4.5 please
OK. This recipe is for a corny keg and you should have about 21 litres going into the fermenter. You can adjust the recipe as required for other batch sizes. The beer was awarded 2nd place in the Scottish Nationals and 3rd in the UK Nationals, I was robbed!
If you treat your water you need 30 litres with sulphate, chloride, and calcium all around 100ppm, sodium about 30ppm, and alkalinity about 60ppm. Actual numbers are not important as long as the proportions are not wildly off. Remember, as a preventative measure against medicinal flavours, to add 1/2 a crushed campden tablet to your water even if you don’t treat your water.
The grist is
3,100g Maris Otter malt
1,000g Brown malt
400g Dark crystal (EBC 225)
300g Chocolate malt
200g Melanoidin malt
100g Torrified malt
Mash the grist in 21 litres of treated water for an hour at 154F (68C), then for 30 minutes at 160F (71C), and mash out at 170F (77C) for 20 minutes.
Heat the remaining 9 litres to about 160F (71C) and sparge.
Bring the wort to the boil. The boil will be for 1 hour.
Add 30g Challenger hops at the start of the boil.
Add 50g each of Fuggles and EKG 10 minutes before the end of the boil.
Dissolve 1/2 a protofloc tablet in the boiling wort at the end of the boil and chill down to pitching temp - about 66F (19C)
Take a gravity reading, hopefully about 1.055-1.060.
Transfer the cooled wort into your fermenter and pitch your yeast. I use a couple of packs of MJ M36 Liberty Bell.
Ferment for a couple of weeks at about 64F (18C). Take another gravity reading, hopefully about 1.020 and calculate your ABV. (Original gravity - finishing gravity) x 0.13125
Transfer the beer and add plum flavouring to your keg or bottling bucket (and priming sugar if you’re bottling) and package as usual. As noted previously I add 12ml of Special Ingredients plum flavouring. You can of course test this level of flavour for yourself beforehand by adding a measured amount of flavouring to a bottle of Porter and when you’re happy, scale up.
You can also just make the Porter and add a few drops of flavouring to your glass when you pour a pint. This way you have no worries about using the wrong amount and you have options to flavour or not.
