Brewing Beer: Porter Recipe

Recipes

Kyle Brown on April 14, 2017

This blog provides information for educational purposes only. Read our complete summary for more info.

Here's the latest homebrew beer to roll off the production line at Clawhammer Supply: a "Porterhouse" Porter. Why'd we call it that? Well, we thought it'd go well with a porterhouse steak

Aside from sourcing the grains, this beer was super easy to make. There is only 1 hop addition at the beginning of the boil (60 minutes) and then a ton of down time. To keep ourselves entertained We cooked up a porterhouse while we were mashing and had it with some local Porter beer and it was delicious. We're anticipating that the final product will pair just as nicely.

We opted to do a "light" brew video for this recipe, showing only what we were doing in the form of a music video overview, which is below. Though, we also included full recipe details further down in this blog post.

Additionally we did a tasting video to discuss the results, which is located at the end of this blog post.

Porter Home Brew Recipe and Procedure

You'll notice that we don't spell out the ingredients and procedure in the video. For that you'll need to read below for the full recipe details.

Water

4.7 gallons (17.8 liters)

Untreated.

adding_water_straight_from_the_tap

Adding water straight from the tap

Grains

5 lb. 3oz. (2.35 kg) - 2 Row UK Pale Malt
13.6oz. (385.5 grams) - Brown Malt
13.6oz (385.5 grams) - Amber Malt
6oz. (170 grams) - Black Patent Malt

Mash for 60 mins.

mashing in

Mashing in

recirculating during mash

Recirculating during mash

Hops

.5oz (14.2 grams) Columbus Hops

Added at 60 minutes (beginning of 60 min boil).

hop silo in boiling wort

Boiling wort - hops were added to the hop silo

Yeast

London Ale Yeast - Wyeast Labs 1028

Add yeast at 65F (18.3C).

pitching yeast

Pitching yeast

Carboy at the end of the brew day

Gravity

Estimated gravity (post-boil): 1.066.

Kegging

This isn't what you would call an extensive overview of kegging, but it's a start. For more information, read below.

When kegging beer, always make sure to clean and sanitize all of your equipment before beginning. This includes the keg body, keg components, siphon, and so on.

Do not pour the fermented beer into the keg. Siphon it. Also, make sure to leave behind the crud (called the "lees") at the bottom of your fermenter. This means that you'll leave a bit of beer behind too, but that's OK. The final product will taste better.

When transferring, make sure to establish a good siphon before allowing it to proceed. Essentially, make sure your auto siphon, hoses, etc. aren't leaking any air, allowing it to come into contact with the beer. You want to avoid excessive contact with air to prevent oxidation. Also, it isn't necessary, but it's not a bad idea to fill the keg with CO2 before adding the beer, displacing the oxygen with the intention of reducing the possibility of oxidation.

kegging porter

Kegging the porter - almost full!

Tasting Notes

cheers

Despite the fact that we used pilsner as our base malt (in place of the UK pale), our porterhouse porter homebrew turned out pretty amazing. It was slightly bitter on the front end but overall, pretty great. Watch the video for more details on the tasting.

Kyle Brown is the owner of Clawhammer Supply, a small scale distillation and brewing equipment company which he founded in 2009. His passion is teaching people about the many uses of distillation equipment as well as how to make beer at home. When he isn't brewing beer or writing about it, you can find him at his local gym or on the running trail.

Brewing Beer: Porter Recipe