Brew #5: Disaster Porter

I spent Saturday attempting to create a Porter similar to the Black Butte Porter:

9 lbs 2-row malt
8 oz chocolate malt
4 oz black patent malt
8 oz honey malt
4 oz Victory Malt (subs. for Roasted Barley)
4 oz rice hulls for sparging

1 oz Galena Hops, pellets (60 min)
2 oz Cascade Hops, whole (30 min)
1 oz Tettnager hops, pellets (2 min)

Wyeast #1338 European Ale Yeast (from starter 30 hours old)

Final volume was 5 gallons, my final gravity was 1.055. In the image, the porter is on the right.

I wanted to do a step mash in 3 steps: 125 Protein rest, 154 Sach. Rest, 158 mash out.

It was a disaster. I was working alone and watching my youngest daughter at the same time. I could not hit the temperatures. I shot past all of them and had to add water to cool down and I think I ended up passing the 180degree point while trying to mash out because the wort has a bitter taste that arrives well after swallowing and remains on the palette for a long time.

I am going to let it ferment and taste it at racking, but I am pretty sure the batch is spoiled and I will need to toss it.

In the future I will not be doing step mashes.

In addition to the temp. problems, I dropped the lid in the brew pot and had to stop the boil to retrieve it and ran out of sparge water before reaching my target volume.

My volume at the start of boiling was 7.2 gallons, and I ended up with just shy of 5 gallons in the fermenter. I HATE WHOLE HOPS!!!