Okocim Porter is dark black in color with a creamy, cappuccino-colored head. The nose is malty and sweet with traces of roasted malt. The full-bodied flavor is brimming with roasted malt and molasses with a nicely balanced hop presence. This porter finishes with an aftertaste dominated by dry roasted grains.
We started by boiling about a gallon of water and let it sit for a while, until it cooled to ~150deg F. Then we chucked in a sock full of our specialty grains!
12oz Weyerman Caramunich Malt
4oz Paul's Black Patent Malt
4oz Paul's Chocolate Malt
4oz Weyerman Dark Munich Malt
We let that sit for about twenty minutes before sparging with cold water from the hose, bringing our total up to about 1.5 gallons. Then we brought it to a boil again before removing it from our turkey fryer and adding the following ingredients.
12.25 pounds Pale Malt Extract
12oz Malto-Dextrin
1oz Brewers Gold Hop Pellets
We brought this up to a boil, yet again, and let it roll for 45 minutes-ish. Here is Max stirring with the trademarked Samurale brewstick.
Jon spent a good bit of time scraping and hacking at this log to turn it into a handmade stirring stick.
Somewhere in here we sanitized the bucket with Iodophor sanitizer.
At T-minus fifteen minutes we chucked in the final bit o' hops.
1/2oz Sterling Hop Pellets
To cool the brew quickly, we threw in the wort chiller and ran some cool water through this copper pipe dunked in the brew. Garden hoses are important for brewing!
Finally, right before buttoning up our brew bucket we added the final ingredient. The little yeastie beasties that do all of the work to make our beer a beer!
White Labs 500 Trappist Yeast
In 5-7 days, we need to move it over to the secondary fermenter. We also have 5 gallons of cider waiting for kegging!
Next time: We're going to set up the kegging system and get our cider under some pressure. Sweet fizzy fizzy go!
Now, kegging is one of those things that when you're ready for it, you should already have a working relationship with the wonderful folks down at your local brew store. By the time you've gotten this far you've found your local brew store right? This place is the mecca of the home-brewer, or at least the local temple. There is nobody working there who doesn't love beer more than you can imagine. More than even I can imagine. Their wisdom flows freely, like good drink amongst better friends. Learn from the priests of the brew.
