Need Porter help

Hi, we need help tweaking a porter recipe.

We're new brewers, but we have everything assembled to brew up a porter clone package we bought from a brew-shop: Deschutes BBP.

Ingredients - Amber malt syrup, Crystal malt, roasted barley, chocolate malt, fuggles hops, Golding hops, corn sugar, british ale yeast.

Recipe - steep crushed malted grain, strain, bring to boil, add some malt syrup, add hops, add finishing hops, then add remaining malt syrup. Move to carboy, top off carboy, add yeast when cooled to 78. Ferment and bottle as usual. Entire recipe is available at bader.com.

We just drank a 12 of BBP storebought, and we consider it a touch too bitter for our tastes. We are wondering if anyone can recommend a tweak to this recipe that would deliver the roasty and chocolatey body and sweetish finish, but remove some of the bitter aspect.

Thanks!

Cut back on the bittering hops, or don't boil them as long. Post your amounts and someone will be able to provide a more specific recommendation.

Use one of the free spreadsheet programs or freeware like qbrew to come up with the exact ibu count for your receipe.. assuming the receipe is a good reflection of the beer you're trying to copy then reduce the IBU's by 8 or 10 at most. While I haven't had the beer, I find numbers in the high 30's to be plenty bitter. Somewhere in the mid to high 20's seems about right for a good dark beer (that's my opinion anyway). Just cut the boil time for the bittering hops down by 5 or 10 minutes or cut the amount down to get the IBU's where you want them.

On a completely unrelated note, I know anchor liberty ale is very popular around here but does anyone else find it so bitter that it's almost medicinal tasting? Like honey but without the sweetness...

Anyhow, post the hop's you're planning on using (quantity and boil time and AA% if you have them) and we can give you more specific advice.

Thanks!

2 oz Fuggles, Alpha 3.4%, boil 60 minutes.
1 oz Kent Golding finishing hops, Alpha 5.3%, in the last 3 mins of the boil.

FWIW - we were hesitant to post the whole recipe verbatim due to just being conservative people when it comes to intellectual property rights, etc. But i guess the recipe is available to all on bader, so we're prolly just being anal.

Does anyone have a link to a favorite spreadsheet? I'll check out qbrew.

it doesnt seem like it would be too bitter with just 2 oz. fuggles for the bittering hops. the bitterness might be attributable to the roasted barley, how much of that does it use? if it is the hops then cut out 1/2 oz. of the fuggles at most. i would probably try adding in 1 or 1 and a half in the beginning and the rest 15 minutes later, it will be slightly less bitter because of the shorter time in the boil but wont completely compromise the hop profile.

Roasted barley = 1/4 lb.

I was unable to download qbrew (kept getting booted), and the Beer Recipator flunked to a Server Not Found, so I downloaded LeMuBrew from brewery.org.

We'll play with it, and see what happens.

Thanks!

I just did a Porter that is a wee bit bitter but is mellowing out with age. With this recipe I used

.75oz Nugget 60min
.50oz Williamette 20min
.50oz Williamette 0min

I think with your 2oz hops for the boil that's a bit much perhaps... EDIT: In reviewing your hop boil selection however your alpha acid is probably about equal to my .75 nugget. You might just make it and see how she goes and adjust next time if needed.

Battery is dying on the notebook, need to submit