recipe help: porter

hello,
i'm new to the site and can't seem to find any info online. I do extract brews and steep grains right now, turns out pretty good. I've found quite a bit of fresh blackberries in my backyard, and was thinking a lightly smoked blackberry porter would be pretty good. I usually just wing it when i brew and put whatever smells/tastes good into my ales. But this time I want a recipe to follow because I've never used smoked ingredients or fruit in my beers. Maybe I can save the blackberries for a regular ale, and just do the smoked porter, who knows. Any ideas? Thanks-

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Just made this yesterday. I'll let you know in 6 weeks.

To brew a smoked porter, your gonna need some smoked malt, either rausch malt or smoke your own (which is what I do). To do that is going to require at the least a mini-mash. You really don't want to use that liquid smoke.

Some brewers use peated malt, but I say yeck to that too...

I wouldn't use fruit in a porter (or any other beer for that matter..save a flanders or other lambic style). I would either make blackberry cobler, mead or wine with those.

- While the concept of a blackberry porter doesn't sound very appealing to me, I think it is doable.

- A smoked porter is very doable, though it would be a good idea to do at least a minimash with some smoked malt to get this effect. You probably want from 25-40% of your fermentables to be smoked malt, so you're looking at a minimash of 2-5 lbs depending on what gravity you are shooting for and how intense you want the smoke to be.

- I can't picture how the blackberry and smoke would go together at all. It seems rather nasty. I would strongly suggest trying one or the other, but it's your beer, so it's up to you.

do i need any extra equipment to do a mini mash? also, what kind of grains should i smoke? I'm making the cobbler for dessert tomorrow. lattice work and all. BAM!