I'm a diehard lover of smoked beer in a world that really doesn't believe in them. My first all-grain batch is based on the smoked porter recipe in Brewing Classic Styles, with adjustments to the grain bill and yeast regime based on availability and temporary lapses in attention.

Ingredients in this batch (July 2)

  • 6 lbs 4 oz Maris Otter malt
  • 1 lb 12 oz Simpsons Golden Promise malt
  • 1 lb Munich malt
  • 3 lbs 8 oz Weyermann Rauch malt
  • 8 oz black patent malt
  • 12 oz 350L chocolate malt
  • 1 lb 40L crystal malt
  • 1 lb 80L crystal malt
  • 1.25 Kent Goldings hops at :60
  • 0.75 oz Willammette hops at :30 and :15
  • 0.4 oz of Kent Goldings and Willammette hops at :00
  • 1 pack WLP051 California ale V yeast
  • ½ pack WLP001 California ale yeast
  • 7 gallons distilled water

Process

Heated 7 gallons of water to 165. Mashed around 154 for one hour; the last 10 minutes were closer to 164. Removed grain, heated to boiling, and added hops according to the schedule above. Starting gravity was 1.065. This beer fermented in our homemade swamp cooler type thing, and we bottled on 7/19. Only after adding the priming sugar did I realize that this finished way too high, at 1.036, for a calculated ABV of just 3.8%. A first test suggests that this is probably a batch of bottle bombs. Lesson learned: Read gravity before priming, girls and boys. With that said, it's a genuinely tasty beer: rich, complex, and with a pronounced smoke character without being overwhelming. Patrick suggests that our use of distilled water may be partially to blame for the messed-up gravity, so we're trying spring water for the next beer.