Official Community Brew - Maple Porter
the LME is where I'd save the most money
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products … bCat=11148
at midwest you can get 6lb of LME from briess for $13.50. I figured I'd give it a shot, it's not as expensive as muntons or coopers, but I've heard decen things about briess (at least their grains) so I thought I'd give it a shot for the price.
BrewRob wrote:
Ps- am I the only who has brewed this one so far?
im going outta town and will order my supplies when i get back, so i will prob be brewing in around two weeks.
Ok, so I don't usually do a secondary fermentation because I don't normally care THAT much about hazy beer and I usually have very little, if any, sediment on the bottom of my bottles. As for adding 8 oz. of maple syrup to the secondary...
could I just add it to my primary or should it NOT settle on top of primary's yeast cake? Once I add this, fermentation will begin again, so I would imagine I should add it to the large amount of yeast in my primary?
not so sure on this one...
I think the point to adding it in the secondary is so that it is added after the majority of the sugar has been converted to alcohol. This process sometimes strips some flavors away and by adding it in the secondary it would retain the flavors. You could just dump it in the primary after your fermentation has slowed but you may have a harder time distributing it evenly without oxidizing your beer.
I just picked up my stuff today. it ran me $34 without the syrup. My neighbor makes his own syrup and I picked up some of his. I got the darkest that he had which was a dark amber. The darker the syrup the more distinct "maple" flavor. The closer you get to Fancy grade, the more "delicate" the flavor. His words, not mine.
Going to brew this one tonight, or tommorrow. The Good Wife is on her way home as I type with all of the parts and peices to make this brew!!!
Got it started on 2-24-07, A.M. OG reading was 1.060, started to ferment A.M. of 2-25-07. Looking at going to secondary in about 4 days. Got all of the supplies at local brew store, cost about 35 bucks, before the syrup.
Just did mine this morning! I ended up with a 1.060 OG almost 1.062. It looks great and smells great! This brew was my first using a liquid yeast. I'm defintely going to try and save the yeast cake. I can't wait to see how it comes out.
One thing we did not talk about is a timeline for fermentation/secondary/aging.
My batch has been in the primary for 10 days now and it still needs more time. There are still large clumps of yeast floating on the top, so I would say it needs another 5-7 days. I also plan to do a secondary for this one. I was thinking of aging for 2-4 weeks, but I just read a post about someone aging their porter for 6 months in the secondary!
We should all agree on an amount for each stage (mainly secondary/ bottling) to achieve maximum consistency.
I just checked mine today and had the same observation: clumps of yeast on the top and a gravity of 1.020. Granted, it's only been 4 full days for me. I plan on letting it go through the weekend before checking on it again.