Suggestions on tonight's "Porter" recipe please.

I have some "normal" beers in the process of fermenting and conditioning right now so I thought I'd finally try something a little different with this batch, having just bought a new 6gal carboy.

I've come up with this recipe over the last week.

NOTE: I've edited the following recipe to reflect the actual ingredients used this evening.

"Cherry-treacle Porter":

5 gallons clean cold water in brewpot.

Grainsack in cold water:
.5 lb #60 Crystal
.25 lb Chocolate Malt
.25 lb Black Patent
-remove at 160 degrees

Boil
60 min:
5 lbs Amber DME
.5 lb brewer's brown sugar
1 lb dark treacle
1 tsp Gypsum
+
1.5 oz Cascade

15 min:
.5 oz Willamette
1 tsp Irish Moss

10 min:
2 sticks Ceylon Cinnamon - .5 oz broken into small pieces (not Cassia bark - real cinnamon is very mild)
1/4 oz Dried Orange Peel

0 min:
Cool with wort chiller to 70 degrees.

Pitch Nottingham Ale Yeast - 11 gram pack

Primary ferment.

Into the secondary fermenter (before the wort) goes 5 lbs of pureed sour cherries. (Oregon brand, canned)

Wait.

"Med DME"? Is that Amber DME?

What the gypsum do for an extract recipe? I don't know if you need it.

I have no idea how strong that cinnamon will be. Two ounces of bittering hops is a pretty decent amount (even if lower AA Cascades), and I wonder how that will mesh with the cinnamon and treacle. Possibly lower the hop levels? (I'll confess I don't know.)

This looks good. I'd drink it. Here's my suggestions:

I think I'd either leave out the brown sugar or add some detrine malt (carapils)....I like my porters with lots of body and plain sugar thins them down, plus you're already adding syrup in there. You can bottle with brown sugar or turbinado sugar to get some of that flavor without adding so much it thins down your porter.

Also, pay attention to the AA's of your cascades: the one's I've been getting have been higher than average (at 7.2 AAU's) and less would be needed here, at least for my taste....using 7.2AA cascades I'd take about 1/3 of those out of the 60 minute addition.

If it were me, I think I'd use an english style yeast....S-04 is great for porters, but any of the english liquid yeasts would be great too. Notty will be fine, but S-04 adds a bit of pleasant yeast character appropriate for the style. I actually brewed a porter a couple months ago and split it between notty and S-04 in two small carboys just to compare them, and while they both turned out great, I thought the S-04 had a touch more 'color' in the flavor, if that makes any sense, while the notty version came out just a bit roastier.

good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Thanks, guys!

Sorry, yes, I meant to type Amber DME.

The real cinnamon is very mild I don't expect it to be very obvious in the end result but I've been wanting to try it and Porter seemed a good vehicle.

I'm a hop-head...but I think I will scale back the bittering hops a bit to 1.5 oz. If it's too hoppy I can just age it longer I guess.

I'm using the Nottingham because it's what I have handy. I'm trying to avoid going to the HBS and just use what's on-hand (which is why I'm not using "British" hop varieties).

...I'm not certain If 1.5 lbs is enough cherries. I want a strong hint of the flavor but not a blast...I figure the cherry will "hide" in the sweet malty notes.

geez, I didn't even see the cherry part.....have you thought about putting them in secondary instead? I've never used fruit before, but I hear constantly that most of the flavor will be chewed away by primary fermentation.....just a thought.

ahh...good to know. This is my first time using fruit as an addition. I just did some checking of other recipes and, yeah, it does look like people usually add it in the secondary. Will do.

Thanks again! I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

The boss is letting everyone go early today so I'll get a start on this in about a half hour.

Cheers!

BTW - once the sour cherries hit the secondary, how much more fermentation should I expect to see (if any)? I've never worked with fruit before.

It's now in the primary at a SG of 1.063

It will be interesting to see how far the yeast takes it. I'll post when the cherries are added when it goes into the secondary.

Had a taste while testing SG. Cinnamon is only noticeable as a very slight bitter overtone. This should be interesting.

Into the secondary tonight with 3 lbs sour cherries and 3 lbs sweet cherry puree.

SG 1.019 before racking to cherries. I think it's still got a ways to go and it will be in the secondary for some time...don't know if the fruit will spur much more fermentation or not.