lactose in a chocolate porter?

I've got a chocolate porter sitting in primary right now - almost 3 weeks in. I used 8oz of honey malt in the grain bill to try to keep some sweetness to the beer, but I don't really taste it. Not sure why since I've seen so many posts talk about how careful you have to be with honey malt. I thought 8oz would be perfect.

Anyways, I'm now thinking of adding some lactose at bottling. I've seen recipes for milk/sweet stouts using 1lb of lactose. Would that be too much for a porter that is on the lighter side of the style? I don't want to over do it. Maybe 8oz?

Porters normally get their sweetness from caramel malts. I'd try 4 ounces first.

david_42 said:

Porters normally get their sweetness from caramel malts. I'd try 4 ounces first.

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I used some caramel 60 - I think 8oz - in addition to the 8oz of honey malt. When I taste the gravity samples I just don't get that much carmel/honey flavor

You might wanna just let this one ride out and see how it ends up. It can be hard to judge at the early stages, even for very experienced brewers. You can always adjust and brew again later. From personal experience, Honey Malt is almost saccharine sweet and 8 ounces is more than I'd even recommend. It could be that yeasty or green flavors are somehow masking the hney malt at this early stage, or it could be that you have a very stiff complex brew that has absorbed the sweetness well, but you shouldn't end up with a beer wanting for sweetness, by any means.

snailsongs said:

...you shouldn't end up with a beer wanting for sweetness, by any means.

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That's what I thought. In fact, looking at my brew log now, I mashed 1.25 lbs of crystal 60L, 0.5 lb honey malt, 0.25 lb chocolate malt, and 0.25 lb of cocoa powder with 1.25 lbs of Maris Otter (the rest of the fermentables being DME and some Turbinado sugar). With over a pound of crystal 60 and the honey malt I expect a rather malty brew.

Maybe I'll just let it be and see how it ages. I haven't checked it in a week or so, but I plan on moving it to secondary this weekend. I'll give it another taste then.