Urca Dry Dock Vanilla Porter

No Vanilla in it yet, but it's gonna be a good porter before that. Ignored the NB instructions and just did the tea-bag steep with 4 muslin bags - a full hour at 158 to 170 degrees.

1 lbs English Maris Otter
.875 lbs English Medium Crystal
.75 lbs Flaked Barley
.5 lbs Belgian Aromatic Malt
.5 lbs British Chocolate Malt
.5 lbs Belgian Special B
.25 lbs English Black Malt

Threw in the extracts and started a full boil:

3.15 lbs Gold malt syrup
2 lbs Munton's Plain Light dry malt extract

Did a 60 min boil with hop-drops at 45 mins, 30 mins, and 15 mins. Shut off the heat and coasted the last 10 mins - pellet Willamette Alpha 4.7/Beta 3.7 for all three.

Pitched a day-old Wyeast 1056 American smack pack. OG 1070. Predicted: 1062.

Will add 10 vanilla beans during secondary. See you in a few days.

Day 7: Final gravity: .1022, which sounds just a bit high ... But! An initial taste test says Right On. Lots of cocoa/coffee overtones with a smoky buttery maltiness down the pipe.

Will rack it tomorrow and add in the beans. Two weeks from now prepare to cream your jeans.

Day 11: Racked and added in 10 vanilla beans (5 bourbon/5 normal), split, skinned, fractionated and commingled into a tea ball.

Final at the 8 week mark: Super Bowl Sunday 2013, we downed all 5 gallons (minus a growler that went home with Meren). This was spot on, and a serious vanilla ass-kicking. Good round body, with just enough vanilla to know we meant business with the beans, but not so much it was all the beer was about. A good porter foundation with lots of round mouthfeel and mocha.