First Porter Homebrew

Going to brew my first all grain porter, just want to run it past some smart and experienced brewers out there first!

What do you all think?

Grain Bill

70% - 8.5 lb -- American 2-Row
10% - 1.25 lb -- Caramel Malt 60L
8% - 1.0 lb -- Brown Malt
8% - 1.0 lb -- 2-Row Chocolate Malt
2% - 4.0 oz -- Black Malt

Hop Schedule
60 minute - .75 oz - Northdown
30 minute - .75 oz - Fuggle

Mash- 152 degrees for 60 minutes, then 167 degrees for 10 minute sparge.

I was thinking British Ale II 1335 Yeast. Never used it before, thoughts?

Thanks for taking the time!

Looks damn tasty to me. The only thing I would change personally is the Fuggle addition. Maybe at 15 or 10 to get some light earthy spice to mingle with the dark malts.

looks good. I also like london ale WLP013 and Burton WLP023 for my robust porters.

I would switch the 2-row for maris otter. Better base malt for this beer.

Thanks for the suggestions. They are all helpful!

A pound of chocolate malt might be too much but it depends on what one it is. I normally use Bairds and it is very strong at 450-550L. With the brown malt even a pound of Briess is more than I'd use.

Hmmm, I have yet to add brown malt to a porter. Now, I think I must try. That recipe does look delicious, and +1 on WLP013. Great yeast

I usually do brown and chocolate malt in my porters too. Great addition of Maris Otter as well for the base malt.

All good suggestions here. For the chocolate malt, I would try to use Briess if possible. It is lighter in color. We could all bore you to death with yeast selections. WLP023 is flipping awesome for Porters and Stouts (I'll monkey knife fight anyone who disagrees)

But shoot from the hip and go with the yeast profile description on the Wyeast or While Labs website that works for you. There is no "single strain" to ferment any beer. But hey, that's the fun of it!

I like to use de-bittered black, no chalky/ash taste that you get from normal black patent.

Grain Bill

72% - 9.0 lb -- Maris Otter
10% - 1.25 lb -- Caramel Malt 60L
8% - 1.0 lb -- Brown Malt
8% - 1.0 lb -- Briess Chocolate Malt
2% - 4.0 oz -- Black Malt

Hop Schedule
60 minute - .75 oz - Northdown
30 minute - .75 oz - Fuggle

Mash- 152 degrees for 60 minutes, then 167 degrees for 10 minute sparge.

Still thinking I am going to try British Ale II 1335 Yeast.

I think this is what I will go with. Brewing this Friday night.

I just got a sack of Crisp MO, five pounds of Briess Cherry wood smoked malt and WLP 007. I'm still working on the recipie for a smoked robust porter. I have about half of a pound of EKG I bought quite some time ago. I'm going to have to use Caraaroma mostly for the crystal with a little Cara Vienna and a touch of special B. A half pound of Hugh Baird Chocolate malt and a quarter pound of black malt (also Baird.) I don't have any brown malt. I've read that brown malt can be very different from maltster to malster too. I've only used Crisp.

Good luck with your porter. Looks tasty.

Edit...Here is what I've came up with for mine with what I have on hand.

http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/smoked-hill?new_recipe=true

It's at the very high end of the guidelines for color. What SRM did you get for yours?

I use brewtoad as well. Nice looking recipe! We have not dabbled with smoked recipes yet. Hope it turns out!

I came up with a Rye IPA recipe which we have brewed twice (there is a thread if you are interested). I liked the taste, color, bitterness, and the spicy rye flavor really comes through, which I like. But my OG was low for both brewdays. I think it had something to do with the amount of Rye and how it was milled possibly, I cannot come up with any other idea.

Here are the stats on my porter recipe:
OG=1.065
FG=1.016
29 IBU
6.3% ABV
42 SRM

I hope it tastes good!

As a brewer does, I tweaked my recipe just a tad. I wanted a little more fermentables in their to make sure I get near my gravity readings. And I lowered the amount of caramel by .25 and brown malt by .5.

Updated Grain Bill

79% - 10.5 lb Maris Otter
8% - 1.0 lb Caramel 60
8% - 1.0 lb Chocolate Malt
4% - .5 Brown Malt
2% - 4 oz Black Malt

Hop Schedule

60 Minute - .75 oz Northdown
30 Minute - .75 oz Fuggle

Yeast - British Ale II 1335

Stats
1.069 OG
1.018 FG
29 IBU
6.7% ABV
40 SRM

We usually are a little low sometimes when it comes to the OG so I just want to make sure I pull those sugars out!

Personally, I've used Amber malt (I'm guessing this is similar to Brown malt) in my porter and a bit less than a pound of Chocolate malt. Personally, I wouldn't add the black malt unless you really want it super dark. I don't think of porters as being completely black, myself. I think of them as just really dark brown. I prefer the flavor and aroma from the Chocolate malt and I also use a lighter crystal malt (20L I think).

Basically, I'd drop the black malt. My porter came out to about 30L, though. So if you want it darker like the 40 SRM you have listed, then go ahead and stick with it.

I actually changed a couple things again. BREW DAY!!!

Grain Bill

79% - 10.5 lb -- Maris Otter
7% - 1.0 lb -- Caramel Malt 60L
5% - 1.0 lb -- Brown Malt
5% - .75 lb -- Briess Chocolate Malt
1% - 3.0 oz -- Debittered Black Malt

Hop Schedule
60 minute - .75 oz - Northdown
30 minute - .75 oz - Fuggle

Mash- 154 degrees for 60 minutes, then 167 degrees for 10 minute sparge.

British Ale II 1335 Yeast.

Stats: 1.059 OG, 1.015 FG, 31 IBU, 5.7% IBU, 35 SRM

Brewing in T-Minus 7.5 hrs!!!

Gentleman, it went pretty well. With my 65% efficiency that I normally get, brewtoad estimated my OG to be 1.059 and I ended up getting 1.056. So I am relatively happy with that. The taste, smell, and color all seemed pretty good so now we wait....

I recently made the "Who's your Taddy Porter", and this was a low efficiency batch for me, I don't really know what happened. I then tried to add enough water to make 4 gallons of "decent" porter, and wasn't impressed, so I tried freeze concentration and came back 1/2 gallon less than I started, and it tasted more malty than the day before. What I am trying to find out is: is there a limit to how much water should be removed without being detrimental the final beverage?

Minden Man, I have never tried anything like that before so I cannot shed any light on that. Sorry!

So we bottled and let condition for two weeks. I used 5 oz of priming sugar. So we tasted at the two week mark and it tasted "green". Not ready to drink yet. We let sit for two more weeks (last night) and it seemed fizzy, possibly overcarbonated. Do you use less priming sugar for porters?

The taste still was not good. It almost tastes sour and bitter. There is a little chocolaty roastiness, but IMO it tastes sour.

I am not saying that I am an master brewer but I did a lot of research when I formulated that recipe (with help from people on this forum as well) and looking at my percentages (listed below) and what each malt brings to the table there is no reason that this porter should be undrinkable. Do you guys possibly think it could have gotten infected?

This has never happened before to us, maybe I missed something when cleaning the carboy. I hate this but I am going to try one more time but its like a fricken sour brown ale! damnit! Thanks for reading and helping everyone!

Name Amount Use PPG
Maris Otter 10.5 lb 79%
Caramel Malt 60L 1.0 lb 7%
Brown Malt 12.0 oz 5 %
2-Row Chocolate Malt 12.0 oz 5%
Belgian Debittered Black Malt 3.0 oz 1%

Hops
Name Amount Time Use Form AA
Northdown 0.75 oz 60 min Boil Pellet 8.5%
Fuggle 0.75 oz 30 min Boil Pellet 4.8%

Yeasts
Name Lab Attenuation Temp
British Ale II 1335 Wyeast 74.5% 63°F – 75°F

Probably over carbed. I did the same thing to an ESB. At 2 weeks it was super fizzy and sour/acidic. I ended up having one bottle bomb. What I did to fix the problem was vent the caps and recap them. A few weeks after doing that the carbonation was way better and the acidic sour taste was gone. Just had one two nights ago, it was awesome. The amount of sugar i used to prime was 4.5 oz, almost twice what i should have used. porter seems along those same lines. Hope this helps.

Yeah, 5 oz. of sugar was probably more than you needed to use. So, it's probably over carbonated. I remember hearing/reading something about how you get a flavor from carbonic acid (CO2 dissolved in liquid becomes carbonic acid, I think) and maybe that is what you are detecting as the sour/acidic flavor.

You could try venting and recapping, if you want. To me, that sounds like a lot of extra opportunity for screw up something else. What I would do is just let it rest after pouring it into a glass. Just let the CO2 off-gas and dissipate. If you have glass with etching in the bottom to provide nucleation points, this process can go pretty quickly.

Even though it is a bit different than my own porter recipe, yours looks like it should be tasty. I wouldn't worry that something was wrong with that.

Barring an actual infection, I think the over-carbonation is your most likely culprit. In the future, I'd recommend using a priming sugar calculator of some sort. There are tons of them online. Most of the time, I don't use anywhere close to 5 oz. in a 5 gallon batch. Usually between 3 and 4 oz., but sometimes even less. Most of the calculators I've seen online even have suggested carbonation levels based on the style of the beer. Also, if you are using any sort of app or software to formulate your recipe, it should include a priming sugar calculation somewhere.

As you can see in the above picture it was too late to vent off the co2. Sad day. Thanks for the tips though guys. I will definitely be using less priming sugar next time. Your posts were very informative. I had no idea that over carbonation could have those other affects on the beer. I figured that the fizzy and extra head were all that could happen. Had no idea about the sour acidic flavors it can leave.
Thanks again. I will be lowering all my priming sugar amounts from now on.

Aww man. That's terrible. My esbs were like that too. What I did was just slightly pry the cap off a little bit, wait and then pry a little bit more. Sucks that didn't work for you. I learned my lesson and always research the amount of priming sugar to use now.

Oh the humanity. Tis always a sad day to see beer go down the drain. We've all been there man. And I'm sorry for your loss.