OK, Mardoo. With such subtle & subdued cajoling, how could I not aquiesce to your request....
Soooo many folks have asked me for this recipe (& variations thereof), that I'm just cutting/pasting from previous PM's. Anyone who was involved in the last winter swap at Yob's place will probably remember my 6.5% Porter, which was a "tamed-down" version of this little puppy:
Y2K (Caledonian Porter from Hell....!!!)
15Kg Pale Malt (Maltco I think?) (80%)
1Kg Amber Malt (5%)
740g Crystal (60 EBC) (4%)
500g Wheat Malt (3%)
380g Roast Barley (2%)
300g Chocolate Malt (all I had laying around at the time) (2%)
500g Malt-Dextrin powder (added during the boil) (4%). I'd be inclined to cut-back on the Malto-Dextrin powder (maybe 300-400g), but the full 500g worked, so if it ain't broke.......
Water Treatment (I'd guess about 35l):
2tsp Calcium Sulphate
1tsp Magnesium Sulphate
1tsp Sodium Chloride (Non-iodised table salt)
Mash-in @ 69C. Temp decreased from 69C to 61C over 2 hours (no insulation, no electronic temp. control, no pump etc. In those days, I was using gravity only).
Mash-out @75C.
Boil the absolute crap out of the first few litres of runnings to caramelise, then continue to run-off until SG 1010.
Total boil time - 90 mins.
100g Tettnanger pellets (5.5%) for 75 mins
60g Tettnanger pellets (5.5%) for 15 mins
Tettnanger was all I had laying around at the time.
Low to mid 30's IBU (This was before the days of brewing software to work things out & besides, I literally threw this thing together on-the-fly at a VERY, VERY pissy WortHogs brewday I hosted in September 1998).
Fermentation:
OG 1092 (no idea of the final volume-didn't keep good notes!)
Peet's Irish Ale yeast. This was dumped straight onto the yeast cake from a double batch of "standard" gravity version of the same beer (OG 1042) that I kegged on the same brew-day in order to free-up the fermenter & use the yeast.
Primary fermentation 1 week @ ~20C.
Secondary fermentation 6 weeks @ ~4C.
FG 1020-1025(?)
ABV: Somewhere~ 9.5%-10%
I used the Peet's Irish, 'cos it was what I had plenty of from the previous fermentation & needed something potentially able to ferment small titanium alloy blocks (that stuff was an absolute BEAST!). I think Wyeast 1084 is the same strain. Anything alcohol-tolerant, cold-tolerant & a clean fermenter will do. Scotch Ales aren't fruity.
I was seconded to Canberra for 6 weeks & didn't want to leave it in the primary, so I racked it (still very actively fermenting) into a 45L keg & chucked it in my ice-cream fridge @ 4C until I got back.
It was brewed in September 1998 & was still going @ 4C well into the new year. I just kept letting-off the pressure (& taking samples, of course!) each week until fermentation started to abate, then let it self-carbonate in the keg & then counter-pressure filled it into bottles around mid-Feb. 1999. At that stage it was still definitely "green".
It took a good year to start coming good & won it's first prize (3rd in Vicbrew '99) as an English Strong Ale. In 2001 it won a 1st at AABC as a Scotch Ale & was still winning prizes for the next few years (including an international 3rd in a Tri-Nations Comp.). It took 8+ years for it to start to drop-off. This is definitely one to put in bottles & store them away for a year (OK, 6 months if you can't wait!) before even bothering to sample.
I called it "Y2K" because it wasn't intended for consumption before the new millennium (NOT, as some suggested, that it would be so badly infected that it would require "de-bugging"!!).
