First Holiday Homebrew!
In five years of homebrewing, I have never made a holiday beer. Then, while looking through Zymurgy I saw a Peppermint Porter that caught my eye.
I didn’t make a bunch of changes to the recipe from the magazine – I did change the yeast (I used Imperial A10 Darkness instead of Nottingham), and I used Chocolate 350L instead of what appears to be Chocolate 450L, and I used a peppermint holiday tea blend instead of straight peppermint tea. Otherwise, I used the recipe as-is.
I did use some water adjustments. The dark grains and my alkaline water tends to push the pH high and it’s low on bicarbonates for a brown balanced beer so I added some pickling lime (I didn’t want to bring sodium up with baking soda).
With the grain milled, mashed, boiled, and hops measured, everything proceeded as normal…
After getting the boil setup, I realized that I forgot to change out the upper port on my kettle with the dip tube that I use for whirlpooling. I was able to tilt the kettle towards the end of the boil and replace it. After that I didn’t stop to think what else could go wrong.
Little did he know, something else would go wrong
–Narrator
I got to the end of the boil and brought the temp down to about 185-190, which was my recollection of the proper tea steeping temperature (it was black tea, it should have been higher, but whatever). I added in the tea bags, which had no strings or tags (this was swanky mass-produced tea, not low-class-Lipton mass-produced tea!). The screen was full of hops (this recipe calls for 4 oz of hops) In hindsight, I should have thought about the fact that those things could sink and clog the dip tube.
And clog the dip tube, they did
–Fucking Narrator
After dealing with the clog from Hell (aren’t they all?), I got the wort down to 68F and added the yeast. I let it rock for a day and saw that it was getting a little too warm, so I moved it to a water bath (something I will likely do more of). This brought the temperature back down to 68F. Fermentation went QUICK. I brewed on Saturday, by Monday evening, it was at 1.012, and Tuesday evening it was at 1.010 I added around 2 oz of Kona coffee beans on Tuesday evening and noticed something in the fermenter. I don’t taste any off-flavors, so I’m hoping it’s just some krausen or tea bag that made it through or something.
Fortunately, it was just a part of a tea bag
That damn narrator again
The numbers:
OG: 1.059
FG: 1.011
ABV: 6.4%
Taste
Aroma and flavor are light peppermint and coffee. The flavor also adds some cream and a hint of smoke. It’s very pleasing and very festive. 🍻
