Backyard Blackberry Porter

I think this blog should include details of our homebrewed beer adventures. Seems like a good place to store notes and recipes for ourselves, and the very occasional wanderer who stumbles in and cares. This idea just occurred to me, so I don't have any details at the moment. Here's the summary.

We've made 2 beers now and are currently making our 3rd.

#1 - Irish red ale from a pre-hopped kit. Decent, but not great. Strong malt flavor, and weak alcohol level (3% or so - I think the fermentation got stuck).

#2 - Wrong Cup IPA. We used an IPA recipe from the local homebrew store. It was already a hoppy recipe, but we screwed up and added 1.5 oz of bittering hopes instead of 0.5 oz. It has a lovely aroma, but face-puckering bitterness. It's awesome mixed half & half with something malty, like our first beer. :)

#3 - Backyard Blackberry Porter. We used the Robust Porter recipe from the beer store but included 4 lbs of fresh blackberries from our backyard. These were briefly steamed then added to the secondary fermentor. The taste of the beer, before the secondary, was lovely - rich, dark, with that porter-like bite. After adding the blackberries, the taste mellowed out some and had a rounded sweetness to it. I think this will be fantastic. It still needs a week or two in the secondary, then a few weeks in the bottle.. homebrewing is for the patient..

Oh yah - while making the porter, we had a massive boilover. About a gallon of the wort went all over our stove, countertop, dishwasher, cabinets, and floor. Keep in mind this was porter, so it was dark & stain-prone like coffee. Not to mention boiling hot and sticky with sugar. Uggghhh, what a mess.