January 23, 2007

For my third batch, I thought I’d continue my progression through the rainbow into darker ales. As I read up on Porters, I became intrigued with the notion of adding coffee to a dark ale. What could be better than combining these two great beverages? Since the coffee would be the most experimental step (for me), I returned to the Grape and Granary kits. At least that part of the recipe would be solid. Online, I found many different methods for adding the coffee, from dumping beans into the boil to adding brewed coffee to the secondary. I chose to add strongly brewed coffee to the fermentor. That way the yeasties could work on the coffee. I doubt there’s any fermentable materials in coffee, but I wanted the coffee to be passed through the yeast in case they did anything interesting to it. I also fancied that the yeasties might like a pick-me-up.

When I bottled the ale, there was a very pronounced coffee aroma.

The Recipe
Robust Porter + Coffee
Malts

Specialty Grains

Hops

Yeast

Other ingredients

The Numbers
(1/23) O.G. 54
(1/27) S.G. 16 (Racked to secondary)
(2/03) F.G. 14 (Bottled)
ABV: 5.16

Tasting Notes: March 27
Appearance
Very dark brown color, not black. Lighter brown highlights rather than the ruby sometimes seen in darker brews. Poured with a dense, fizzy 1″ head that quickly shrank to 1/4″ and stayed to form spidery tracings as I drained the glass.
Aroma
Intense coffee aroma with malt and hops and a hint of chocolate.
Taste
It seems that the bitterness of the coffee complements the bitterness of the hops summing up to something greater than the two. There is an underling maltiness to balance the bitterness. Wyeast claims that the London Ale yeast provides some slight fruitiness; I detect some of that fruit in the aftertaste.
Drinkability
I would call this a medium-bodied porter. It’s dryness makes it easy to drink; it is not cloying. Not being a big fan of overly bitter brews, this is on the upper end of my taste. It’s alcohol is too high to be called a session ale. On the other hand, it seems to be a nice sipping brew. Those I’ve shared it with have said they liked the flavor, but didn’t usually drink more than one.
Overall impression
I am ready to call this a successful experiment. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how to describe the coffee flavor. OTR Blend is a deep, rich, earthy coffee that certainly asserted itself over the porter. I’m also still too new to all of these flavors to be able to adequately describe the complexity of the hops. I am enjoying the complexity of this effort. In addition to the coffee, this batch also featured my first use of liquid yeast. It was interesting to see what effect the yeast could have on the end product. In all truth, it was actually T4 that showed me clearly a yeast affecting the brew, but now that I see what those effects can be like, I see how the London Ale yeast added to the underlying complexity of the porter. I look forward to tasting this brew over time and watching it develop.

It’s Spring Break! Woo and/or Hoo! In any case, don’t know what our connectivity is going to be for a bit, and I don’t have the time today to comment on all the things that are fighting for writing time. In short however:

• Finished Dante’s Hell and am scurrying on up Mt. Purgatory. Sayers intro to Purgatory is absolutely delightful and needs comment.
• This past weekend, two broadcast channels in our area were showing the movie G.I. Jane almost simultaneously. Why? The film’s rendering of what it might be like for a woman entering into special military training is difficult at times. However, as brutal as it is, the recent article by Helen Benedict reveals that the real life of women in combat is even scarier. Given all the angst over the conditions for our wounded soldiers here at home, I wonder if the large number of women who are being assaulted by our own men are getting any kind of proper care for their emotional and physical scars.
• T3: Porter the Rhine is coming of age this week. Tasted a bottle last night and found it to be filled with coffee goodness. T4: CP’s Who’s In The Garden Grand Cru W/Revisions wasn’t ready for Spring Break as I’d hoped. Had to rack it into a secondary yesterday since I won’t be able to get to it for a couple more weeks. However, the brew at this point did have some interesting flavors. I’ll be interested to see if it retains the very odd odors that I assumed were the result of the Belgian Witbier yeast.
• There needs to be a larger volume of critical writing about literature that’s aimed at the undergraduate. Will expand later.

Well, there’s more floating about in my wee little head, but that’s all I have time for this morning. If truffin.com seems rather quiet, assume I’m frolicking about in fjords, fields, or fens.

I haven’t really done much meme-related activity here at truffin.com. Don’t know why. Maybe you do.

At any rate, I ran across this at Sara’s blog and thought it looked fun. You can now

take a test

to see how well you know me. I made up the questions, so they’re not just random silly things like “What color is Todd’s navel lint?” They’re serious things that only friends would know like “What show does Todd watch and feel guilty about every time?”

Have FUN!

Cantos xviii-xxx navigate through the second region of Nether Hell, the 8th Circle, wherein lie the malbowges. Down here in the middle reaches of heaven we move away from those whose sins are the result of uncontrolled nature and into the sins that are concsciously chosen. It is also in this circle that we see most clearly one of the main difficulties of categorizing sin: granularity. Up to this point, Dante has been fairly willing to use a fairly low level of granularity. The 2nd circle doesn’t differentiate between kinds of lustfullness. They all go there, and that’s that. But here in the malbowges, the 8th circle is subdivided into 10 sub-levels of Fraud and Malice.

It’s easy to debate who should be higher or lower in Dante’s lowerarchy. Dr. W’s class was puzzled by Dante’s placing Theives lower than Simoniacs (those who sell church positions) and Barrators (those who sell political positions, bribers). Dr. W explains

Dante’s lowerarchy is based, though, on what the sin does to the sinner, not the damage it does to the victim. The guy who takes my wallet has personalized his offense; he cannot escape or hide from the fact that he is stealing from an actual real person, but he does it anyway, so his is a more straightforward embrace of sin than the corrupt official. The damage he does to his own soul is eternal, but what he takes from me is only temporal, so there is reason to say that the eternal evil trumps the temporal, and it is therefore right to make the damage he does to himself the rationale.

However, as Dr. W’s class astutely observes, by creating a cynical attitude towards the church, the Simoniac damages not only his own soul but also imperils other souls as well; his damage is eternal. I myself found it interesting that even granting the reasoning behind placing thieves lower than both Dante still deems the corruption of church offices a lesser offense than the corruption of government.

That said, the character Dante displays an uncharacteristic outburst while visiting the Simoniacs that seems to indicate that (more…)