Smoked Robust Porter

Well I just bottled up my Robust Smoked Porter that I brewed up a 10 gallon batch of. I'm pretty stoked to be doing 10 gallon batches now because I am the type of homebrewer that can't keep my hands off of my beers until they are fully matured. I feel the need to check how my carbonation is doing like every day or two at the most.

I am pretty happy that I got my efficiency back up a little bit. I had just bought a 14 gallon pot so I could do bigger beers (gravity and volume) but my efficiency took a nose dive. I'm still trying to correct the issue. When I made this porter, instead of just changing one variable at a time, I changed 2 things so I am not sure what is the reason for my increased efficiencey. Maybe it is both things. One thing I did was I did a batch sparge instead of fly sparged. I would think that that would make a big difference for a beer with an O.G. of 1.065. The other thing I did was I added a half pound of Acidulated Malt which dropped my pH down a little which makes for a better environment for converting starches to sugar. I think that had a lot to do with the increase. I'll have to tweak one of these variables at a time to really get it pin-pointed. Here is the recipe I used for this porter.

Grain

17 lb. Pale Malt (2-row)

6 lb. Smoked Malt (Weyermann German Malt)

2 lb Crystal 40L

2 lb Crystal 60L

1.5 lb Chocolate Malt

1 lb Munich

1 lb Black Patent

1 lb Vienna Malt

.5 lb Acidulated Malt (taste a little bit of this, Wow!)

Hops

1.58 oz. East Kent Golding (60 min/Pellet Hops)

1 oz. East Kent Golding (15 min/Whole Hops)

1.1 oz. Willamette (15 min/Whole Hops)

Yeast: California Ale Yeast from White Labs

Single infusion mash for 90 min at 151 F

Mash out at 170 F for 10-15 min.