Aged Porter and Mild

In 2017 I designed and brewed a beer with Three Notch'd Brewing in Charlottesville, Blackwall London Porter. The recipe for Blackwall was based on copious amounts of research into porter brewing in the middle of the 19th century, and named for the docks in London which were so central to the history of the British Empire.

 

Featuring about 30% brown malt, the beer was only brewed a couple of times, but at the last brewing in 2018, I made sure to get myself a growler's worth for a little project. Beer hacking, to use Evan Rail's term. As well as my growler of Blackwall, I bought a bottle of Orval, which I promptly drank and pitched the dregs, containing all that brettanomyces goodness, into the growler, and soon enough the gasket on the swing top was thoroughly deformed as the additional CO2 created by our friend brett was expelled.

Yesterday, after nearly 8 years of the growler sitting on the shelf in my beer room, I took the opportunity of the head brewer from Selvedge helping me transport my new-to-me kegerator, to finally broach the growler.

I had two major concerns when I unclipped the lid...a geysir of foam, or being as lifeless as the grave. Thankfully neither happened and as you can see from the picture, there was carbonation in the beer, but not to excess, though the glass I poured for Josh did overflow, but that was more user error on my part than the beer itself.

So how did it turn out? Well, while it is true that I didn't take any notes, Josh and I had a pretty wide ranging conversation around what we were experiencing. In terms of the aroma, that classic barnyard character was present, not overwhelmingly so, however. Maybe it is because I grew up in a very rural area, but I have always found that character to be somewhat comforting. I was most relieved though there was no real vinegar aroma, and it was still identifiably a porter I was shuffling my nose about.

Tastewise I was getting some interesting nuttiness, I imagine from the brown malt - fun fact, when we first brewed the beer, the brewers at Three Notch'd were a little reticent about using 30% brown malt in the grist. I am glad I stuck to my guns on that one. Also in there was that thing which is often described as "vinous", which in this case reminded me of sour cherries, but lingering in the background was an umami character that I absolutely love in dark beers, just a merest wisp of soy sauce, but good quality soy sauce rather than industrially produced.

Clearly the presence of the brettanomyces had dried the beer out a little more than it had already been, but it wasn't like sucking lemons, just there was a tartness that I enjoyed. Nearly 8 years sitting around had meant that the hops were barely perceptible as anything more than bitterness in the finish. Overall I was really happy with how it turned out, and I enjoyed a couple of glasses, even persuading Mrs V to try a little as well.

I can't remember the exact quote, but I do recall seeing that well aged porters were described as being "racy and mellow", an epithet that now makes sense to me after this experiment. It's just kind of a shame that to repeat will mean brewing Blackwall at home again sometime...oh darn.

From one extreme, we went to the other, by broaching my final mini-keg "cask" of dark mild that I brewed earlier this year, and boy was that just flat out awesome. I think I need to get myself another couple of mini-kegs so that my mild brews can all be cask rather than in the keg. This one, Crystal Conjunction, was fine on keg, but with natural carbonation it absolutely shone. It's good to know that you can make very solid beer at home...

A Little Self Evaluation

So far this year I have brewed almost as many times as I managed in the entirety of 2022. It turns out that having children that understand instructions and get quickly bored of watching daddy watch a boil kettle and disappear to play in the yard makes getting back to all-grain brewing far more feasible, and even enjoyable once again. It might also help that I have replaced the crappy little push button faucet on my mash tun for a ball valve and draining the first runnings now takes 5 minutes where it used to take 20.

In getting back to brewing more regularly this year, I also made a commitment to use malt from our local maltster, Murphy & Rude Malting Company, as much as possible. I have been developing new recipes based purely on their malts, and updating some of my existing recipes as well.

The very first brewday of 2023 was to brew a long standing favourite style of mine, dry stout. The grist was made up of pale, biscuit, roast barley, and milk chocolate malts - milk chocolate is Murphy & Rude's name for pale chocolate malt. For hops I used the locally grown Challenger hops, and of course the water came from my well. The only non-local ingredient was the yeast, which is Safale S-04, basically my go-to yeast. Coming in at 4% abv, and with 40 IBUs, it looked like this:

Basically what you expect a pint of stout to look like, and those looks are not deceiving, it smells and tastes as you would expect a low gravity dry stout to taste, especially if your reference point is Murphy's rather than Guinness. While it is true I do like a pint of Guinness, if Murphy's is also on tap in the same establishment, I'd be on the Murphy's instead. One thing that struck me though with this being my first all Murphy and Rude malt homebrew was the freshness and clarity of the malt flavours, especially the biscuit and milk chocolate which lacked the fusty character that can sometimes be present in malts that have enduring long journeys from Europe to the US.

As Virginia's rather lame, mild, and snowless winter dragged on, thoughts began to turn to spring, and in particular my wife's fiddle teacher's kind of annual St Patrick's Day concert/gathering, for which I brew a couple of kegs of beer. Mrs V's teacher is Alex Caton, who in 2015 released an album of songs and poems from the mining communities of England and Appalachia called "Never Take A Daisy Down the Mine". For the album release party I brewed a dark mild called Pit Pony, and Alex asked for a re-brew for the gathering.

Pit Pony was a beer that I re-factored to use Murphy & Ride malts, though as they don't do a honey malt the grist wasn't 100% Virginian. However, I did use a blend of their Crystal 40, 60, 80, and 150, as well as the biscuit malt, all on top of their pale malt. Sure at 4.3% it is a wee bit stronger than some of the guidelines would say a dark mild should be, so let's just call it a best mild shall we? The hops were a remnant of East Kent Goldings I had knocking about, and so that the malt could shine through, I took advantage of Safale's US-05 for it's clean character. The crystal malts really are the star here, with lots of toffee, caramel, and a touch of singed sugar in the mix. My only regret was that I didn't put it in a cubitainer to serve as an ersatz real ale.

The third of my recent brews, there is technically a fourth but that is a re-brew of the stout, was a blonde ale so there would be something paler for those who equate dark colour with heavy beers.

This one is a completely new recipe for me. Continuing my 100% Virginian malt when possible commitment, the grist is Murphy & Rude's Virginia Pils, Vienna, Crystal 15, and Soft Red Wheat malt which gave me an ABV of 4.5% and that absolutely banging colour. On the hops front, I decided to use up some Cascade I had in the freezer, with a calcuated 23 IBUs, though with a healthy addition at flameout just for aroma. I stuck with US-05 for the yeast, though this time more to let the hops do their thing. I realise I am biased, but damn this is one lovely beer, well, was as my neighbour and I kicked the keg last weekend. I will be brewing this several times this year I am sure, though likely swapping out the hops to get different characters, I definitely plan a version with Saaz, and likely one with Hallertauer Mittelfrüh,  perhaps even a 100% Fuggles one as well.

With regular brewing very much back on the table, and a kegerator in the kitchen to justify the expense of by having beer regularly on tap, I can see homebrew making up a greater portion of my drinking this year.