First All Grain Attempt

Planning on giving this porter recipe a try. This is my first attempt at all grain after about 10 or so extract brews. Also going to add some vanilla beans to the fermenter for 7 days or so. Although I wont be able to pick up any other ingredients before brew day, was hoping for some critiques on this recipe i came up with.


Style: Robust Porter
Batch Size: 2.20 gal
Boil Time: 30 min
Mash Method: All Grain BIAB

Calculated & Measured Statistics
Calculated O.G. 1.045
Calculated F.G. 1.014 (72% Yeast Attenuation)
ABV 3.7%
IBU 34
SRM 35.7°L

Mash at 154 for 60

Malt Bill
Malt Name Weight PPG SRM Type
2-Row Malt - 1.75°L 3.00 lbs 1.038 1.80 Mashed Grain
Chocolate Malt - 450°L 0.40 lbs 1.034 450.00 Mashed Grain
Coffee Malt - 150°L 0.25 lbs 1.029 150.00 Mashed Grain
Honey Malt - 25°L 0.10 lbs 1.034 25.00 Mashed Grain

Hop Bill
Hop Name Time Added Weight AA% Type
Magnum (U.S.) 30 min 0.25 oz 13.5% Leaf Hop
Magnum (U.S.) 15 min 0.25 oz 13.5% Leaf Hop

Yeast Details
Yeast Strain Quantity Attenuation Flocculation
Safale US-05 Fermentis Dry Ale 72 Low– Medium

I think you need to cut back on the specialty malts by a large margin. Youve got 4.25 lbs total there and 1.25 of which is specialty malts (which are not as fermentable as base malts). I go by a rule of thumb to never exceed 20% specialty malts or else the beer wont get down to its FG and will be cloyingly sweet. Youve got close to 30% there so I could take some of it out

what temp are you mashing at? I usually do 154 for porters. You should try to keep your fermentation below 70 for that yeast if you dont want off flavors. If the sticker on the side of the fermentor says72, the interior of the wort is likely in the mid to high 70s...

m00ps said:

I think you need to cut back on the specialty malts by a large margin. Youve got 4.25 lbs total there and 1.25 of which is specialty malts (which are not as fermentable as base malts). I go by a rule of thumb to never exceed 20% specialty malts or else the beer wont get down to its FG and will be cloyingly sweet. Youve got close to 30% there so I could take some of it out

what temp are you mashing at? I usually do 154 for porters. You should try to keep your fermentation below 70 for that yeast if you dont want off flavors. If the sticker on the side of the fermentor says72, the interior of the wort is likely in the mid to high 70s...

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Thanks for the suggestions and yea I might scale back the coffee malt a bit to try and get under 20%

Hadnt finalized mash temp yet, but I think the recipe i was basing this off was 156.

Ill try and keep my temps down, but I dont have much in the way of temp control yet, but my basement is usually mid to upper 60s. Ill probably have to do a bit of messing around with that.

Do you think it would work if i scaled back to ...
3lbs 2-Row
.40lbs Chocolate
.25lbs Coffee
.10lbs Honey

?

yeah that looks good IMO

Just curious if there was a mistake calculation somewhere, are you planning on doing a 2.2gal pre boil for a 2gal batch? And I agree with m00ps to mash at 154, that's where I mash my porters at

m00ps said:

yeah that looks good IMO

Click to expand...

Awesome thanks, I appreciate the advice. I'm pretty excited for this brew.

nettekdl said:

Just curious if there was a mistake calculation somewhere, are you planning on doing a 2.2gal pre boil for a 2gal batch? And I agree with m00ps to mash at 154, that's where I mash my porters at

Click to expand...

Ahh sorry, yea thats from the phone app I'm using. Haven't calculated that, but I plan on using Death Brewers method - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=75231 - and just scaling it down.

Looks good for first all grain. Porters have a decent margin of error as well!

I've adjusted the recipe in the first post.

Just curious about one more thing. I used the Brewer's Friend mash calculator and at 1.50 qt/lb I should use 5.63 qts (1.4gallons). Does that sound right? And then that should mean I'd use 2.1 gallons for sparge water?

So I brewed this yesterday, things turned out decent. However I only got 62% efficiency, probably could have done better with the sparge next time. Still should be around 4% abv.

It tasted pretty good, much better than any extract I've done so far. Gonna also add some vanilla bean soaked in rum for a few days.