Don's Most Wickid Ale

Classification: porter, all-grain

Source: Don McDaniel (dinsdale@chtm.eece.unm.edu) Issue #740, 10/8/91

Tasted quite smoky and bitter at bottling. Kind of like a Porter rather than the brown ale I had in mind. Four weeks later...WOW! Both the smokyness and bitterness had mellowed. The beer was very dark, very malty with a complex flavor from the molases and black patent malt. The malt was balanced perfectly by the hops. My best beer yet. Had a thick, rich, smooth and long lasting head. I'm not aware of any commercial brew with which this beer can be compared. It sits between the brown ales available and something like an imperial stout or Mackeson XXX. Finally, don't Knock the use of a pound of sugar. It comes to only about 1/7 of fermentables, sugar is standard in British brewing and most importantly IT WORKED!

Ingredients:

6 pounds, pale ale malt
3/4 pound, crystal malt
1/4 pound, black patent malt
1 pound, corn sugar
1 cup, blackstrap molasses (strong stuff. don't mess with any wimpy Brer Rabbit stuff.)
10 AAU, Northern Brewer, 60 min. boil
6 AAU, Cascade, steep
Wyeast 1028 London Ale yeast
1/2 cup, corn sugar to prime

Procedure:

Mash grains in 10 quarts water at 150 degrees for 90 min. Mash pH 5.5. Mash-out 5 min. @ 168 degrees. Sparge with 5 gallons water @ 168 degrees. Disolved sugar and molases into runnings. Boil 90 minutes. Add Northern Brewer hops 30 minutes into boil. Turn off heat and add Cascades. Cool. Let sit over night. Rack off trub and pitch yeast. Temp at pitching: 62 degrees. After five days in primary, rack to secondary. Let sit for ten days then rack into bottling bucket with disolved priming sugar and bottled.

Specifics:

O.G.: 1.052
F.G.: 1.010
Primary Ferment: 5 days at 60--65 degrees
Secondary Ferment: 10 days at 60--65 degrees