Bumble Bee Porter

Description:

After working on this recipe for over a year, I think I can finally share it with the brewing public. It is virtually identical to the original, but I’ll let you be the judge. Special thanks to George De Piro and Hiawatha for their input during the recipe’s formulation. I really hope you enjoy it!

Ingredients:

• 5 pounds American Two-Row (I used Briess)
• 1 pound Belgian Biscuit
• 1 pound DWC Munich
• 12 oz. Belgian Special-B
• 8 oz. DWC Chocolate Malt
• 8 oz. British CaraPils
• 8 oz. Flaked Barley
• 4 oz. DWC CaraMunich
• 4 oz. DWC Aromatic
• 2 oz. Black Patent
• 0.5 oz. Galena (12.0%) 60 minutes
• 0.5 oz. Galena (12.0%) 45 minutes
• 0.5 oz. Cascade (5.9%) 30 minutes
• 0.5 oz. Cascade (5.9%) 15 minutes
• 1.0 oz. Tettnanger (3.8%) 5 minutes
• yeast cultured from Black Butte Porter

Procedure:

Mash with 1 quart/pound. Strike water: 2.5 gallons of 170F water. Add 0.5 gallons boiling water to raise mash to 158F. Recirculated 4 quarts of mash, then drained 4 quarts of mash and heated to boil. Returned to mash for mashout. Sparge with 5 gallons water.

Once boil is established, begin hop schedule. I added two quarts distilled water 30 minutes into the boil (it was a warm day and the boil was rolling nicely). I added my immersion chiller with 30 minutes remaining. After cooling, I added 1/2 teaspoon HopTech Foam control to a sanitized 6 gallon carboy, then carefully poured the cool wort through a stainless steel strainer nested in a large funnel. After chilling the wort further in a water bath to 58F, I aerated the wort using an aquarium pump, 0.22 micron filter, and aquarium airstone for 30 minutes.

The yeast, which came from a bottle of Black Butte Porter, was stepped up to a 2000ml starter. I think the fermentation temperature might have been too cold (60F) because it took almost 36 hours to reach active fermentation. Temperture was maintained at 60F for seven days, then racked to secondary, where temperature was allowed to stabilize at 65F for two weeks. Bottled using 5/8 cups corn sugar. Allow at least four weeks in the bottle to condition before taste testing.