St. Brigid's Brew: Ould Porter

5/1/23-Grain was smoked about a 1 1/2years prior, dried and refrigerated. Switching to Meridian hops. Using yeast cake from Red Rye IPA, so S-05, oak chips and hops in fermenter. Water Mods: 2g Gypsum, 1g Epsom, 1g CaCl, 10g Chalk, 2g Baking Soda, 1ml Acid Sparge. Forgot to stir minerals, so sledge left behind.
6/12/21-Bottling off keg. Next time, add 1 more oz. EKG at 15 and at WP, ~40-45 IBU.
5/22/21-Kegged.
5/15/21-Finally brewing this up according to the new recipe with the new equipment. Lost 1/2G to the boil, lost maybe another 1 1/2G to grain, drips, hose changes, pump, etc. Learned a lot. 6 hours including clean-up. Fermenting with a toasted oak stick. Kegged on 5/22/21, tasted on 6/8/21-lightly smoky, roasty, sweet smelling, but dry in the mouth. Excellent! Do this again, just like this!
1/1/21-Smoked the malt for the next porter. Aging in the fridge.

12/28/2020-1st time AG. I will smoke the dark malts and this time I get to grind them in a proper malt mill. I will check PH, but I might need to add some baking soda. I am hoping for a higher temp on the mash for more body. The smoke was off and on in the previous batch, but it was well-received.

**Wanted to recreate a traditional wood-fired malt kiln flavor. Smoked wort 1-2 weeks earlier than brew day over Irish whiskey soaked oak chips. Dried grain in low oven. But it didn’t dry as well as I wanted, so I kept the grain refrigerated until brew day. Crushed grain by food processor. Couldn't take wet grain back to the LHBS for grinding (yeah, I need a home grain crusher). Mashed at 145 +/- ( Strike Water 3Q./165F, I need a mash tun that will hold temp) for 1 hour. Batch Sparged with 1 1/4G 180F Water. Ok, so the 23 ounces of Dark LME is a lie. I transferred to secondary my Barley Wine (12-14%, IBU 70-100, SRM 40) after only 1 week of fermentation. Apparently, I had more than 5 gallons to transfer (Thank You, Trustworthy Brewing in Burbank, CA and the Long Beach Home Brew Club and Strand Brewers Club!) so I made a 2 gallon boil of this porter, with the expectation that I would add 1 gallon of spring water; AND...2/3-3/4 of that gallon is half-fermented Barley Wine. Bottled 12/8/18 (19 Pints): delicious toasty coffee flavor, the smoke did not come through, though it showed up at different points in the aging process.