G'day Boomercisers

Well it's that time folks. Time for a Vanilla Mocha Porter.....

Doesn't it just make your parts water? Finally the time has come the walrus said. Mocha Porter time!! With yet another stealthy yet fleeting appearance of the Grand JMJ Ninja Brewing Maestro (yeah title change!) ......

Brewing started well with the grain bill smelling fantastic before it even made it to the Mash Tun. The 'more power' Boomers re-engineered pilot plant burst into life with Mongolian burners lighting the way. Everything went to plan except for a couple of minor blockages possibly caused by a slightly finer grind by the grain mill. In the end it's quite likely to have produced a higher level of sugar extraction given our starting SG of 1.068. This is gonna be a big beer ladies and gents!

The GJMJNBM has confessed to being not only a beer brewing wunderkind but he also roasts and grinds his own coffee (of course!). So when it came to coffee addition it got the JMJ treatment with four shots of his specially prepared espresso. The result? A dark as night beer with a fantastic smooth, rich coffee flavour. What about the vanilla you ask? Well we at Boomers pride ourselves on the fact that our high quality boutique beers have no additives and no chemicals so we got some vanilla beans to add the Vanilla to the Mocha Porter. Well folk don't know if you've had a whiff of a vanilla bean lately but shisht they are bloody strong. So we're in the process if deciding if we keep on the Vanilla Mocha Porter track & risking ruining a fantastic coffee flavoured porter or we give the idea of vanilla away all together. Hmmmm........dunno yet.......maybe one keg with & one without? Whichever way we go the flavour MUST be subtle. Stay tuned...

So while we ponder the final outcome in the brewery Boomers Mocha Porter is bubbling away........

Now I know you're going to be disappointed because you've already been educated in the origins of porters so I can't really do the same again. Yeah I know how much you look forward to it......Shut up & go with me on this.......So instead I'm gonna go with an educational bit on coffee. Not all coffee because we'd need days to go through all that history but instead Mocha Coffee.....

Mocha or Mokha (Arabic: المخا [al-Mukhā]) is a port city on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. Until it was eclipsed in the 19th century by Aden and Hodeida, Mocha was the principal port for Yemen's capital Sana'a.

Mocha is famous for being the major marketplace for coffee from the 15th century until the 17th century. Even after other sources of coffee were found, Mocha beans (also called Sanani or Mocha Sanani beans, meaning from Sana'a) continued to be prized for their distinctive flavor—and remain so even today. From this coffee the English language gained the word mocha, which is now used for combinations of chocolate and coffee flavors as cafe mocha.

According to the Jesuit and traveler Jeronimo Lobo, who sailed the Red Sea in 1625, Mocha was "formerly of limited reputation and trade" but since "the Turkish assumption of power throughout Arabia, it has become the major city of the territory under Turkish domination, even though it is not the Pasha'splace of residence, which is two days' journey inland in the city of Sana'a." Lobo adds that its importance as a port was also due to the Ottoman law that required all ships entering the Red Sea to put in at Mocha and pay duty on their cargoes.

Passing through Mocha in 1752, Remedius Prutky found that it boasted a "lodging-house of the Prophet Muhammad, which was like a huge tenement block laid out in many hundred separate cells where accommodation was rented to all strangers without discrimination of race or religion." He also found a number of European ships in the harbor: three French, four English, two Dutch, and one Portuguese.

At present, Mocha is no longer utilized as a major trade route and the current local economy is largely based upon fishing and small amounts of tourism. The village of Mocha was officially relocated 3 kilometers west along the Red Sea shore to accommodate the building and demolition of several coastal highways.

History of the Mocha coffee bean

It is commonly believed that the coffee bean that originated in the port city of Mocha was encountered by Marco Polo on his trip through the Arab World. After the month and a half of Polo's turbulent journey, his party were forced to go ashore at Ṣūr (modern-day Tyre, Lebanon) to resupply their stocks, because the captain, William Maurice, had provided insufficient room for food storage. In the marketplace there, Polo found a Yemenite salesman who had brought coffee beans from Mocha, purchased some and ultimately returned with them (among many other imports) to Europe. However, the bean was not widely known through Europe until the 17th century.

In 1595 Spanish Jesuit missionary Pedro Páez was the first European to taste Mocha's coffee in place.

The term "mocha" in relation to chocolate and coffee–chocolate blends is strictly as a result of European influence. Chocolate is not cultivated at Mocha nor imported into it.

So here we are. A number of good brews under the belt. What's next for Boomers Brewery? Will the fabled Vanilla Mocha Porter be changed into Boomers Mocha Porter? Will J Master J get his double dan black belt in sheep fondling? Will Fluffy ever return to her role as Boomers resident booze hound? And what does brewing minion Neil have up his sleeve for a trip back into Western Australian brewing history? For answers to these questions and more stay tuned!!!

Meanwhile check this out..... 

Next Update