Porter looks more like a brown

% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
66.7 6.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.036 2
15.2 1.36 lbs. Munich Malt Germany 1.037 8
9.1 0.82 lbs. Brown Malt Great Britain 1.032 70
6.1 0.55 lbs. Crystal 105L Great Britain 1.033 120
3.0 0.27 lbs. Crystal 40L America 1.034 40

Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
0.45 oz. Magnum Whole 14.00 27.4 60 min.
0.55 oz. Goldings - E.K. Whole 4.75 0.0 10 min.

This is the recipe I used for a 3 gallon batch of the vanilla bourbon porter I got from the recipe section. I mashed at about 156-157 for an hour. sparged boiled and cooled as normal with hop additions, whifloc, and yeast nutrient. While I was transferring it the color was really light almost like a brown. My OG was supposed to be 1.080 but ended up with a 1.059 giving an efficiency of about 67%? I'm leaning towards the mash temp being the main problem. Is there anything out of the ordinary with this grain bill for this style?

I had a chocolate coffee stout with a calculated OG of 1.063 come out to about 1.043. I tracked the problem back to grain crush. The culprit was my LHBS grain mill, had to set it to a finer crush. Then I did a Wit that was supposed to have OG 1.055 (assuming 70%) and came out to 1.060 which is closer to 75-78%.

Could that be the culprit for you to?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f126/
all the recipes in the Porter Recipe section of the site seem to have some combination of chocolate malt, roasted barley, black malt, and/or carafa.

Beersmith showed for 5gal that you can expect approx 15.6-15.9SRM so that color is to be expected without darker malts/grains.

he said it was a 3 gallon batch

You don't have any dark malts in the recipe, so no surprise. Even a brown Porter is likely to have some black patent and chocolate malt. You could steep 2 oz of BP and 4 oz of chocolate in a quart of water, strain and boil for 5 minutes.

kypher said:

he said it was a 3 gallon batch

Click to expand...

A yes my poor reading skills indeed , so SRM expected is 22 for a 3gal. so still brown without dark malts.

OK I looked over the original recipe and I'm an idiot I guess I completely missed the chocolate malt. Did I mash to high to get such a low OG? I hope it turns out well this is the wifes brew.

Hmmm... morels in a beer. hmmm

LOL and I thought I was going to get away with it. LOL

It's unlikely the OG was lower than expected due to your mash temperature. The more likely culprit was the texture of the grain crush. They warn you of not crushing too fine and that you'll get a "STUCK SPARGE" (cue dramatic horror music). Though there is some truth in the hype, always make sure you leave the HBS with a crush fine enough that the water will get a chance to really soak into the grain. You don't want flour obviously, but the husks need to be cracked.

That's just my two cents.