January 2006 - Barry Anderson

By Kathy Thompson

This month I had the good fortune to brew along side Barry Anderson. Barry has been brewing for 10 years. His engineer friend introduced him to brewing. Barry started with a 5 gallon system. Then, he had an engineer friend put together the system you see in the picture, with the designs he drew.

Barry generally brews 3-4 times per year. However, he doesn’t just make one beer. He makes a weekend out of it. This particular weekend Barry started with a Root Beer, then made 10 gallons of pale ale. Half of it will be a fruit, flavored pale ale.

He also made 10 gallons of Vanilla Toasted Coconut Porter. This is a recipe he has created more than once. He said he might even enter it into the Dredhop. I hope everyone got to try this one at the Holiday Party!

The following recipe is from 1998 Zymurgy. Ichiri Fujura from Tokyo, Japan received a Gold Medal for this one at the national Homebrew Competition.

Toasted Coconut Porter ( 10 gal .)

20 lb. Great Western Pale Ale
4 lb. Ch. Malt
2 lb. 80 Crystal
90 min. mash at approx. 155 degrees
Boil 90 min. with 1/2 oz whole Horizon,
3 oz whole N. Brewers. Yeast starter using London 3
3 x 12 oz bags of toasted coconut.

Toast in a flat pan for about 15 minutes or until golden brown at 250° F. Watch closely it is easy to burn.

Put coconut in secondary fermenter and ferment for an additional two weeks at temps below 50 to 55° F. When transferring don't get to greedy. There may be coconut oil on the surface and that will hinder head retention. An optional ingredient is to add 3/4 fl oz of vanilla extract when kegging the beer.

For a yeast starter Barry used yeast, dry malt extract and hops and water.