Porter Recipe

[jords]

Morning all

Am about to put this down and was hoping for a few thoughts from you all.

This is my first time using brewmate and using specialty grains.

Robust Porter

Dry Malt Extract - Light - 2.5 kg
Caramunich 1 - 0.5 kg
Crystal Dark (not in brewmate so I used Crystal 90) - 0.5 kg
Black Malt - 0.2 kg
Carapils - 0.2 kg

35g Fuggles Flowers (7.7%) 60 min boiling
10g Fuggles Flowers (7.7%) 15 min from flame out

Flowers aren't in brewmate either, had a quick google which suggests that dried flowers are about 10% less potent. Not convinced it'll matter too much in this case.

Safale SO4

OG - 1061
Projected FG - 1015
%Alc - 6%
38.4 IBU

Am I adding too much crystal? I don't want a really acrid flavour from the Black Malt, have I used little enough to aviod it?

Any input would be much appreciated guys.

Cheers,
Jords

[warra48]

This recipe looks rather unbalanced to me.
Effectively you have 1.2 kg of Crystal/Cara malts. Personally, I wouldn't go over about .5 kg all up.
Black Malt will tend to leave a fairly acrid sharp taste. .2 kg is way beyond my personal threshold of comfort.

I've only ever brewed a Porter once before, and that was back in my extract days. This is the recipe I used:

23 litre batch OG 1.053 FG 1.019
3 kg Light Liquid Malt Extract
227 gr Chocolate Malt
470 gr Medium Crystal
113 gr Black Malt
The last 3 were steeped for 60 minutes at 69°C, drained, and rinsed with some 80°C water. This was a bit of a training run into mashing, as my next batch was my first AG batch.

18 gr Horizon (9.3%) 60 minutes
23 gr Willamette (4.6%) 40 minutes
15 gr Willamette (4.6%) 20 min

WLP001 yeastcake

My notes show this drank very nicely over the following year, with a lovely malt quality and a well balanced bitterness.
My brew was an American Porter. You seem to be designing a UK version. Given that your choice of hops and yeast is fine. Aim for somewhere around 35 to 40 IBU.

[jords]

Thanks Warra

Thinking I'll remove the caramunich completely then, and back the crapils to 100g.

I'll do the same with the black malt and go to 100g.

Honestly I don't really know what hops suit the porter style, and I'm limited by what hops I actually have on hand.

Thanks again for the input, I appreciate it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers

[warra48]

Sounds good.
Fuggles hops' character is ideal for a UK style porter. They're the original UK hop from which Willamette was bred in the US, and are a good substitute for each other.

[emnpaul]

Flowers aren't in brewmate either, had a quick google which suggests that dried flowers are about 10% less potent. Not convinced it'll matter too much in this case.

Jords

I'm pretty sure they are the same as leaf. Leaf are in Brewmate.

Just mashed in my first partial using Brewemate. How AWESOME is that program!

Cheers
Paul

[jords]

I agree, brewmate is pretty awesome so far.

In the end I also backed the dark crystal off to 300g after weighing it out and realising I don't want toooooo much of that flavour. A little will be good, but too much I think will overpower the beer and maybe make it too one dimensional.

Cant wait till its time to drink!

[drsmurto]

Thanks Warra

Thinking I'll remove the caramunich completely then, and back the crapils to 100g.

I'll do the same with the black malt and go to 100g.

Honestly I don't really know what hops suit the porter style, and I'm limited by what hops I actually have on hand.

Thanks again for the input, I appreciate it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers

It may be a typo but you just summed up my opinion of that grain perfectly!

Too late now for a porter the best grain to use is carafa special (I, II or III). It's a dehusked dark grain so is far less harsh than black malt or roasted barley.

Back in my kit days i used a very simple robust porter recipe which was something like 1 can of goo, 1 kg of DDME, 500g of carafa spec III and whatever hops took my fancy. S04 yeast.

I still use carafa spec is most of my AG dark beers. Pale choc malt is a close second as far as dark spec grains go

[jords]

Well I know what'll be going in my next porter recipe then. What is the difference between I, II or III?

The reason there is no choc malt in this one is that apparently I forgot to order it from craftbrewer with the rest of my stuff. I certainly wanted it there but when I opened the bag, no choc malt...

What is the reason for the hatred of carapils? Craftbrewer mention that it improves body and head retention and I thought "Well I sure do want full body and good head retention in this beer, why not add it."

Obviously there are better ways to achieve this, how to do it without going all grain though?