Breakfast at the North Pole

This is an English/Canadian inspired imperial porter, with smacks of coffee, maple, and bacon. Balancing these flavors is the trick, and so there’s a number of things going on here. The water profile is that of a London porter, so Ca+2:100, Mg+2:5, Na+:35, Cl-:60, SO4-2:50, and HCO3-:265. For the base recipe, a solid imperial porter recipe was selected, strong, malty, and toasty, with generous hops for a porter brewed in the colonies. For the bacon flavor, six strips of hickory bacon from a local farm are fried extra crisp, and placed in 1 cup of vodka (or to cover bacon); mixture is allowed to sit for 2 weeks (agitate daily), when the fat is skimmed; freeze overnight, skim the fat, and then use coffee filters to remove tincture. FAT MUST BE REMOVED or head retention will suffer, though the flaked barley in the recipe is there to help you out... Tincture is added at kegging, so preparing it on brew day is ideal. For the maple flavor, actual maple syrup is problematic at best, so a maple extract is used; a 2 oz. bottle should suffice added to secondary. Finally, coffee flavor is added by dry-beaning, which warrants caution. 2 oz. of a mocha style, French roast, or espresso style bean are warranted here, the lighter the roast, the less oil to hurt head retention. Have the barista use the coarsest grind on the 2 oz. of beans, then toss in a sanitized mueslin sack, and add for the last 2 days in secondary. Too much, and the coffee will overpower the rest of the brew. Tread carefully on the ice at the North Pole…