Haphazard Winter Porter

I had a funny and interesting brew day yesterday after getting off work early, and realizing I had time to do a brew. I quickly searched up a winter porter recipe, ran to the brewstore for some grains and wlp007, assumed I had good enough hops at home, and went for it. Here's the recipe, based on a Crafty Gremlyn Brewing kit recipe I found:

for 5.5 gallons:

10 lbs. Marris Otter
.75 lbs. chocolate dark
.5 crystal 80
.25 quaker oats
.25 black patent (actually half of this was carafa II)
.25 flaked wheat

I don't have a scale, so the hop amounts are extremely approximate:

FWH: 1 oz. total of sterling/chinook/simcoe leftovers
15 min: 1 oz. total (I think) of simcoe and amarillo

yeast: wlp007 (loved this yeast in my ipa)
spices: 1/4 tsp each of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg,
mashed at 157 (hoping this will prevent the wlp007 from drying it out completely)

I had a limited time to brew, so I had to cut my mash time to 45 minutes, and also my boil to 45 minutes. I did it indoors so my rolling boil was not as aggressive as usual, so I ended up with too much liquid. So I threw in some brown sugar just for fun, and to make up for the surely bad efficiency I was headed for.

In the end, some yummy dark liquid resulted, and my OG was 1.052 (bad efficiency, but still good range for a porter I think). It will be interesting to see how it turns out!

Tastes good so far. Fermenting like crazy. If this turns out well I may drop my mash and boil times down to 45 min. for simple brews to make things quicker...

Ha, been there - brewing in a hurry right after getting fresh hops. Funny that those are sometimes the best beers. Hope you enjoy!

I was with you until the spices.

Good luck with the brew.

Thanks!

Yeah, I only did the 1/4 tsp. each because I'm not too sure about the spices. In the hydrometer sample I took at 1.020 I couldn't even taste them, so that's better than too strong as far as I'm concerned.

Well I finally kegged this last night, after a nice month long primary. Tasted today after chilling and a slight amount of carbonation. Tastes really smooth, a tiny hint of the spices, but nothing anyone would probably notice that didn't know it had them. Compared very favorably after drinking a Black Butte Porter. I think it has a kind of similar character hopwise and whatnot. Anyway, a good porter, and I think I'd brew again with minor modifications, if at all. If anything boiling down the right amount and ending up with a higher OG is where I'd go. Cheers.