Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Sour Cherry Baltic Porter


Since I haven't gotten my huge hop order from HopsDirect yet, I've opted to brew the sour cherry baltic porter today. Mulling over some ideas for a new sour (to utilize the slurry from the Flanders' barrel), I was a little stuck. I tried looking to commercial sours (mainly Jolly Pumpkin and Russian River) for ideas, but I ended up back with something with fruit. I really enjoyed the cherry robust porter I brewed last year, and thought it would be nice with some funk. To mix it up a bit, I thought I'd try my hand at a Baltic porter. The main difference is fermentation. Baltics are traditionally brewed with lager yeasts, or ale yeasts at low temperatures (mid 50s to low 60s). They are also not as roasty as American porters, almost a malt bill mix of a dubbel and a brown porter. I have basically copied Jamil's Baltic recipe with a couple tweaks. I brought the OG down a bit as I didn't want something too alcoholic, and I added a couple ounces of roasted barley for some added depth. Finally, I tried to find a lager yeast that can handle higher than normal fermentation temperatures. I looked at California Common, Kolsch, German ale, and then at lager yeasts. I came upon Bohemian Lager, which according to Wyeast, can produce psuedo-lagers fermented in the high 60s.
Recipe:
5.5 gal batch, 8 gal boil
OG: 1.067
IBU~ 28.1

6# Pale 2 Row (mixture of Kolsch, Briess Pale and Briess 2 row)
7# Briess Munich 10L
.5# Special B
.5# Crystal 60L
.25# Carafa I
.25# Chocolate
.125# Roasted Barley
1 oz Glacier (7% AA) 75min
.5 oz Glacier (6% AA) 20min
Wyeast 2124 Bohemian Lager

11/04/09: Brewed this morning, no problems with the Barley Crusher. Mike gave me tips on his partial fly-sparge method so I thought I'd give it a try. I was concerned that I wasn't keeping the grain bed fluid enough, so I batched the last 3 gallons of sparge water. Since I'm still on the netbook I couldn't have the recipe copied over from Tasty Brew, so I wrote it up very simply.
I mashed this one at 154 for 60min, and boiled for 75min. Saved about 3L of wort for a starter, will chill in the morning and decant in the afternoon and hopefully pitch around 60 or so degrees. Dregs and cherry puree will be added in secondary, those notes will follow.
11/12/09:
Gravity down to 1.021 so plenty of sugars left. Going to pitch some slurry from the barrel and Drie Fonteinen to get the funk going. I'll probably rack in another couple weeks.

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