Preparing to Branch Out

Today I went and got ingredients to do a dry Irish stout, marking my first branch from the porter style. It may end up being not so dry after all, as I upped the 2-row pale a little bit from the base recipe because I didn't want to make another three-two beer. The original recipe only had 5 lbs of 2-row pale so I threw in 2 more to make sure my gravity gets up over 1.040. I'm gonna try to brew tomorrow morning.

I racked #3, Seven-Eleven Porter, and got a likely final gravity reading of 1.010, so it's relatively sweet and clocks in at about 4.7% ABV. It's a little tart at this point, but it's got a pretty prominent coffee aftertaste which I really like, so hopefully after a week in the secondary and a week or two in the bottle it will be A-OK.

I also just cracked open my first bottle of #2. This was the half-bottle of the 21.5 bombers I bottled last week. It actually tastes more or less like #1 except less watered down -- pretty much just what I'd expected. It has a pretty prominent caramel flavor and I'd say another week will do it wonders.