Christmas Brew

A few months ago I was lucky enough to try a bottle of Chockwork Orange from the Brentwood Brewing Company.

This is a fairly strong old style dark ale with added oranges. It has some nice roasted malt flavours and this along with the bitterness helps to create a chocolate flavour which is enhanced by a fantastically fresh aroma and taste of fresh oranges.

I was impressed with the beer and decided to do my own take on it by trying to add the orangey-ness to my existing Dark Dog Porter recipe to make a Chocolate Orange Porter.

At the time of trying the Chockwork Orange the brewers mentioned that whole oranges were added to the boil. Armed with this knowledge I set about attempting to brew a passable Chocolate Orange Porter style brew.

The recipe was as follows:

Fermentables
Pale Malt (5EBC) 86.3%
Crystal Malt (130EBC) 4.4%
Wheat Malt (3.5EBC) 2.8%
Chocolate Malt (1050EBC) 2.8%
Malted Oats (3.5 EBC) 2%
Roasted Barley (1350EBC) 1.7%

Hop Schedule
Golding (5.2%AA) 90mins 52g
Golding (5.2%AA)  5mins 10g
Fuggle (3.8%AA) 0mins 10g

Other
Bitter Dried Orange Peel @5mins 20g
4 x Sweet Oranges (quartered) @ 3 mins

Yeast
Safale S-04

Info
Brew Length: 19L
OG 1.056
FG 1.014
Bitterness: 35 EBU
Colour: 114 EBC

This was 10 days in the primary fermenter and a sample was promising but lacked any orangey aroma so I made up an orange infusion by grating the rind of 2 oranges into a cafetiere with 100ml or so of boiling water and left to cool. This was then added to a second FV which the beer was then racked into.

I'm planning on kegging / bottling this one today and hopefully this will turn out as an interesting Christmas drink.