Black Panther Porter 40L Brewing Journal

Started 25th January 2020

Full bodied and full of flavour, almost black in colour. Porter is an old favourite that always gets good reviews. This is the first time using yeast from "Imperial" but they are very highly rated, so I am expecting some good results.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

Recipe	Measure
Brew Length	40L
Pale Malt (EBC 6)	8100g
Crystal Malt (EBC 150)	980g
Chocolate Malt (EBC 950)	484g
Flaked Oats	210g
Fuggles (Start of Boil)	100g
East Kent Goldings Pellets (Last 10 Min)	30g
Yeast (Using Starter)	Imperial A09 Pub
Mash Liquor	25 Litres
Strike Heat	72C
Mash Temperature	66C
Mash Time	1 Hour 30 Minutes
Sparge Temperature	77C
Mash Efficiency (estimated)	75%
Boil Time	1 Hour 30 Minutes
Fermentation Temperature	18C
Expected OG	1054
Actual OG	1050
Expected FG	1017
Actual FG

Water Treatment:

Recipe	Measure
CaCo3 Adjustments
Calcium Carbonate CAC03	160 ppm
Calcium Carbonate Required	125 ppm
Adjustment Necessary	35 ppm
CRS per Litre Required	1.5 ml per 10L
Total CRS to add to Mash (25L)	3.75 ml
Total CRS to add to Sparge water (9+24L)	1.5 and 3.6 ml
*Chlorine Treatment*
Campden Tablets (half in mash, half in sparge)	1 tablet
Calcium Adjustment (using brupaks calculation)
Calcium in Water	63 ppm
Calcium Required	110 ppm
Adjustment	47 ppm
DLS (using GW Calc it suggests adding none)	1 Tsp

Water Schedule:

This brew will be batch sparged, so the water will be scheduled as follows:

Mash = 25L using 3.75 ml of CRS +1/2 Campden Tab
Top Up = 9L using 1.5 ml of CRS
Final Batch Sparge = 24L using 3.6 ml of CRS and 1/2 campden tab

Mashing:

Using SS Brewtech infussion mash tun.

Mash cleaned ann Tun pre warmed
HLT topped back up and set for 78C
Water treated with 3.75ml CRS and 1/2 Campden tab.
25L of water added to the mash tun, which settled to 74C, stirred until 72c
Doughed in + 1 tsp of gypsum
Temperature dropped to 66C. which is perfect.
Measured temperature with Thermapen and mash was showing as 66C but mash tun probe is still showing 66C in middle of mash.
mash will now be left alone for 1.5 hours.
10 minutes left on the clock and mash tun thermometer is showing as 66.5c
Final temperature was around 66C

Sparging

25L of sparge water was heated to 85C and treated.
Recirc started and run for 10 minutes.
Added 10L Top up, stirred and continued recirc.
Topeed up HLT to 24L and set for 82C.
Pumped wort into boiler and stopped once below sight glass.
Added 24L of sparge water to mash tun, stirred and started recirc. Left running for 15 minutes.
Pumped to boiler and stopped just as the turbid last runnings appeared in the pipe.

Boiling

I used the hop strainer that came with my boiler as this has bigger holes. This seems to work much better but did mean that there was additional wastage as not all wort was extracted from the boiler.
The Boiler was switched on as soon as first few litres of wort had drained from Mash Tun.
The Gas had bee running since first batch runnings added to the boiler. The burner has a new wind sheild which seems to have speeded up the time required to reach boiling point as the wort reached teh bopil before the batch sparge was ready to be added to the bolier.
70g of Fuggles hops added at start of boil.
Good rolling boil for 1h 30 m was planned. During lunch break the wind managed to blow out the flame so boiling paused. This was re-lit and then took around 5 minutes to bring back to a boil.
Last 15 minutes. added Immersion coil inserted to ensure sterilised.
Post boil gravity = 12.5 brix, 1050. This is quite a bit under the planned 1057 but will still amke an acceptable beer. After checking my recipe I noticed that brew house efficency was set to 75% and I have had this set at 70% for recent brews so this accounts for the difference.
Chilling took about 35 minutes with the new larger stainless steel wort immersion chiller.
Recirc was intermittently swsitched on during chilling to ensure no hot/cold spots formed.

Fermentation:

A 1.8L yeast starter of A09 Pub was started 2 days before and refrigerated the evening prior to brew day. Most of liquid pired off of yeast and some of teh wort added to acclimatise the yeast.
16:40 Yeast pitched at 23C
25/01/20 23:59 Krausen has started to form already so fermentation has started.
26/01/20 10:00 Fermentation well under way, Krausen is now 3" thick.
27/01/20 19:00 Fermentation has started to slow down and the Krausen is now quite thin. The Brix reading was 8.5, which is areound 1024
29/01/20 Temperature is 18.4c and Brix reading is 6.7, which is around SG1013. Temperature will now be raised to 20C for a 24 hours diacetyle rest before cold crashing.
30/01/20 Temperature set at zero degrees C but will probably only get as low as 3C with my set-up
31/01/20 Temperature now 5.4C
01/02/20 Gently stirred in Gelatin
03/02/20 2 Corny kegs and 4 x 500ml bottles filled. Kegs were purged a few times.

Tasting Notes:

This beer has cleared brilliantly and the colour is almost black. There is great mouth feel and the hop schedule has produced a light bittering making this a very easy drinking beer.