Brew Day - 4 BeeCee Porter

Wow, it hardly feels like two weeks since I last brewed (!), and here we go again.

I've been meaning to lay down something strong and dark for the winter - there's something about the long winter nights that calls for a warming kick of alcohol and a rich dark beer. I'd decided on a porter (a Robust Porter if you want to get all BJCP style guideline pedantic on me) but I decided I wanted a bit of a twist on the traditional. I found an excellent recipe on the internet for a whisky & vanilla-infused porter but I was a bit concerned that the whisky would overwhelm the porter. In the end, with a little bit of advice from Jim's Homebrew Forum I decided on a honey porter, and came up with the following recipe:
2 x 1.8kg cans Muntons Light Liquid Malt Extract
400g Dark Crystal Malt
200g Chocolate Malt
200g Black (Patent) Malt
150g Roast Barley
30g Pacific Jade hops @ 60 min
20g NZ Fuggles @ 10 mins
1 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 mins
500g honey (added after the heat had been turned off)
2 x Safale S-04 English ale yeast

Here's a photo of the assembled gear:

The speciality malts (crystal, chocolate etc.) were steeped in grain bags at 75 degrees for 30 mins, resulting in this luscious black liquid:

The grain bags were then removed - you can see the final dregs of goodness seeping from them in this photo:

After that it was just a matter of topping up to the boil volume and adding the malt extract ready for boiling:

(there's something dodgy about the perspective on that photo - I'm sure that pan is way bigger than my stomach in reality!)

After that it's the same old brewing process: boil, add the hops, add the irish moss (to try and get rid of some of the haze-forming proteins), cool the wort, rehydrate the yeast, pitch it and off we go!

This is another prospective entry in the SOBA National Homebrew Competition, so let's hope it turns out OK. It's tasting good so far - I drew off a sample to check the original gravity (bang on the button at 1.055) and it tasted pretty good. A definite hint of honey, but not overpowering and the hops were also present. Another successful (if tiring) brew day.