Batch #3, Smoked Porter

As an early birthday gift, I received a freezer to use as a fermentation chamber. I purchased an after market temperature controller from (The Brewmeister) in Roseville after talking to Erik, the owner about temperature controllers. He advised that the analog would be sufficient for anything that I planned on doing now or in the future and that a digital would be spending extra money unnecessarily.

So now, thanks to Christy, Dad, Justin, and Janie I can brew all summer long and I can even now lager!

For my first beer in the new chamber I chose to do a Smoked Porter Recipe Kit from the Brewmeister. It sounded good, Christy wanted to have it for an upcoming holiday party and well, I didn't have any other recipes that I wanted to try for the time being.

The ingredients are as follows:
7 lbs. Pale liquid malt extract
1 lb. RauchMaltz
1 lb. Crystal malt
1 lb. Chocolate malt
1 lb. Black Patent malt
1.50 oz East Kent Golding Hops (for bittering, 60 minutes boil)
0.50 oz East Kent Golding Hops (for aroma, 0 minutes boil)
0.25 oz Irish Moss for clearing Corn sugar for bottle conditioning
1 packet of Safale S-04 Ale Yeast

I may have misread the original gravity as I measured it at just a hair over 1.040 (and not much higher after adjusting for temperature) which seems a bit low as the expected is 1.054.

I placed the wort in the fermentation bucket and placed it in the chamber around midnight on Friday, October 12. The Brewmeister directions indicate to rack to secondary after 7 days, and let clear for 10-14 days and then bottle. After bottling, it is recommended to let the hops mellow for 3 weeks...looks like I won't be sampling this beer anytime soon. Bummer, but it'll be that much tastier when I do get to it.