by

Scott Morgan

Sweet Imperial Texan Cowgirl Porter

(A tribute to that Ol’ Cowgirl Lynne O’Connor)

It sure is hot as summer passes us by, and I bet that there’s nothing more than a cool lager that will help to beat the heat.

Well no joy!

Brewing in the heat does not make things easy. Brewing at ambient temperatures almost dictates that Ales be made. This month’s beer is another Ale, but one that benefits from significant aging. One of the most important things for ambient brewing is to make sure that whilst you are subject to rise and falls of temperature, try to minimise temperature extremes.

For beers to be brewed in ambient temperatures, good quality yeast is required. It is almost compulsory. Unfortunately I do not consider that the yeast supplied in most kits is acceptable. Like a free lunch, there is no such thing as a good “all purpose” yeast.

When it comes to brewing in ambient temperatures, Australian brewers, particularly Kit brewers do some funny things.  Instead of selecting the right yeast to do the work, some brewers use things like aquarium heaters to brew in winter and take no notice of temperature in summer. Letting the yeast do the majority of the work not the brewer is a more logical way. In colder temperatures beer takes a longer time to ferment. This is a good thing. Lager yeasts like this temperature, and forcing hot conditions on them otherwise is not good. It is a bit like the tortoise and the hair, what is the rush?

To counter summer temps I brew in an old fridge that is long past working. I rotate frozen coke bottles to keep the temp down. The temperature stays pretty constant at 15C. Some brewers use the T-shirt method, whereby the beer is immersed in a water bath with a t-shirt placed over the fermenter to draw the water up and help keep down the heat. I once read in Zymurgy of an Arizonan brewer who put beer in the shallow end of his pool. I am wondering how he avoided light strike?!

But, any help, even a cool and shaded laundry floor is a good start. If you are not sick of me saying so, yeast is the key. The cheap, dried yeast that many of the kit beers supply does not cut the mustard!

Rant off.

Take a look at the information on the sidebars and please make any comments or ask any questions.

Happy Brewing!

Scotty.

Perspective

I have been told that this month’s beer is true to the Porter Style. The extra sweetness from a heavy amount of chocolate malt is the culprit. I believe Porter to be a dynamic and open style though, one that is loose in orientation. Porter’s history reflects this.

Finding a commercial example in Australia to compare and taste has recently become easier. I have never seen a Porter for sale in Australia, except for the recent release by the Sydney based Malt Shovel Brewery. Holding the style guru’s to ransom this roast barley flavoured beer with additions of wheat is pretty damn gnarly. Hats off to Chuck Hahn for going out to bat with this beer in the Australian market. Perhaps Samuel Smiths Tad caster may turn up, but wether it is fresh is another story. (Therefore I highly recommend the Malt Shovel beer and gallons of it!)

I have based this recipe on one of Lynne O’Connor’s of St Pats Brewers Supply’s Texas. Disappointed with the beers I was making a while back, I looked for recipes other then my own. St Pats is heaven on a stick and one the largest craft brewing suppliers in the USA. Take a look at the site, www.stpats.com. Lynne really knows her stuff; I guess a PHD in brewing chemistry helps.

Using the ingredients I had at home and following Lynne’s recipe, I put this beer together one Saturday morning. After all was said and fermented, the results blew me away.

Who says good beer cannot be made from liquid malt??

With this beer I won the Dark Ale section of the Eastern Suburbs Brew Club 2000 competition. This was the first beer I had ever entered in a competition, and it came as a complete surprise. Eric Young took the Hahn trophy, but with extra aging one never knows.

At the time of the competition this beer was only 3 months old. Having tasted the beer progressively, the beer became more rounded and at 8 months one wonders how it would have matched up against Eric’s winner.

This beer is extract based. Anyone who says that you have to mash to create beer is plain wrong. Good beer is a result of good ingredients, especially yeast.

Historical Perspective

Porter was the first beer in history developed to meet a specific consumer market. Once it was established the industrial revolution lead to large-scale production. As the beer matured, newer ingredients, techniques and adulterations sacrificed the quality of the beer. Porter gave birth to stout, and then faded to almost extinction.

The beer that would become Porter was first brewed in 1722. Publicans of the time mixed complex blends of beers to meet consumer demand and to help beat taxation duties.  Porter was brewed to replace these blended beers and make life easier for the publican.

The name Porter comes from the target market of the beer.  Labourers, Porters and the like drank these darker blended beers. Although originally called Entire Butt, the name Porter soon superseded this due to its popularity.

Originally porters were based on brown malt. Brown malt was dried over wood fires that would have given the beer a roasted, smoky, slightly acidic (from the use of brettamyces in the aging process) and well-bittered beer. The colour would have been a ruby coloured beer rather than the modern day black.

As the industrial revolution began, Porter became established. The high levels of production required large scale brewing and high brewing temperatures. Temperatures of 24c to 26 c were readily recorded increased the likelihood of ester and fusel alcohol production in the beer.

Porter also required significant aging and breweries made huge wooden vats to do this. To decreased the aging process, blending and adulterations started to creep into the production processes. Laws had to be put into place to make the addition of various toxic items illegal.

Breweries competed in sorts to build the largest vats for aging until in 1814 the Meux disaster occurred. A ruptured vat set off a chain of events that lead to the deaths of 8 people in the breweries surrounding neighbourhood. Many more injured trying to drink the Porter that flowed in the streets. To bring some perspective to the size of these large vats, the largest made in England was approx 3 million litres!

As the life cycle of Porter matured, the use of brown malt subsided due to the inclusion of amber and pale malts. Brown malt gave low gravities compared to pale malt.  Cost implications certainly made pale malt more attractive.

The development of Wheelers cylindrical roasting drum was an important development for Porter in 1817. The new machine allowed the production of roast barley, chocolate and black patent malt. The later quickly replaced brown malt for use in Porters by major breweries.

By the late 1800’s Porter’s popularity began to decline. Pale Ale began to take over as the dominant beer in Britain. Stout increased in popularity and Porters market share and gravities started to slip. The breweries in London, the traditional market for Porter, had all but stopped brewing the beer by 1930. Guinness continued to make the last British Porter till 1974 when production ceased.

Porter has slipped to niche status in craft brewing in the USA, UK and Australia. Through my own time living and travelling in the USA, I long ago tasted quite a few craft brewed Porters, the nicest being from a small craft brewery in Santa Barbara California. Regrettably I have forgotten the name of the brewery.

As for commercial examples Samuel Adams, Sierra Nevada and Anchor Brewing are examples of American Porters. Samuel Smiths Tad caster Porter is a British version. Again our local product carrying the flag is Malt Shovel brewery's James Squire Porter.

From the beginning, the beer style has been an evolution of profiles, ingredients and methods. This provides a basis for my argument that the beer should lack strict style definition and allows for garage-based ingenuity. Some brewers are obsessed by style guidelines; others do not care how the beer conforms to style as long as it tastes good.

Porter perhaps provides a happy medium for both types of brewers.

Beer-O-Rama

Let's Brew

• In a small esky of larger pot add the ingredients into the mash at 72c or so. I used 4litres of water, without 1 litre lost to the mash. (Remember the temperature drop!)
  
  
• Stabilize to 67c for one hour and let mash complete.
  
  
• Once time has elapsed sparge the grains. I used a colander and approx 8 litres.
  
  
• I boiled in an 18-litre pot at a volume of approx 12 litres for 1 hour.
  
  
• Cooled beer in the sink using a water bath.
  
  
• Added to fermenter and topped up to 22litres when cool enough.
  
  
• Pitch Yeast and let the good times roll!

References

Daniels, R, Designing Great Beers, 1996, Brewers Publications Boulder Colorado

Papazian, C, World Of Worts - Heart of the Tide Imperial Porter,

In Zymurgy, Vol 22, No.1 Jan Feb 1999, Association of Brewers, Boulder Colorado.

Papazian C, The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing, 1991, Avon Books, New York.

Protz R, The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Beer, 1995, Carlton Books, London.