Smoked Porter critique

I'm working on formulating a Smoked Porter recipe for our "winter" here in San Diego and was wondering if someone could help me fine tune. Here's the current grainbill:

8 lb Maris Otter
3 lb smoked malt
1 lb Munich
.75 lb Crystal 60
.5 lb Chocolate malt
.25 lb Black malt

OG 1.067
FG 1.016
.5 oz summit at 60 min
1 oz Liberty at 15 min

S-04 probably

A couple of questions:

- What's the difference between Black Malt, Black Patent, and Black Barley as far as taste and appropriateness in a porter
- I use a bit of Munich in a lot of recipes, and don't know why...probably cause i see you guys use it a lot. anything better as a base malt w/ additional flavor here?

My understanding is that Black Malt and Black Patent are the same thing. Black Barley, I believe, is Roasted Barley.

For a porter I would use the Black Malt/Black Patent. Black Barley is more appropriate for stouts.

Not sure 1 lb of Munich will shine through given that you're using mostly MO, which will impart it's own nice malty note. Add to that the roastiness from the dark malts and the smokiness, I see no reason to include it. Just stick with MO as your base malt. (on the other hand, it won't hurt anything either to leave it in)

JLem, I took your advice and left out the 1# of Munich. Brewed this 3.5 weeks ago and it's been kegged and carbing for about a week now. It's an extremely well balanced smoked porter, IMO. I've got to sample a few other commercial examples, but for my palate this works great.

Coincidentally, i see a lot of Robust Porter recipes here that have 1 lb of Chocolate malt...might be my grain bill adjustment for the next version of this. Would be interesting to see how this changes the "smokiness".

glad it turned out well...and screw you and your San Diego "winter"