Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Left Hand Pepper Porter Clone

So in this year's Fade to Black series, Left Hand released a pepper porter that I had on cask at the brewery, and it was divine. I normally don't enjoy pepper beers - or at least not more than one pint - but the LH porter is downright drinkable. Instead of a bunch of heat in the beer, the spice is more subtle.

So I set out to clone it based on knowledge of how they did their peppers - an online video shows the brewers seeding and deveining anchos, serranos, and brown chipotles. so I think the spice tinkering will work out. What I am working on is how they got this sweet cocoa note in the beer...almost gives it a mexican mole taste. I'm going to do a 5 gal partial mash version at home, and if it is decent, we'll dial it up all-grain on our 20 Gal rig with my buddies.

So here is my first crack recipe - I'd love critique.

Extract: 8lb Munich and 2lb pale LME
Specialty:
1 lb simpson crystal 60
1/2 lb chocolate wheat - for a bit of mouthfeel and some tang
1/4 lb pale choc
1/4 lb de-husked carafa III

Hops: 1 oz Haller (4.3%aa) at 60 min
(this beer has some bittering, but overall has a really low hop profile)

CA Ale yeast (WLP 001)

Looking for an OG of 1.080 to hit 7.5ABV at mid 70s attenuation

Thoughts or critique? And if you can get this beer, it is good in the bottle, great on cask. Cheers!

I just recently had the Pepper Porter as well. You're not kidding, it's excellent!

I'll be following your thread as I'd love to brew a clone too. I don't have any critiques or advice for now though, sorry!

Did you brew this?

This sounds interesting. Let us know if you did this one and how many peppers you used.

This is one of my favorite beers right now. Did you ever brew this?

I just racked it last night, and the grav sample was delicious. really psyched. bought three types of dry chilies today - anchos, smoked serranos, and brown chipotle. watched this video online that describes the taste notes they were looking for in each of those chilies - really interesting. they also look like they drop all the chilies in the bright tank and then taste daily till they get the right heat.

so tomorrow night I'm going to chop the chilies (1 oz each, deseeded, deveined) and put them in a grain bag, give them a quick pasteurizaton (too long and the peppers bitter), and into the drink. read other options of making them into a tea or infusing into vodka, but "dry hopping" them seemed more familiar. any thoughts on that?

I'll post back in several days when I'm to taste on heat...

Let us know how the chilies timeline works out. I have wanted to do a chili porter for a while now. Did you use dried chilies or fresh?

So here's the report back for FYI and for anyone who wants to offer helpful critique my way. I brewed the beer as per the PM recipe above. OG 1.079, FG 1.023, ABV 7.4%. Tasting the base beer, the chocolate notes were right there - subtle sweet chocolate nib taste. Needed more classic porter notes (roasty, coffee, dark choc), which I still get in the Left Hand version after the chilis.

I used whole dried chilis from the same shop that Left Hand used. .5 oz each of de-seeded brown chipotles and smoked serranos, and .5 oz anchos. I boiled a bit of water with my grain bag to sanitize it, added the chilis, and let them steep in near hot water for about 10 min before cooling. Wanted to pasteurize, but not for too long - the spice shop said 20min in hot water will begin to bitter the chilis instead of allowing their taste/aroma to come out (sound familiar?).

I dumped the cooled water (about 6 oz) and chili bag into the keg. Initial taste was good heat, mild spice notes. 12 hrs later, the heat was creeping too high, so I pulled the chilis. End result - heat is a bit bright and the chili flavor notes a bit low for me. For anyone trying this, I would go .5 oz anchos, and .25 oz ea of the serranos and chipotles. I wanted more time in the beer to extract the smoke and tobacco notes of the hotter chilies, but their heat made me cut it short.

Overall...a good learning experience given the lack of info I could find on this beer. The sweet choc notes of the porter are now hidden too much in the heat, and it stil lacks the porter roastiness and chili flavors I was looking for. I'll drink it, but I wish it had the better maltiness of our all-grain beers. Overall: B-, but a few more cracks and I can dial this in.

If you threw in a 1/4 lb of roasted barley it would probably help with that roastiness your looking for. I think a small amount of roasted barley in a porter is great. In regards to the chilies do you think that adding the water they were steeped in might have made it to over the top? Maybe try spritizing (never though I would ever use that word) the chili's with starsan and just dry hoping (Dry Chiling?) them next time?

@Coldies - I agree on the water. Thought I might loose some of the flavor from their soak, so I included it. but I basically made a wicked hot pepper tea and hid the chili taste under the heat. Other option would be fresh chilies that you oven roast yourself (and therefore debug), in a smaller quantity. I'd ultimately like the chilis in the keg longer to draw a fuller range of flavor out of them.

tales of a chili noob...

Sounds amazing. I'm enjoying a black chili beer from Rockyard Brewing and want to do something similar. As your post is a bit older, any notes or ever a re-do that you can offer up any advice?