We make home brew

Choc coffee porter

Since the first brew I did back in January this year I’ve been thinking about changes to the recipes of the kits. The most appealing was to have a coffee porter. That dream has come true.

The base is the Brew Smith Chocolate Paradise Porter. But there is a fair amount of coffee in it. So, I’ve dubbed the beer “Chocolate Paradise OMG The Coffee!! Porter”.

We made this on Sunday 28 April. As a result I can’t remember exact details on where we did the following steps. Hopefully Chas can clear up a few points.

Even without changing the porter base, a change was made. For the grain pot we used a grain bag. This meant no grain all over the place when adding in or pouring into the carboy. Plus it meant we could squeeze the liquid out of the grain a lot better. And get more of the flavour into the beer.

While the wort was bubbling away, after the hot break, coffee was added. I used my 8 cup percolator to brew the coffee. Was a mix of coffee grains, so don’t ask what coffee. Given this is a small batch of beer, that’s a lot of coffee.

While wanting to make a coffee porter I also wanted to up the alcohol. So a full cup of soft brown sugar was also thrown into the mix. That was about 100 or 150 grams of sugar. Will confirm later.

So, added coffee and added sugar. Petty bold. Because we had the grain bag we might have not used the mesh sieve when pouring the wort into the carboy. That means we forgot to remove the hops. Hopeful Chas remembers if we did or not. If not, this might be a very hoppy, and cloudy, beer.

The brew sat fermenting for two weeks at about 22 degrees Celsius. That’s probably too warm for this type of ale. But I’m pretty sure the fermentation process was done.

Gravity reading was a high 1.080 for original and dropped to a final reading of 1.020 when bottled, on Saturday 11 May.

The sample we took at bottling was very rich in coffee flavour. Plus the typical dark sweetness of the brown sugar was there. This beer is going to get a minimum of four weeks conditioning, some maybe twice as long. That should allow the porter to really come back up while the coffee mellows out.

I’m hoping the brown sugar fully fermented in the carboy. I really don’t want any exploding bottles. Time will tell if this is a success or not.