The Asheville Porter

This was my first ever homebrew, and I must say it turned out nicely.  Oh, it was far from perfect, but given the number of things that can go wrong with homebrewing, it was a great first start.  It failed to carbonate properly, but I believe this is because I just dumped in the priming sugar to the bottling bucket without first boiling it with water.  I will assume that the sugar stayed where it started: at the bottom of the bucket.  I brewed this back in September and finished the last bottle of it last week.  I wasn't planning on blogging at the time, so I don't have any pictures of it.  Too bad, since it was a nice looking brew, dark brown with a small head.  The longer it sat in the bottle, the more the chocolate malt flaver became pronounced.  

The Asheville Porter is named in honor of the Asheville Brewers Supply where I embarked on my homebrew journey.

5 gallons, Extract

6lbs Northwestern Amber Liquid Malt

1lb Northwestern Dark Dry Malt Extract

.5lb British Chocolate Malt 

.5lb Dark Crystal Malt (200L)

1oz Kent Golding (bittering)

1oz Kent Golding (aroma)

White Labs London Ale liquid yeast

60 minute boil

Brewed grains at around 140 degrees, removed after 45 minutes.  Brought liquid to boil, removed from heat and stirred in malt.  Placed back on heat and brought to a gentle boil.  Added first round of hops and boiled for 50 minutes.  Added second hops and boiled another 10 minutes.  Strained wort into plastic fermenter and topped off to 5 gallons.

I wound up pitching the yeast at just under 85 degrees because I became impatient after a few hours.  I was really nervous the wort would become infected, etc. that I pitched it too early.  I'm kind of a nervous nelly about these things.  This was all compounded by the fact that I never saw a single bubble come out of the airlock.  I now know that this is because the lid had a leak in it, but I was quite upset at the time.  Three days after I pitched the yeast, I peeked under the lid and was greated with the sight of a krausen.  I like brewing in the plastic buckets, but it certainly has the drawback of not being able to see what's going on.  The brew turned out fine and 10 days later I bottled it.  Like I said at the beginning, I didn't do the priming sugar correctly and it never carbonated.  There are worse beers than porters to have low carbonation with, so all in all, not a bad first attempt.