this is not your general's porter

About a week and a half ago my buddy Skip and I were chatting online about my brewing. He has been saying for a while now that he wants to come down and sample some of my brews.

I figured that I would try and brew a style of beer that he prefers. Upon asking him a preference, though, his answer was "my favorite beer is the one in my hand" -- while a good answer, not really what I was looking for. I haven't made a porter yet and had been thinking about doing one as I do like that style

He finally suggested a porter (sick minds and all that) he likes and I told him I would search for a recipe. I never found the particular one he was wanting, but apparently, I wasn't the only one searching as he sent me a link to a recipe (which I had just seen a few minutes earlier).

It was a recipe for General George Washington's Porter -- or at least a derivation of it. Some of the ingredients are no longer available and the fermentation procedure is substantially different due to better technology and overall knowledge. It wouldn't be his version, but based upon it at least. So anyway, I went ahead and ordered the ingredients for it.

I made a 1.5 liter starter for my yeast two days prior to brewing because it had been in the heat during shipping and I was concerned about the health of the cells. I never saw any action in the starter, but I didn't see any the first time I made one either.

Anyway, I did my usual setup of two boil pots -- one for steeping my grains and the other for boiling water. When the steeping pot got to 155*, I added the grains. Immediately, the water turned black. Usually it takes a few seconds for color to disperse through the water, but this time, it turned as soon as the grain bag hit the water.

After 45 minutes of smelling this roasty, coffee-ish goodness, I added this to the boil pot. I love the smell of coffee brewing, but just cannot stand the taste of it. It doesn't make any sense to me, but that's just the way it is.

Anyway, I then let the wort come up to a  rigorous boil and added my extract and bittering hops. Thirty minutes later, another hop addition, followed by one more 15 minutes after that. The recipe also called for molasses to be added at this point. This brew is dark enough already; 8 oz. of molasses would devour light.  ; )

I got it chilled down to 80* in 15 minutes time (4 bags of ice is the way to go --even for a full boil). It was then racked into my fermenter, aerated, and then I pitched the yeast. Within 12 hours it was bubbling, so there was enough healthy yeast cells to at least get started.

The gravity sample read 1.050 which was about 6 points low, but I am not worried about it. I tasted the sample and it was not the sweet syrup most worts tend to be.

This had a good flavor to it and was pure black, like a good porter should be. They say stout is porter's big brother. While both are good beers, I favor a porter over a stout anytime and this seems like it's going to be good, even if it's not what ol' George intended it to be.