure I get all the good stuff into my beer and not in the garbage.

About 35 minutes into the boil I added a whirfloc tablet to help with clearing of the brew.  Ten minutes later was the Cascade whole hops followed by the Fuggles whole hops with 2 minutes left in the boil.  For this brew I took the brew pot off the heat, discarded the malts (they had been draining and I had been pressing them for the whole hour of boiling until almost no liquid pooled at all) and placed the hops one by one into the strainer.  Still holding the strainer over the brew pot, I slid the cooling coil into the wort, attaching one end to a garden hose I ran it for about 10 minutes cooling the brew rapidly.  I filled my primary up to approximately 2 gallons from the outlet of the cooling coil.  I waited a couple of minutes before starting to fill the primary to both reduce the outlet temperature of the cooling coil hose but also ensure any impurities were flushed out completely.  I find it helpful to move the coil around every minute or so while the beer is cooling, since the beer isn’t moving at this point there is a tendency for the coil to reach equilibrium with the liquid in contact with the coil surface.  Without cooling the bulk liquid and moving the coil slightly, you can feel the drastic changes in outlet temperature and thereby do a better job of monitoring the heat transfer.  Once the wort had reached a good consistent temperature I dumped the bags of hops out after more pressing to drain all the liquid. I placed the empty strainer on top of the primary bucket and poured the wort through the strainer into the primary, which had been filled up to 2 gallons already.  I brought the total volume up to 5 gallons and placed the lid onto the primary. 

 I carefully brought the primary and took a sample.  The target γg was 1.068 but I added less honey than the recipe called for (the recipe called for 1 lb and I used 8 oz).  The actual measured γg was 1.080, slightly greater than anticipated but I also thing with the extensive straining of the malts that I end up with a slightly higher mash efficiency than their formulas predict.  This batch used liquid yeast again that had sat out to activate for about 3 hours.  I pitched the yeast into the primary, gave it a good stir to mix everything up and place the lid and fermentation lock onto the primary just after 4 pm. 

At 8 pm that night fermentation was not yet active via bubbles but I could tell that pressure was building inside the primary.  By 4 am the next morning fermentation had started and was on its way up giving me bursts of CO2 escaping from the lock.

Now, the least favorite part- the waiting.  I will be closely monitoring the progress of fermentation with this batch (as with the last couple) and eventually will get around to analyzing all of my data that I will present here.  With this being a busy week I am hoping to get to rack into the secondary by Wednesday or Thursday but I know better than to try and rush the process.