What would you call this beer?

My brother in law just picked up the ingredients as listed below to make an orange vanilla porter. I just plugged the grain bill into beersmith and came up with a gravity of 1.084. That seems pretty big for a flavored porter to me. The recipe he had doesn't even list an OG to shoot for either. My other concern is the high C120 and low "roast" in the grain bill. I would think there'd be too much dark fruit and not enough bite there. But what do you guys think?

What would you call this beer? Can we call it a Baltic Porter?


11.00 lb Brewers Malt 2-Row (Briess) (1.8 SRM) Grain 64.7 %
2.50 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 14.7 %
1.50 lb Brown Malt (65.0 SRM) Grain 8.8 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 5.9 %
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 2.9 %
0.50 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 2.9 %
0.75 oz Magnum [14.00%] (60 min) Hops 29.1 IBU
1.00 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (10 min) Hops 5.0 IBU
2.00 items Vanilla Bean (Secondary 14.0 days) Misc
1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) Yeast-Ale

That's definately an imperial porter. It could use a little roasted barley, but it's probably fine without it. I don't like to abide by the style guidelines for most beers unless I'm sending them in for competition. It limits you on what you can do without calling everything "specialty". Any beer thats higher in gravity than its style guidelines state should be deemed an imperial.

"baltics" generally have been lagered. You could lager this, but I'd go with a lager-yeast if you want to go Baltic.

where are you getting the orange from?

why do you think there will be too much dark fruit?

My first impression was a Baltic porter. But I wouldn't want to lager it, so I don't know what I'd call it. Probably some kind of a mix between an imperial porter and a baltic.

motobrewer said:

"baltics" generally have been lagered. You could lager this, but I'd go with a lager-yeast if you want to go Baltic.

where are you getting the orange from?

why do you think there will be too much dark fruit?

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My experience with Crystal 120 is that it gives a really raisiny flavor to beer, and with nothing to balance it in the roast department I personally would fear this recipe a little. I'm not big on the raisin-prune notes though. Some people really like that.

the orange will be from bitter orange peel, sorry.

I didn't know that baltics were lagered......interesting.

snailsongs said:

My experience with Crystal 120 is that it gives a really raisiny flavor to beer, and with nothing to balance it in the roast department I personally would fear this recipe a little. I'm not big on the raisin-prune notes though. Some people really like that.

the orange will be from bitter orange peel, sorry.

I didn't know that baltics were lagered......interesting.

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I DO really like raisin-prune in my porters, which is why I was asking. I've never used C120 before, I'm pretty new to brewing.

This recipe seems interesting to me as far as a base porter goes. I think I might eliminate the vanilla and orange, grab a lager yeast, and brew this up. Except I'd have to partial mash, my tun's only 5 gallon....

Just realized you used East Kent at 5min....awesome.