Damson Porter

Andy has a walk that he does at this time every year near Tarporley in Cheshire. He does it partly because of the abundance of damsons and sloes in the hedgerows in late September. This year he picked 3.5kg of damsons and we have used them to make a damson porter.

We brewed it last week, and the base porter recipe was as follows:

Grain Bill

• 4.31kg maris otter pale ale malt
• 450g brown malt
• 450g crystal malt (45L)
• 280g chocolate malt

Hops

• 32g progress, 60 mins (15 IBU)
• 20g bramling cross, 60 mins (10 IBU)
• 14g fuggles, 10 mins (1 IBU)

Mash 67C for 60 mins

OG 1.053

We used the yeast cake from the previous brew (Stock Old Horizontal clone), which was Safale US-05.

With such a rich yeast cake, fermentation was extremely vigorous for the first couple of days. I was glad of temperature control so I could cool it to 16C to keep it under control. Still had a bit of a mess though!

After 3 days we added the damsons. These had been initially prepared as follows:

• The best 2.5kg were selected – the softest, ripest and least damaged
• These were washed and frozen, the idea being that the freezing process would kill wild yeast
• On the day they were added, we defrosted them and placed them in a stainless steel bowl
• We poured boiling water over them and left it for five minutes, in an attempt to kill some of the bacteria on them
• The water was drained and the damsons mashed with a sanitised potato masher
• The mashed damsons were added directly to the FV and stirred in with a sanitised brew spoon

After the fruit was added, the FV was held at 16C for a few days then gradually ramped up to 19C. The vigorous initial fermentation again made a mess, this time with bits of damson skin getting stuck in the airlock. It’s a good job I caught this because the gas was not getting out at all and the lid was ballooning!

I plan to leave it for at least another week, then rack to another FV and fine it. Then it will be primed and bottled and matured for at least a few months.