Brew #67: Porter/Crowberry Porter

It has been a while since I made a dark beer, and it has been too long since I made a porter. With its 7.0% abv this is a fairly robust porter.

Knut Albert has been kind enough to mention that crowberries might do well in a porter. I agree. Last year I had a sample of Haandbryggeriet's lingonberry porter, an experimental brew that they had made but did not put into production. It was an excellent beer with an interesting bittering quality that balanced the roasted malts in a nice way. It is sad that they decided not to take it further. The reason was supposedly the high production costs. Crowberries should be quite similar in flavour.

I found 330 ml bottles of crowberry juice at a Helios store here in Oslo. 1 liter juice to 11 liters of porter in the secondary. Interestingly I could not see any visible fermentation activity in the secondary, so I guess there's not much fermentable sugars in the juice. It is anything but sweet, but I think it'll lend a nice balance it the beer. The juice is organic and should not contain any preservatives.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) to mash and 1ts to boil.

The batch was brewed 2009-01-26 and bottled 2009-02-10.

Style:
Porter
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
76 EBC (Very dark brown)
Bitterness:
35 IBU
Malts:
6000g Pale malt, Castle
850g Aromatic malt, 100 EBC, Castle
800g Münchener malt, Weyermann
300g Crystal malt, Castle
300g Special B, Dingemans
300g Chocolate malt (Special II), Weyermann
100g Coffee malt, Castle
Mash:
66C, 90 min
68% efficiency
Hops:
35g Cascade pellets, 5.8% 90 min (first wort hops)
35g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 60 min
25g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 10 min
Yeast:
1 pack Wyeast 2450 Denny’s Favorite 50, 1 liter starter
Boil:
180 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.073 FG: 1.020 abv: 7.0%