Advice on Robust Porter Recipe

This will be the first recipe I've made myself and looking for advice on a robust porter.

Robust Porter
Batch Size: 5 gal
Est OG: 1.055
IBU: 40
SRM: 32
Est ABV: 5.5%

Grains:

7 lbs. 2-Row
1 lbs. Munich Malt
1 lbs. Crystal 80L
1 lbs. Crystal 40L
12 oz Chocolate Malt
4 oz Black (Patent) Malt
4 oz Flaked Barley

Hops:
1 oz East Kent Goldings 5.00% AA - 60 minutes
1 oz Willamette 5.50% AA - 30 minutes
1 oz Willamette 5.50% AA - 15 minutes

Yeast: White Labs WLP005 British Ale Yeast

Mash @ 152 for 60 minutes, Mash-out @ 168 for 15 minutes
Boil 60 minutes

I love thick, dark porters with lots of caramel and chocolate flavors. Any suggestions very welcome! Thanks so much!

Looks like a good recipe, especially if you like caramel flavors. Porter is one of my favorite kinds of beer, I've brewed my own porter about 35 times. Here's a link to my recipe for comparison and some stuff about porter (in case you're interested).

My recipe:
http://beerandwinejournal.com/colby-house-porter/

Me blathering on about porter:
http://beerandwinejournal.com/porter-i/


Chris Colby
Editor
beerandwinejournal.com

With British yeast, I think that 2 lbs of crystal is probably too high. People have different preferences, but for me, that will likely leave too much residual sweetness. Consider dropping the total crystal to 1 lb or so. I do like using different crystal malts, though--gives a nice complexity of flavor. Still, I don't think 2 lbs is going to kill the beer.

You might consider moving the EKG addition to 30 minutes so that you get a bit more flavor impact. You could use a higher AA hop for bittering, also, and have a 20 min addition of both EKG and Willamette.

Awesome thanks for the replies guys! 2 lbs of crystal may actually be too sweet even for me, so I decreased the 80L and 40L to 0.75 lbs each, cause I still would like to have a strong caramel flavor. I also boosted the black patent to 12 oz and decreased the chocolate malt to 8 oz to keep it more in line with the robust porter style.

Keep the replies coming! I hope to brew this in a couple weeks when I have some free space

Any other comments?

VikingChrisColby said:

Looks like a good recipe, especially if you like caramel flavors. Porter is one of my favorite kinds of beer, I've brewed my own porter about 35 times. Here's a link to my recipe for comparison and some stuff about porter (in case you're interested).

My recipe:
http://beerandwinejournal.com/colby-house-porter/

Me blathering on about porter:
http://beerandwinejournal.com/porter-i/


Chris Colby
Editor
beerandwinejournal.com

Click to expand...

Glad to see you haunting here Chris!

I just brewed my first Porter two weeks ago and my recipe is not for from your's. I did add less molasses, but I wanted it to be just enough to offset the vanilla beans and cacao nibs I racked it onto. I, also, used WLP007 to dry it out a bit more.

eonsend said:

Any other comments?

Click to expand...

I think dropping the crystal helps bring it more into line with style. I only used about 4oz of Black Patent (didn't want it to be too similar to my Milk Stout).

I used 1# of Chocolate Malt, 8oz of Flaked Wheat (they were out of Flaked Barley), .75# C-40, .75# C-75, 2oz of Black Roasted Barley, 8# of California Select (3L), 3oz of Molasses and 2oz Northern Brewer. It has a slightly caramelized coffee taste after primary and was racked onto 5 vanilla beans and 4oz of cacao nibs that were marinated in 150ml of Vanilla Vodka for 2 weeks. Should be ready to hit with CO2 in time to serve on the 24th.

Well yesterday I brewed a 3 gal batch of this so i'll let everyone know how it went. I did drop the percentage of crystal malts a bit more to 10% total, dropped the flaked barley, and mashed at 153. I also hopped with 1 oz Perle instead and increased the Black Patent a bit.

just bottled today. The beer was nice and dark and very clear. Tasted very good but will maybe too much of a bitter afterbite. We'll see how it is after carbonation and conditioning, maybe the bitterness of the roasted malts will mellow a little bit.