2014 Rapsberry Porter Version below (the beer was only 3 weeks old, looked great and tasted great!)
2013 Pumpkin Porter Version below:
A 5 gallon batch recipe for a nice Pumpkin Porter, based on the recipe of a Edmund Fitzgerald porter clone with our tweaks. We wanted to give it a British theme, so that’s the pale malt we used, but any pale malt suitable for use in porters or stouts should work well.
In addition we are providing you a link to a very good article on the subject of porters in general, a recommended read – by Brew Magazine:
http://byo.com/porter/item/1260-practical-porter
Grain:
- 8 lb Pale Malt – we used (British pale malt)
- 3/4 lb Crystal 60 L Malt
- 1/2 lb Chocolate Malt
- 3/4 lb Roasted barley Malt
Hops:
Hops are rated using AAU’s in this recipe, it stands for Alpha Acid Unit, the math is to divide whatever AAU you need by the acid level printed on the label of your hops (per 1 ounce). For example our hops were: Norther Brewer 8.6%, Cascade 6.7% and Fuggle at 5.3%. So 7 AAU’s of Norther Brewer is 7 / 8.6 = 0.81 ounces of Northern Brewer (so you will need a scale), you should be fine if you round-off, but then you loose exactness of the formula.
- 7 AAU’s or 0.81 ounce / Northern Brewer @ 0 minutes (from start of boil)
- 4 AAU’s or 0.75 ounce / Fuggles @ 30 minutes
- 8 AAU’s or 1.19 oz / Cascade @ 60 minutes
Pumpkin:
Add in at last 10 minutes of rolling boil, if you want more pumpkin flavor try adding at last 5 minutes or at end of boil.
A good chunk of either fresh or frozen organic sugar pumpkin is the best, you can substitute for canned pumpkin that you can buy in the store, but……… If you have a little property, try growing some sugar pumpkins, those are the best – or buy them from your local farm and prepare your own pumpkin meat.
In our recipe we used a 2.2 lb chunk of a earlier prepared frozen pumpkin meat! Article on how to do that here: https://kodiakbrewing.com/wordpress/?p=1364
Spices:
What about the spices that typically go along into a regular pumpkin ale ? We didn’t use it in our recipe, but you are more than welcome to try if you want :- )
Mash:
We did the standard mash at 152 F for 60 minutes using the batch sparge method.
video of mashing phase:
video of mash out:
Yeast:
We used – WYEAST London ESB #1968, use your house strain if it is suitable for a Porter.
Fermentation:
A recommended temperature is about 65 F – but there exists various different techniques, so do some research if you want to know more.