Djibouti Smoked Porter

Yesterday I spent all day watching football and brewing beer. It's not a bad combination, really. My recipe for the day was a smoked porter, whose name is a very long story not worth reiterating here.

The Recipe:

9 lb 2-row pale malt
2.5 lb rauch malt
8 oz chocolate malt
4 oz black patent malt

8 AAU (20g @ 11.1% AA) Chinook hops @ 60
4 AAU (28g @ 4% AA) Fuggles @ 20

1 Irish Moss tablet @ 15 min

Wyeast 1318 - London Ale III

Single infusion mash for 60 minutes at about 152° using 14.5 quarts; sparged with ~180-190° water until I had about 25 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.046
Est. IBU: 44

My pre-boil gravity was a measly 1.040, which means I only got about 55% mash efficiency. I have no idea what went wrong: same grind as a I always get at the homebrew store, and I mashed with a little over one quart per pound, which is pretty typical for my mashes. At 80% attenuation I'd be looking at another 4.7-4.8% ABV porter, quite along the lines of Seven-Eleven Porter. I guess we'll just have to see.

I also racked Brevity Wit yesterday. Its gravity read 1.016, or only about 60% attenuation; however, I noticed after inserting the airlock in the secondary that there was still quite a lot of fermentation activity going on; I think agitating the yeast did something. I think I'll leave it in the secondary for two weeks, agitating periodically to make sure I get a complete fermentation (with no bottle bombs).

In other news, we cracked open a couple more bottles of Mulligan ESB and they were, still, pretty much flat. I shan't be carbonating with table sugar again soon, methinks.