Gingerbread Porter?

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Lodovico

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I want to take a shot at brewing a porter next week and spicing it for a different type of holiday ale.

I was thinking of brewing a Brown Porter as the base beer and then spicing it with ginger,cinnamon, and maybe a few other spices. Do you think this would be a good style to spice? I haven't had a lot of experience with Brown Porter but I have brewed it once and I was happy with it.

I wasn't able to get Brown Malt last time which I've now learned is pretty much critical to brewing this beer to style. I'll be throwing a decent amount into this recipe. Brown Porter should have some mild roastiness and I think this could go well with spice.

Other spice combinations you would use to get a gingerbread taste?

What do you think of this idea?
 
I'm kind of talking with myself here lol, but I've been looking at good gingerbread cookie recipes for ideas. Things like:

Ginger
Cloves
Molasses
Brown Sugar
Vanilla
Cinnamon

I think I'll stay away from the eggs and flour part of the cookie recipes. :)

I think this could go well if it was subtle with a Brown Porter.
 
Love the idea, could be very interesting. I'd definitely throw some biscuit malt into the grist as well to resemble the "cookie". Just make sure you go easy with the spices. With this type of beer it's too easy to be heavy-handed. Remember that you can always add, but can't take away...
 
Love the idea, could be very interesting. I'd definitely throw some biscuit malt into the grist as well to resemble the "cookie". Just make sure you go easy with the spices. With this type of beer it's too easy to be heavy-handed. Remember that you can always add, but can't take away...

You make a couple of great suggestions here. Love the biscuit malt idea and you're so right about getting heavy handed and losing the balance. I don't want this to be a big spice beer. Just a subtle cookie background.
 
So here's what I've come up with. All critiques welcome!

Gingerbread Porter

OG: 1064
IBU: 24


10# Marris Otter
1# Biscuit (a lot I know but going for the cookie thing)
1# Crystal 60
.5# Pale Chocolate
.5# Light Brown Sugar
.5# Molasses

Fuggles just as a bittering addition.

S-04 or London Ale Yeast

Spicing with Ginger, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla- Going to go really easy on the spicing. I want it to be obvious but not in your face spice beer.

What do you think?
 
Just be careful with the cloves, too much tend to give you a nice aftershave taste on the beer. :)

Yea this is the first time I'll have used cloves in a beer. Thanks for the advice.
 
Brewed this on Saturday. I think it went really well and it smelled good going into the fermenter. I'll update this and let you know how it turns out.
 
I have actually made a gingerbread porter before and i'm brewing it again tomorrow! I'm also aiming for a similar OG and IBU. Last time OG was 1063 with ~35 IBU. I used cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and fresh ginger in the boil and then dry hopped with all but the ginger. It was a little spicy like 3 weeks after bottling but two weeks after that the spices calmed down a lot and really worked well together. This time i'm not going to use so much nutmeg (first batch wasn't bad) but it over-powered the cinnamon a bit so i'm reversing the amounts for this batch.
 
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