brackbrew
Well-Known Member
I've been brewing with varying degrees of frequency over the last 10 years, but have always been a little nervous to formulate my own recipes, but I have a flavor in my head I'd really like to duplicate.
While camping with my in-laws last weekend, I had a great piece of cinnamon bread and a Founder's Porter for breakfast. I still had some of the cinnamon bread in my mouth when I took my first sip of the porter and WOW, what a great flavor combination (to me); so I started to wonder if you could brew a cinnamon porter and have the flavors work out.
I started to look at all the various porter recipes I had and noticed they used four specific adjunct grains: crystal malt, chocolate malt, black patent malt, and roasted barley. I was trying to find a "baseline" basic porter recipe that I could play with, so I took the averages of those adjuncts across the recipes and came up with the following:
12 oz. Crystal Malt
8 oz. Chocolate Malt
4 oz. Black Patent Malt
and a negligible amount of roasted barley
Normally I'm an extract brewer who sometimes does a "bastardized" partial mash. So if I was going to formulate a basic grain bill, I guess I would use the above ingredients with about 6 2/3 lbs. DME and add some East Kent Goldings or other mild hop and a good british ale yeast.
I've seen spiced beer recipes that add cinnamon powder toward the end of the boil and others that add cinnamon sticks to the secondary. I guess my questions are this:
1. Am I approaching formulating the grain bill incorrectly?
2. Are there better proportions of those grains that will "help" accentuate the cinnamon more?
3. Are there other grains I should be thinking about that will "help" accentuate the cinnamon more?
4. Are there other adjuncts (i.e. molasses, nutmeg, vanilla bean, etc) I should be thinking about that will help accentuate the cinnamon more?
5. When and how much cinnamon do you think I should add?
I know this is a long post, but I thought being specific might help things. Thanks to all who respond with help, ideas, suggestions and criticism.
BREW ON:rockin:
While camping with my in-laws last weekend, I had a great piece of cinnamon bread and a Founder's Porter for breakfast. I still had some of the cinnamon bread in my mouth when I took my first sip of the porter and WOW, what a great flavor combination (to me); so I started to wonder if you could brew a cinnamon porter and have the flavors work out.
I started to look at all the various porter recipes I had and noticed they used four specific adjunct grains: crystal malt, chocolate malt, black patent malt, and roasted barley. I was trying to find a "baseline" basic porter recipe that I could play with, so I took the averages of those adjuncts across the recipes and came up with the following:
12 oz. Crystal Malt
8 oz. Chocolate Malt
4 oz. Black Patent Malt
and a negligible amount of roasted barley
Normally I'm an extract brewer who sometimes does a "bastardized" partial mash. So if I was going to formulate a basic grain bill, I guess I would use the above ingredients with about 6 2/3 lbs. DME and add some East Kent Goldings or other mild hop and a good british ale yeast.
I've seen spiced beer recipes that add cinnamon powder toward the end of the boil and others that add cinnamon sticks to the secondary. I guess my questions are this:
1. Am I approaching formulating the grain bill incorrectly?
2. Are there better proportions of those grains that will "help" accentuate the cinnamon more?
3. Are there other grains I should be thinking about that will "help" accentuate the cinnamon more?
4. Are there other adjuncts (i.e. molasses, nutmeg, vanilla bean, etc) I should be thinking about that will help accentuate the cinnamon more?
5. When and how much cinnamon do you think I should add?
I know this is a long post, but I thought being specific might help things. Thanks to all who respond with help, ideas, suggestions and criticism.
BREW ON:rockin: