Resistor Brewing – The Holiday Porter

NYC Resistor has been known to occasionally homebrew a beer or two. We have members interested in the topic, and friends in the wider brewing community of NYC. However, since I’ve returned from California, I’ve found myself more and more interested in beer brewing at Resistor. Luckily Travis, a fellow member is also deeply into the homebrew hobby. Together we’ve been spinning up a few different projects over here. There will be some great follow up posts on those other projects I am sure. Read on for more about brewing at NYC Resistor!

What some folks may not know is that NYC Resistor is in a building that was at one point part of a sprawling complex owned by and housing the Long Island Brewing Company, as well as later the Federal Brewing Co. There’s not much known at this point about those breweries. Federal shut down in the very earily part of the 20th Century. Long Island existed for about 40 years from the late 1850s on. During this time Brooklyn was known to be home to over 100 different breweries. We do know that at least one particularly gruesome fatality occurred at our Brooklyn location, in which a worker was decapitated when a tank exploded. So if you ever thought Resistor was haunted… maybe it was?

Regardless, Brewing beer is in NYC Resistor’s bones quite literally. So, in November, Travis and I brewed a couple of batches of Porter. The base recipe is now available on our NYC Resistor github in the brewery repository in a JSON format. I have not written unit tests for verifying beer recipes yet. We’ve been targetting the standard homebrewing size of 5 gallon batches. Travis bottles, I keg. We’ve been doing full grain batches as of late. However, we’ll likely be reaching out to other homebrewers in the wider community to do some collaborative brews this year. I am really looking forward to what this year will bring in terms of exciting brew projects.

Basic Porter

Experimental Porter

We left the porters to ferment for a little under a month. Travis just finished his primary and bottled. I primaried in kegs and force carbonated towards the end. I lost a rubber o-ring for my keg while sanitizing it for primarying, and that led to some liberal use of teflon to get the keg to seal. Despite the missing O-ring the beer came out great. In two days, at two different parties, almost 5 gallons of the batch was drank by friends and family. I think the recipe can be improved greatly, but it was received with very positive reviews. Currently fermenting is an Extra IPA for NYC Resistor members to enjoy made off of a clone recipe for Sierra Nevadas Torpedo. That recipe is included in our repo.

Happy Holidays from NYC Resistor. May your year bring new projects, and the completion of old ones.