Vanilla Porter 2.0

Some times stepping away from a project is beneficial & will refresh ones thoughts & opinions. The vanilla porter has been a staple of our beer list since we opened in 2011. Toward the end of 2016 there was a couple batches I wasn't entirely happy with. Later, I determined the cause was bad vanilla beans. Between the bad vanilla beans & the monotonicity of frequently brewing the vanilla porter I decided to stop brewing it for awhile. Not until I tapped a oatmeal raisin stout I'd brewed during that winter, did I realize I wanted to attempt another batch of vanilla porter. The oatmeal raisin stout was smooth & creamy because of proper water chemistry, utilizing new ingredients & techniques. Like a lot of recipes I do, I started from scratch. I'd been using golden promise, a more expensive ,but higher quality pale malt for my Double India Pale Ales. If you compared brewing a beer to building a house, the base malt is the foundation. Some base malts may be a wood foundation & others solid concrete. Golden Promise is a solid heavy duty concrete foundation. I didn't change much when it came to specialty grains other than increasing them. Technically, this beer would be considered a oatmeal porter due to the amount of flaked & malted oats used in it. When it comes to vanilla, I use to use whole bean ,but the oils from the beans made head retention & lacing difficult. So I eventually switched to organic vanilla bean powder. Which worked alright for awhile until I got a couple bad batches. So I decided to go back to using whole vanilla beans.

PA Grand Canyon Vanilla Porter - 6.2 % with notes of dark chocolate, velvety creaminess, latte & vanilla with a nice surprisingly smooth roastiness in the finish.