Batch No. 4: Toronto Brewing Co.'s Honey Porter
Now TOBC's kits (the two I've purchased anyhow) include a muslin steeping bag (henceforth known as the "Sock Puppet" for holding the grains in the water like a giant tea sock. I used this for the Brown Ale and decided two and a half things noted in that post:
1) it made cleanup really really easy.
2a) was never fully confident I got everything out of the grains I could.
2b) it made the mash really really boring.
So I said bugger that this time around. Recipe called for 7 quarts (1.75 gallons) of water, so I did a 3/4 split for mash and sparge. Which went smooth and was a lot more fun than teabagging my stock pot with the sock puppet.
When I did the brown ale, the resulting wort was not as dark as I'd imagined it should be. Though this is all conjecture never having done a brown ale before but still.... it looked and smelled "weak".
The honey ale: No such conniptions. It was dark, very very dark, ran off the stirring spoon like warm syrup, and honest to goodness smells between the brewing and the slow cooker full of my SO's chili/stew/beef cilantro mix my senses were going haywire.
Now TOBC's kits (the two I've purchased anyhow) include a muslin steeping bag (henceforth known as the "Sock Puppet" for holding the grains in the water like a giant tea sock. I used this for the Brown Ale and decided two and a half things noted in that post:
1) it made cleanup really really easy.
2a) was never fully confident I got everything out of the grains I could.
2b) it made the mash really really boring.
So I said bugger that this time around. Recipe called for 7 quarts (1.75 gallons) of water, so I did a 3/4 split for mash and sparge. Which went smooth and was a lot more fun than teabagging my stock pot with the sock puppet.
When I did the brown ale, the resulting wort was not as dark as I'd imagined it should be. Though this is all conjecture never having done a brown ale before but still.... it looked and smelled "weak".
The honey ale: No such conniptions. It was dark, very very dark, ran off the stirring spoon like warm syrup, and honest to goodness smells between the brewing and the slow cooker full of my SO's chili/stew/beef cilantro mix my senses were going haywire.
During the mash though the usual problem of impatience and not entirely understanding the stove top still gave me the problem of temp control. The mash was running about 10-20F too hot for most and by the time I got the temp down to 152-ish it was time to jack it right back up again for 10 minutes at 170 again.
Now all in all though hoping this will be a positive impact. Same thing happened with the IPA and it turned out better than expected. Fingers crossed. Also ended up filling the carboy to the last drop right the gallon line, no extra water needed which was a nice end to it.
This recipe also does not call for a blow off tube but goes straight for the bubbler. Crossing the fingers a lot on this one, here's to hoping I don't come home to a porter flood this evening. The cats would just love that I'm sure.
Maybe I can use the sock puppet as a cat toy.
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