Chocolate Cherry Porter Critique Please

NOTE - MODIFIED RECIPE ACTUALLY BREWED IS IN POST #4 BELOW!!!

Hey all!

Taking my first crack at a Chocolate Cherry Porter. Please critique my recipe below - what I'm going for is a very subdued roast, with upfront chocolate taste. Hence, just a small amount of dehusked Carafa III and 1# of chocolate malt. How are my IBU's @ 37 using a clean hop for bittering.

One question I do have is in regards to my crystal malts. Do these look ok? I have quite a bit of 120L so I figured this would be a good recipe for those flavors. Little 120L and a little more 60L - is this appropriate? Should I be going in another direction, like 40L?

Not sure about the cherry yet either, I will either be doing the extract, juice concentrate, canned cherries, whole cherries, or a combo of all or some.


Chocolate Cherry Porter
(Ferment for 14-21 Days @ 63 deg, Secondary for 2-4 weeks @ 68 deg, Bulk Age for 4-8 Weeks @ 35-40 deg. Keg and
serve at 42 deg)


Type: All Grain
Date: 10/13/2012
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Brewer: Ryan B
Boil Size: 7.50 gal
Boil Time: 90 min Equipment: Brew Pot (15 Gal), Hot Liquor Tank (15 Gal) and Igloo/Gott Cooler (10 Gal)
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00


Ingredients:

GRAIN
6.00 lb Pale Malt, Golden Promise (2.2 SRM) Grain 38.14 %
4.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 25.43 %
2.00 lb Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 12.71 %
1.00 lb Organic Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 6.36 %
1.00 lb Organic Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 6.36 %
8oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 3.18 %
8oz Honey Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 3.18 %
6oz lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 2.42 %
4oz lb Carafa III (525.0 SRM) Grain 1.59 %

HOPS
0.75 oz Magnum [14.00 %] (60 min) Hops 30.3 IBU
0.75 oz Fuggles [5.80 %] (20 min) Hops 7.6 IBU

MISC. ADDITIONS
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1.00 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
2.00 oz Cocoa Powder (Mash 75.0 min) Misc
2.00 oz Cocoa Powder (Secondary 30.0 days) Misc
4.00 oz Cherry Extract (Secondary 30.0 days) Misc
4.00 oz Cocoa Powder (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs SafAle English Ale (DCL Yeast #S-04) Yeast-Ale



Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.070
Est Final Gravity: 1.015 SG
Bitterness: 37.9 IBU
Est Color: 37.1 SRM

Forgot to mention - the only reason you see 6# GP, 4# 2-row and 2# 6-row is because I need to use up some grains. Without this constraint I would just use 100% Golden Promise.

Any issues with splitting the base grain up like this?

Anyone? Brewing Saturday and have some ideas on modifications, but would like some more insight

Well, I made some changes and brewed this one up last Saturday. I mainly just increased the base malts and changed the hops around to up the gravity and balance with IBU's. I also switched from using cherry extract to using 100% pure black cherry juice concentrate that you get and whole foods or sprouts. 8oz makes one quart of reconstituted juice, and I'm adding 8 - 8oz. jars of the stuff.

Here is my modified recipe - I'll keep this post going with updates just to keep a log... and to share if anyone is interested:

GRAIN
5.00 lb Pale Malt, Golden Promise (2.2 SRM) Grain
6.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain
4.75 lb Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain (what I had left...)
1.00 lb Organic Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain
1.00 lb Organic Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain
8oz White Table Sugar (Boil - 20min)
4oz Organic Toasted Oats, Flaked (Toasted in the oven at 350F until golden)
8oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 3.18 %
8oz Honey Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 3.18 %
8oz lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 2.42 %
5.31oz lb Carafa III (525.0 SRM) Grain 1.59 %

HOPS
0.75 oz Magnum [14.00 %] (60 min) Hops
0.5 oz Fuggles [5.80 %] (30 min) Hops
0.5 oz Fuggles [5.80 %] (10 min) Hops

MISC. ADDITIONS
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1.00 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
4.00 oz Cocoa Powder (Boil 75.0 min) Misc
4.00 oz Cocoa Powder (Boil 5 min) Misc
(8) 8oz Jars of rw knudsen black cherry juice concentrate (adding first 4 bottles after 48hrs, and the rest 48hrs after that)
2 Madagascar Vanilla beans in vodka or bourbon added to fermenter for ~2 weeks prior to secondary.

Mashed at ~151-153deg F for 60 min.

Double Batch Sparged with 165deg F water to 7.5 gallons pre boil volume.

Boil vigorously for 90min to end up with ~5.25 gallons into fermenter

Pure O2 through SS stone for 45-60 seconds.

2 Pkgs Nottingham Yeast-Ale (one dry pitched the day of brewing, after chilling to about 75F, the placing in chest freezer to fall to 62F - the second rehydrated in 1/2 cup of water and pitched after ~24hrs)

OG was about 1.087 before cherry juice and the adjusted OG after cherry juice should be about 1.095-1.100. A BIG BEER INDEED. I added some yeast energizer and nutrient with the first half of the cherry juice and plan on doing it again for the last half of the bottles to keep the yeast happy. Doing this and maintaining temp control I am hopping to get the Notty to get me down to around 1.022-1.026. If I do that this should be a 10%+ beer that will be great around Christmas.

This sounds awesome, did you actually add the full 64 oz. of cherry juice?
Also, did the cocoa powder add much chocolate aroma and flavor?

I recently made a breakfast stout: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/all-grain-all-grain-chocolate-biscuit-stout-363757/

I used nibs, a full 8 oz box. I also used 4 oz. of bakers chocolate dissolve in 3/4 cup of rum with a vanilla bean. It turned out well, but I am still curious how cocoa powder would come out.

Thanks!

It's in the fermentation freezer at 63-64deg F right now at day #4 (pitched Sunday night, Thursday morning now), so I'm not really sure how the cocoa affected the flavor or aroma. It smelled awesome going into the fermenter though!

I actually could only get 7 jars of the cherry concentrate since I bought all of them off the shelf - so I have added 56oz. so far - all last night @ day 3 of fermentation.

I am hoping this turns out great for Christmas time. I was going for a very chocolate forward stout, hence the look of the grain bill. I will also be adding two Madagascar vanilla beans to a bit of vodka or bourbon to toss into the fermenter for a week or two before transferring to a secondary to bulk condition for 6-8 weeks.

I'll let you know how this turns out and keep posting updates. Cheers!

That's so much juice. I wonder how thin the body will be with all of those simple sugars. Kind of makes me want throw together a Chocolate Stout Cherry Shandy. Hopefully it turns out well it should have a dry finish, a lot of chocolate, and a lot of cherry too.

The vanilla beans are a good idea to accentuate the chocolate. I'd recommend splitting them, as opposed to cutting them into pieces horizontally. The latter method will leave a lot of the vanilla inside of the bean and you'll be disappointed when you're squeezing out the vanilla goodness later.

Cheers!

Let us know how it turns out. Sounds a bit busier than I'd do in a Porter, but thats the great thing about trying new stuff when you brew.

I have a recipe for a Porter that is very chocolate forward, and has a nice creamy vanilla finish.

Yeah, the three different base malt are unnecessary, but I was trying to use up what I had.

Other than that, it's really just base, chocolate, some darker crystal, Carafa for a little bit of roast, and honey malt for some sweetness. Table sugar is there just to help boost the ABV and dry it out some.

I usually try to use simple recipes, but sometimes it gets away from me! Depending on how this turns out I will probably simplify the grain bill and hone the final product. Fingers crossed though for now!

EDIT: I actually used your porter for inspiration, but I didn't have any roasted or dark grains other that the chocolate and Carafa III...

OCBrewin said:

Yeah, the three different base malt are unnecessary, but I was trying to use up what I had.

Other than that, it's really just base, chocolate, some darker crystal, Carafa for a little bit of roast, and honey malt for some sweetness. Table sugar is there just to help boost the ABV and dry it out some.

I usually try to use simple recipes, but sometimes it gets away from me! Depending on how this turns out I will probably simplify the grain bill and hone the final product. Fingers crossed though for now!

EDIT: I actually used your porter for inspiration, but I didn't have any roasted or dark grains other that the chocolate and Carafa III...

Click to expand...

Oh, neat.. Thats pretty cool then! My porter is really nice and simple. Easy to up the chocolate malt, add some pale chocolate, and it'll be even more chocolatey.

Let me know if you think the toasted oats made a difference. My brother was telling me to do that on the phone for the RIS I just came up with, and I opted to leave them be.. Curious what it would add to the beer.

Herky21 said:

That's so much juice. I wonder how thin the body will be with all of those simple sugars. Kind of makes me want throw together a Chocolate Stout Cherry Shandy. Hopefully it turns out well it should have a dry finish, a lot of chocolate, and a lot of cherry too....

Click to expand...

Yeah, it is a lot of juice, but it's actually less than the 9 jars (72oz.) in the original recipe that I got my inspiration from:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/chocolate-cherry-stout-326884/

and this beer's OG was less than mine. I don't want 'Cherry Rocket Fuel', but instead a nice, chocolaty porter that will hold up to a fair amount of cherry flavor. I want to be able to tell that there is cherry in it, without it being overpowering. After reading the original recipe above I settled on 8 jars - I can always add more if I want to at kegging time.

I also noticed that I had the sugar amount wrong in the last post. I have corrected the white table sugar BK addition from 1lb to 8oz.

FATC1TY said:

Let me know if you think the toasted oats made a difference. My brother was telling me to do that on the phone for the RIS I just came up with, and I opted to leave them be.. Curious what it would add to the beer.

Click to expand...

I will do - although it may be hard to tell with all of the other flavors happening in this beer. I tasted them before I brewed and there is definitely a flavor difference. The toasted oats remind me more of an actual oatmeal cookie, whereas the plain oats have that raw silky taste - more like plain oatmeal that you would have for breakfast. I will definitely be using it more in the future for beers like stouts, porters, and maybe even esb, browns and milds.

So here's a quick update. I took a hydro reading today (day 15 after pitch) and she seems to be stalled out at 1.030. The OG adjusted for the juice was just about 1.100, but this still seems like too high of a final gravity. Will it come down more? I'm gonna check again in one week and see where it is. If its still high I'm thinking of making a starter with some fresh S-04 or S-05 and repitching at high krausen. What do ya think?

The sample was really good, apart from being a bit sweet and uncarbed. Heavy thick chocolate with just the slightest cherry background and a slight warming from alcohol. The cherry is almost non detectable, I don't think you could pick it out if you didn't know. I still have one juice concentrate that I didn't pour in the primary that I will add just before kegging I think. Overall, I'm very happy so far, and hope that it'll eventually get down to around 1.022-1.024 for a nice 10.5%+ holiday beer