Cinnamon Porter--Is it possible? Looking for opinions and guidance!

I've been brewing with varying degrees of frequency over the last 10 years, but have always been a little nervous to formulate my own recipes, but I have a flavor in my head I'd really like to duplicate.

While camping with my in-laws last weekend, I had a great piece of cinnamon bread and a Founder's Porter for breakfast. I still had some of the cinnamon bread in my mouth when I took my first sip of the porter and WOW, what a great flavor combination (to me); so I started to wonder if you could brew a cinnamon porter and have the flavors work out.

I started to look at all the various porter recipes I had and noticed they used four specific adjunct grains: crystal malt, chocolate malt, black patent malt, and roasted barley. I was trying to find a "baseline" basic porter recipe that I could play with, so I took the averages of those adjuncts across the recipes and came up with the following:

12 oz. Crystal Malt
8 oz. Chocolate Malt
4 oz. Black Patent Malt

and a negligible amount of roasted barley

Normally I'm an extract brewer who sometimes does a "bastardized" partial mash. So if I was going to formulate a basic grain bill, I guess I would use the above ingredients with about 6 2/3 lbs. DME and add some East Kent Goldings or other mild hop and a good british ale yeast.

I've seen spiced beer recipes that add cinnamon powder toward the end of the boil and others that add cinnamon sticks to the secondary. I guess my questions are this:

1. Am I approaching formulating the grain bill incorrectly?
2. Are there better proportions of those grains that will "help" accentuate the cinnamon more?
3. Are there other grains I should be thinking about that will "help" accentuate the cinnamon more?
4. Are there other adjuncts (i.e. molasses, nutmeg, vanilla bean, etc) I should be thinking about that will help accentuate the cinnamon more?
5. When and how much cinnamon do you think I should add?

I know this is a long post, but I thought being specific might help things. Thanks to all who respond with help, ideas, suggestions and criticism.

BREW ON:rockin:

I have used Cinnamon in a Steam-Style Marzen* and a Porter with very good results.

I add half a cinnamon stick to the boil at 5 minutes and the other half into the primary for fermentation.

Lots of cinnamon flavor.


*Done on a bet. I won. It tasted great.

That ain't chicken has the same idea that i had...I know that cinnamin is pretty volitle and will fade quickly, and boiling will drive a lot of it away. SO Adding a stick to primary or secondary would carry the flavor and aroma through longer. I have never done it, but it seems that that would be the best.

'Chicken, did you sanitize the one in primary any special way?

Revvy said:

'Chicken, did you sanitize the one in primary any special way?

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Nothing special. I just dip it in Vodka, Jack or 'Shine. That will usually scare off any beasties.

thataintchicken said:

I add half a cinnamon stick to the boil at 5 minutes and the other half into the primary for fermentation.

Lots of cinnamon flavor.

Click to expand...

Are there any benefits to putting the cinnamon stick in during the primary fermentation as opposed to when I rack it to the secondary?

Thanks!

BREW ON:rockin:

Can anybody advise about the amounts (and types) of adjunct grain I plan to use and whether or not different amounts would be good (and not cover up the cinnamon flavor)?

Thanks!

BREW ON:rockin: