Plum Crazy Porter

I also filter my beers so that will also help, but like you say, its a porter so the cloudiness will be negligible at the the worst.

I bet it will be good as all of your beers are. My thought is that I know from making wine that plums have an extremely high pectin content and they say that it is hard to clear it even with larger doses of pectic enzyme. I'm not sure if you've taken that into consideration or how irish moss will do. I'm wondering what kind of cloudiness it would have, or if you would even be able to notice being a porter.

Sounds wonderful to me! I love wild game and I love craft beer!

my wifer makes a plumb wine sause for goose, that keeps ya begging for more! i think of how well that meal and a porter would be together and my mouth starts to water. (maybe it is the whole pavlov thing)

That sounds like a really good combination of flavors. You don't see plum used enough. I once saw a plum porter sauce recipe for pork. I think it had plums, porter (obviously), brown sugar, and maybe cinnamon or something. Either way, sounds tasty!

There are a lot of ways to add fruit to beer. What I wanted to do with the plums was to steep then during the last 10 minutes of the boil. When using real fruit is is often beneficial to freeze the fruit first to help break down the cell walls. If using purees and/or extracts, most of the time they are added to the fermentation and are specifically not to be boiled.

My original idea of the plum nut porter came from 1996 GABF where I sampled a plum nut brown ale made by New Belgium. It was a great beer and would make a great seasonal at the pub. I will be pursuing this plum crazy porter for a seasonal beer for the fall.

so added it after the boil? then so really the yeast is eating that sugar as well as the extract? it is not a juice, but you are putting the actual fruits to ferment?

I have done quit a few fruit batches and of course in the Mr Beer...But i always used canned fruit..i did several of what they call blue lightning, which of course has blueberry and then ones with cherrys for Christmas..they all turned out great especially when i started using the liquid yeast and the upgraded dry which i like.....The one thing is you want to use the canned fruit that uses natural fruit juices for the canning and the fruit sugars are prosessed and ready to break down...just a thought..i know it works good for extract brews and put in the wort when it goes into the fermentor after boiled ...Jeff

The whole process from start to finish of cleanup takes about 5 hours for a 5 gallon batch. Once you get your strike water to temp, put the the grains in for 1 hour. Then sparging takes about 1/2 hour. Boil time ranges from 90-60 minutes. Then chilling can take about 10 minutes, up 30 minutes depending on the chiller you use.

i am just curious, if i started brewing all grain, how long does it take? to get into the fermentor? i had a guy tell me it take about 8 hours. i didn't know but i know you do so on average say approximately 6 gallons for a brown, amber, or porter. it takes a long time to make te malt doesn't it?

I didn't get a chance to make it. The plums I had were at end of the season and they went bad before I could use them. And then I couldn't get anymore. I may be able to make it now with Chilean plums. I thought I saw some at Dans the other day.

i am very interested in how this turned out, i typically don't care for fruit in my beer, but i have never heard of anyone adding plums, it seems very interesting, i know if i was at a pub i would have to try it! after all it is a porter too!

i guess i really have only had the normal fruits, orange citrus, and blueberries.

just curious if you were happy with the results

Letting everyone know I am formulating a recipe for a plum, nut porter. Any suggestions. I pretty much have an idea of what its going to be and how I am going to brew it, just wanted to raise the topic for discussion. Brewing with fruit can be mysterious and scary, and taboo for that matter. Just waiting for the ingredients to arrive. Ordered them today.