Baltic Porter - racking off

Racked off the Baltic Porter tonight. After a rocky, volcanic, and messy fermentation, it is looking excellent. Considering it was in the brew pan only 10 days ago, the taste is fantastic, the best I've tasted so far for a beer at this stage in the making, loads of layers to the flavour from the different malts

 I always stick a straw in the end of the syphon tube so I don't get spit on the valve that goes into the beer.

 We'll leave it for a couple of weeks to clear and mature a little before bottling it.

Guinness and Apple Soda Bread

Tried making some Guinness and apple soda bread today. The recipe was given to me by good mate Dave (http://www.redmaxmonowheel.co.uk/). I didn't expect it to turn out as well as it did, as things just seemed too easy. I didn't have any Guinness but I did have some of the port-oak porter I made last year; not my favourite beer I've made, but it suited the purpose. So into a bowl you mix 1lb of wholemeal breadflour, a teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, a chopped apple, a couple of ounces of grated cheese. The add some oil - I used olive oil - and a bit more than half pint of the ale. Give it a quick stir - not too much, form into a loaf shape, grate a bit more cheese on the top, then put into a preheated oven at 220C for about 35 minutes.

 45 minutes start to finish. I cannot believe how good it is, really tasty with the beer, cheese and apple.

Volcanic Porter settled down finally

 

The Baltic Porter finally settled down to a steady bubbling. Took me ages to clean up the bucket and surrounds. There are quite a few marks on the kitchen wall that won't come off. I'll ferment brews like this in the garage in future unless it's too cold. There's half a kilo of molasses sugar to add when the fermentation slows right down 

Volcanic Baltic Porter

Have never seen anything ferment so fast. The photo here is the airlock constantly blowing bubbles.

 

Eventually the airlock could take no more and the lid blew off. I wasn't sure what to do because the foam was going everywhere. I'm going to rename this volcanic porter.

 I abandoned the airlock after a few hours and just put a cloth over the hole held down by a weight. It still blew the lid off again. I've put the bucket in the brew pan and moved it into the garage where it's a bit cooler (16C). Hopefully it will calm down a bit soon. Also I hope that the yeast activity is sufficient to ward off any unwanted bacteria as the beer is no longer properly protected from the atmosphere without an airlock. As soon as fermentation slows down, I'll put the air lock back in.

Baltic Porter Brew Day

Got the Baltic Porter Brewed. Everything went smoothly almost exactly as per the recipe written out on the 30th April. Only 16oz of the caramunich went in rather than 18oz though as the bag was a bit short. For the bittering hops I used Golding hops, for the flavour hops I used Saaz, and for the aroma hops Hallertua hops; this was to use bits up rather than by design. The yeast was Windsor Ale which I got going in a demijon of the wort first and added the following morning.

 

Purple Broccoli

Purple Broccoli: tastes fantastic and appears when not much else is growing