Advice on Porter recipe?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

b-radbrew

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 7, 2014
Messages
74
Reaction score
5
Location
Spokane
My wife is a porter fan and I've been trying to make something that she will really enjoy. I've done 2 1 gallon test batches so far and they turned out ok, but not quite what I'm looking for. Now a friend of ours asked if I could make a batch for her wedding next year so I've really got to get this down. I will be sticking with 1 gallon sizes until I'm confident with the recipe. Her and my wife will be the ones judging these as I make them so I can fine tune if needed. I usually make lighter ales so I'm not used to using some of these grains and would like some opinions on this recipe:

1.5 gl
OG 1.053
FG 1.013
IBU 33
S-04

2-row - 2.75 lbs 88%
Chocolate - 5 oz 10%
C-60 - .25 oz 0.5%
Roasted barley - .25 oz 0.5%
Carapils - 1 oz 1%

Hops (no-chill in the kettle which is why the times are what they are)

3 g Nugget @ 40 min/ 22 ibu
7g Eas Kent Goldings @ flameout / 11 ibu

Both my wife and friend are looking for something that gives a nice coffee and subtle roasted note. How is this looking so far?
 
that looks pretty good but id up the crystal and roasted barley to like 1oz each or something. As it is, theres not even enough to really do antyhing

for more subtle coffee (not using actual coffee) try some coffee kiln malt. Its like in between chocolate and brown malt
 
That is for .5 gallons.

Not enough Chocolate in my opinion. I'd up it to 0.5 lbs, and drop the Roasted. The coffee will give some subtle roast flavor. A lot of people will disagree with removing the roast, but that is how I like them; lots of chocolate, but no roast or black. Makes it easier drinking IMO.

I'd also go C90 or 120 and have a couple of ounces.

.............. really difficult trying to scale to 1.5 gallons.

Mash low 150s. If you go my route, there will be a lot of speciality malts, so you need a lower mash temp to offset the unfermentable sugars from the speciality malts.

I like a little licorice in my Porters too. You can use Brewers licorice, Licorice root, or star anise to get the flavor.
 
So, I couldn't take it anymore. Last time I brewed was at the end of April so I went into the brew room to see what I had around and came up with this little concoction:

1.5 gl batch
1.8lbs - 2row
12 Oz - Munich 10
6 Oz - chocolate
4 Oz - c10
4 Oz - carapils

5 gram - nugget @40 min

I figured what the hell it's worth a start. The 1.8 lbs of 2 row was all i had left which is why i threw the munich in there.I was a little high on my end boil volume but the sample was pretty good so far. Atlas it will give me something to elaborate on for the next go round.
 
Im making a porter recipe now, I've never used brown malt but I've heard other people say it should be in there. So the malts in using are

MO
Munich
Brown
Crystal 80
Chocolate
Black Malt

I don't have the exact figures yet but for a 5 gallon recipe I'm just going to add around 3-4oz of black malt to add complexity. Shouldn't add too much roast or bitterness but add a subtle taste to it.
 
I tinkered around to get a porter that is more chocolate with some coffee and less straight roasted flavor and have settled on the recipe below. I think it's the brown plus pale chocolate that really does it. The 2% midnight wheat is mostly color, I've done it also with black malt and roasted barley and it doesn't change it too much at that small amount, but this is my favorite version. It's quite tasty:

64% base (I usually do MO if I have it, or MO plus some 2-row)
16% brown malt
7% pale chocolate
7% carastan
4% flaked barley
2% midnight wheat
 
I tinkered around to get a porter that is more chocolate with some coffee and less straight roasted flavor and have settled on the recipe below. I think it's the brown plus pale chocolate that really does it. The 2% midnight wheat is mostly color, I've done it also with black malt and roasted barley and it doesn't change it too much at that small amount, but this is my favorite version. It's quite tasty:

64% base (I usually do MO if I have it, or MO plus some 2-row)
16% brown malt
7% pale chocolate
7% carastan
4% flaked barley
2% midnight wheat

That looks like a really solid porter recipe.
 
I tinkered around to get a porter that is more chocolate with some coffee and less straight roasted flavor and have settled on the recipe below. I think it's the brown plus pale chocolate that really does it. The 2% midnight wheat is mostly color, I've done it also with black malt and roasted barley and it doesn't change it too much at that small amount, but this is my favorite version. It's quite tasty:

64% base (I usually do MO if I have it, or MO plus some 2-row)
16% brown malt
7% pale chocolate
7% carastan
4% flaked barley
2% midnight wheat

That looks awesome!

I always think of the the difference between stout and porter is that a porter doesn't have roasted barley, while a stout does. I love the looks of that porter, as it's got the brown malt and chocolate, and some cara, as well as the color from the midnight wheat- and I love flaked barley for body and head. I may have to make a porter now. :mug:
 
Okay all this porter talk made me thirsty, so here's a pic to go with the recipe. I highly recommend it on nitro. It's a little early here on the left coast, but I'm getting ready to call in on a long distance fantasy football draft and I'm sure everyone else is already drinking so I don't feel too guilty.

sorry OP a little off topic
:mug:

porter_edited-1.jpg
 
I definitely agree that brown malt is good. Somewhere around 4 to 8 ounces in a one gallon batch is probably good

Also 10% chocolate malt is way too much for me, although I know some people go for that much. I generally think of porters being richer than stouts, so I love the extra maltiness of some Munich and little Crystal malt without overdoing the coffee/roasty notes you can get with too much chocolate malt.
 
You might want to try Beir Munchers BLACK PEARL porter. It is smooth and easy drinking my bet is your wife would like it.:D
 
After a week of fermenting I drew a gravity sample tonight. I thought it was pretty good so far. Nice roasted/coffee flavor that wasn't too overwhelming. The wife tried it and thought the same. Now I'm wondering though, after reading some of the other replies, what does the brown malt bring to the flavor profile? I think the next go round I'll back off the chocolate and Munich a little then replace it with brown?
 
That looks awesome!

I always think of the the difference between stout and porter is that a porter doesn't have roasted barley, while a stout does. I love the looks of that porter, as it's got the brown malt and chocolate, and some cara, as well as the color from the midnight wheat- and I love flaked barley for body and head. I may have to make a porter now. :mug:

i agree. i feel like a porter should have a bit more pronounced chocolate flavor over the roasted coffee, while a stout should be the other way around.

i got a christmas porter 5 days into fermentation now. i didn't end up with any brown malt in it, and it ended up slightly lighter than i wanted it (when i got to the lhbs they were out of some of the ingredients, even though their website said they had it in, so i had to change it up a bit). even just during the vigorous part of fermenation it filled the ferment chamber with lots of chocolatey, malty aroma:

82.5% MO
6.2% caramel (30 ebc)
6.2% chocolate (690 ebc)
3.7% flaked barley
1.2% carafa special II (818 ebc)

18 IBUs from northern brewer 60 min
12 IBUs from nb 30 min

"dry spice" with:
5 vanilla beans
5 cinnamon sticks
60g cocao nibs
 
After a week of fermenting I drew a gravity sample tonight. I thought it was pretty good so far. Nice roasted/coffee flavor that wasn't too overwhelming. The wife tried it and thought the same. Now I'm wondering though, after reading some of the other replies, what does the brown malt bring to the flavor profile? I think the next go round I'll back off the chocolate and Munich a little then replace it with brown?

Brown malt brings the party straight to your mouth! It's a strange malt in the way that it's not quite a speciality malt and therefore you can vary the proportion quite a bit (I've seen all the way from 2% to 50% of the grist). I was doing some comparisons of porters made with two malts: pale plus any other, and matching the resulting SRM (to around 25-30). Brown malt was the best by far as all the others (patent, chocolate) were quite unidimensional. Where black patent provides a clear roast, burnt, coffee note, brown malt brings instead layers of coffee, toast, nuts, slightly burnt cake, and some sweetness. In small quantities it's nutty and toasty, but when you bring it to 20% of the grist and above it's a bit like a big, deep instrumental section compared to the single, loud solo guitar of patent malt. It's pretty much *the* porter malt and it blends well with other roast malts (that can balance the toast and bring in more colour and deeper and sharper coffee / chocolate notes). It also has a good place in any stout (specially stronger ones) as far as your definition of stout is not a Guinness clone.
 
I don't mean to hijack this thread but hope to get some advice on what will be my own first porter! Reading this thread I put together a basic malt bill but still have 1 or 2 questions.
the grain bill:
65% pale ale malt
10 % munich
15% brown malt(can't get that here so I'll have to roast some pale malt myself)
5% pale chocolate

For the last 5% I intend to add some caramel malt. Now, would you suggest a 60-80 EBC or a darker one like cara aroma or special B?
Also what about hops.? I have EKG, Willamette and Magnum. could anyone suggest a hop schedule with those suitable for a porter? Again, it will be my first and I haven' t really a clue!
many thanks!
 
I don't mean to hijack this thread but hope to get some advice on what will be my own first porter! Reading this thread I put together a basic malt bill but still have 1 or 2 questions.
the grain bill:
65% pale ale malt
10 % munich
15% brown malt(can't get that here so I'll have to roast some pale malt myself)
5% pale chocolate

For the last 5% I intend to add some caramel malt. Now, would you suggest a 60-80 EBC or a darker one like cara aroma or special B?
Also what about hops.? I have EKG, Willamette and Magnum. could anyone suggest a hop schedule with those suitable for a porter? Again, it will be my first and I haven' t really a clue!
many thanks!

you basically want enough IBUs to take this out of the "fermented roast chocolate" category, but not so much that it's entering into the stout category, and especially not getting into the black ipa arena. typically an english style hop goes well in a porter. out of those three i would choose ekg.

to figure out how much bitterness compared to gravity points (a calculation that will give you an idea of the balance), i use this calculator:

http://www.madalchemist.com/rbr_calculator.html

but you need to know your expected bu:gu ratio (IBUs:OG), but also your expected apparent attenuation percentage (OG-FG /OG = X%). so in mine i had a bu:gu ratio of .468. i have 30 ibus and OG of 1.065. expected apparent attenuation is 75.1%, which gives me a relative bitterness ratio of .461. i then went here:

http://www.madalchemist.com/chart_bitterness_corrected.html

clicked on robust porter, brown porter, and baltic porter, and figured out that mine will pretty much be right in the middle between brown and baltic. which is exactly where i wanted it. (actually i did it the other way around and adjusted my recipe to get it between those two).

that's a lot of info, but i think it really helps to get that balance for each style.
 
Right! Had to chew on that for a while. I guess with an OG of 1.047 and apparent attn. of 74% I should be good with about 27 IBUs for a brown porter. Would those be all bittering hops at 60 mins or should there be aby late hops as well?
I plan on pitching s04 yeast. Also have us05 but I guess an English ale yeast would fit a porter better.
Any comments on the grain bill ? How about those caramel malts? Would you go for the lighter or darker ones? Thanks again anyone for your suugestions.
 
Right! Had to chew on that for a while. I guess with an OG of 1.047 and apparent attn. of 74% I should be good with about 27 IBUs for a brown porter. Would those be all bittering hops at 60 mins or should there be aby late hops as well?
I plan on pitching s04 yeast. Also have us05 but I guess an English ale yeast would fit a porter better.
Any comments on the grain bill ? How about those caramel malts? Would you go for the lighter or darker ones? Thanks again anyone for your suugestions.


Mine are split up between additions at 60 (18 ibus) and 30 (12 ibus), but that's because I'm not really wanting a ton of hop flavors and aromas because I'm using some spices that I want to shine instead. But if I was just doing this without those spices I would prolly do about 20 ibus at 60 and 10 ibus at 15.

Out of those two, def choose s-04. I personally went with an Irish ale yeast from white labs.

For the malts I feel like you've already got a ton of malt characteristics going on, so I would prolly just up the pale malt by that 5%. But if I had to choose I would go with something lighter, maybe a 20L, since you've already got some darker characteristics happening.
 
I go for around 1/3 of the IBU at the 20m mark. I usually skip crystal malts in porter but I can see some medium crystal going into porters with OG below 1.050. I'm keen on trying to brew one of those WW2 porters with an OG of 1.030! Brown malt contributes somewhat to body and can come across as fairly malty.
 
Thanks Karanka! I might skip the caramel malts and add part of the hops at 20 min.
I always wondered, maybe you can explain, how do you avoid a thin or watery beer with a low og like 1030?
One more question came up: how many ppg does brown malt add? I know crystal malt don't add any fermentable sugars, but do they add points to the og?
 
Crystal malt does contribute fermentable sugars as the enzymes from the pale malt will chew them up, it just has more sugars that won't get chewed (there's an article on the front page about this). Brown malt should be around 32PPG or so?
 
Thanks Karanka! I might skip the caramel malts and add part of the hops at 20 min.
I always wondered, maybe you can explain, how do you avoid a thin or watery beer with a low og like 1030?
One more question came up: how many ppg does brown malt add? I know crystal malt don't add any fermentable sugars, but do they add points to the og?

Caramel/crystal malt does add fermentable sugars, as well as dextrines (nonfermentable) for body. And they add points to the OG as well.
 
Thanks Karanka! I might skip the caramel malts and add part of the hops at 20 min.
I always wondered, maybe you can explain, how do you avoid a thin or watery beer with a low og like 1030?
One more question came up: how many ppg does brown malt add? I know crystal malt don't add any fermentable sugars, but do they add points to the og?

Just dug out the recipe for Whitbread Porter from 1940:

3.75lb Pale malt
0.35lb Brown Malt
0.35lb Chocolate Malt
0.5lb Invert sugar syrup (2/3)
2oz Oats

Mash at 150F, underlet and sparge at 170F.

The hops where a blend of the last 4 years (including fresh ones), mainly EKG but pretty much anything goes. They would have been kept cold.

90m boil, 1oz of hops at 90, 1/2oz at 30m, 1/2oz at 15m. ABV of 2.8% with an OG of 1.029 and an FG of 1.007. It would have had some brewers' caramel to make it darker.

To be fair, if I did something similar I'd have 2lb Brown malt and another of Crystal in it for some more body, but would be interesting to brew something like the one above. I'm quite surprised it had any sugar in it considering war time rationing (sugar is a lot more useful than barley!).
 
Sorry, my mistake! Just checked How to Brew and he typical malt yield chart shows clearly crystal malts add gravity points too.
But this leads me to the next question: if part of these sugars are fermentable and part not, how do you calculate an estimated final gravity of a beer that contains crystal malts? Can you? Or is it an educated guess?
 
Sorry, my mistake! Just checked How to Brew and he typical malt yield chart shows clearly crystal malts add gravity points too.
But this leads me to the next question: if part of these sugars are fermentable and part not, how do you calculate an estimated final gravity of a beer that contains crystal malts? Can you? Or is it an educated guess?

It's all an educated guess, crystal malts or no. Attenuation depends on recipe, mash temperature, and yeast strain primarily. Some yeast strains are highly attenuative, some are not. A mash temperature of 160F will give you a different fermentability than 147F. Lactose is non-fermentable, and will add both to the OG and FG. Crystal malts, or lack of, play a small part.
 
Thank you! I'm not one for very precise recipe calculations anyway so that's all fine with me. An educated guess and if I'm roughly in the ballpark I'm OK with it. Out of 40 batches only one I thought was mweh, so it works for me. It's true, beer is very forgiving!
 
Brown malt brings the party straight to your mouth! It's a strange malt in the way that it's not quite a speciality malt and therefore you can vary the proportion quite a bit (I've seen all the way from 2% to 50% of the grist). I was doing some comparisons of porters made with two malts: pale plus any other, and matching the resulting SRM (to around 25-30). Brown malt was the best by far as all the others (patent, chocolate) were quite unidimensional. Where black patent provides a clear roast, burnt, coffee note, brown malt brings instead layers of coffee, toast, nuts, slightly burnt cake, and some sweetness. In small quantities it's nutty and toasty, but when you bring it to 20% of the grist and above it's a bit like a big, deep instrumental section compared to the single, loud solo guitar of patent malt. It's pretty much *the* porter malt and it blends well with other roast malts (that can balance the toast and bring in more colour and deeper and sharper coffee / chocolate notes). It also has a good place in any stout (specially stronger ones) as far as your definition of stout is not a Guinness clone.


So I ended up doing a revamp of my original receipe and added brown malt. Holy crap what a difference! I went through and really focused on each ingredient and played with the percentages while incorporating the Brown malt. I backed off my Munich and Chocolate by a couple ounces each and took those quantities for my Brown addition. I don't have my recipe handy at the moment but this is sooooo much better than the first round which almost came out tasting like a Guiness so far. So glad I went with your recommendation on this malt. Just brewed a couple days ago and can't wait to see how it plays out. Thanks again, JKaranka!
 
So I ended up doing a revamp of my original receipe and added brown malt. Holy crap what a difference! I went through and really focused on each ingredient and played with the percentages while incorporating the Brown malt. I backed off my Munich and Chocolate by a couple ounces each and took those quantities for my Brown addition. I don't have my recipe handy at the moment but this is sooooo much better than the first round which almost came out tasting like a Guiness so far. So glad I went with your recommendation on this malt. Just brewed a couple days ago and can't wait to see how it plays out. Thanks again, JKaranka!

Do you mind posting your full recipe with the Brown malt addition?

I've been brewing cider and mead for a few months but am looking for a porter or stout as my first small batch beer experiment. Your 1.5gal batch looks perfect and I'd love to start with one that's had at least a little success.

Also, a few other random questions:

1. How long are you boiling the wort? 60 min?
2. Are you fermenting for the normal 7-10 days and then bottling?
3. What temperature are you mashing at?
4. Do you have the OG and estimated FG?
5. Is 1.5gal your post-boil wort amount? I have a 2 gallon fermentation bucket that I was planning on using so 1.5 gal post-boil would be perfect.

Thanks for posting this thread and finally convincing me to bite the bullet and brew my first beer!
 
I want to brew a Baltic porter for my Christmas beer this year, and have been intrigued by brown malt. I was about to start a new thread to get comments about this recipe; I hope you don't mind if I piggyback here instead. Does this look okay? Porter is not a style I'm really familiar with...

Baltic Porter 2015 (4 gallons)

8 lbs pale ale malt
2 lbs UK brown malt
2 oz roasted barley (or midnight wheat, or black patent?)
1 lb Karo white corn syrup
2 oz Willamette, 4.5AA @ 60 minutes
S-33 or Windsor Ale yeast

It should end up with OG of about 1.075 and FG of 1.021 (7% ABV) and 37 IBU's. Or I could use a more attenuating yeast like S04 and dry it out a bit.
 
I really like this recipe for a porter. It is based on a clone of Black Butte Porter, which is an amazing beer and a crowd pleaser (see beeradvocate.com for confirmation :))

- 7 lbs Light Liquid Malt Extract
- 6oz Chocolate Wheat Malt
- 12oz Dextrin Malt
- 10oz Crystal Malt
- 2oz Galena (60 mins)
- 1oz Tettnang (5 Mins)

I got this from a brew shop in Portland back in the day. They have since taken it off their website, but I saved what we used. I ended up adding more hops because I love something closer to a Black IPA (or, as we say in the Northwest, a CDA - Cascadian Dark Ale), but I think this is really close to the original.
 
Do you mind posting your full recipe with the Brown malt addition?

I've been brewing cider and mead for a few months but am looking for a porter or stout as my first small batch beer experiment. Your 1.5gal batch looks perfect and I'd love to start with one that's had at least a little success.

Also, a few other random questions:

1. How long are you boiling the wort? 60 min?
2. Are you fermenting for the normal 7-10 days and then bottling?
3. What temperature are you mashing at?
4. Do you have the OG and estimated FG?
5. Is 1.5gal your post-boil wort amount? I have a 2 gallon fermentation bucket that I was planning on using so 1.5 gal post-boil would be perfect.

Thanks for posting this thread and finally convincing me to bite the bullet and brew my first beer!

If you would like, I'd give you the recipe after it ferments out and when I bottle. Like I said it tasted great on brew day but I don't rely on that to gauge if it turned out or not. I just don't want to throw it out there for you not completely knowing how it finishes. Just for example, the first run I did with no brown malt tasted really nice and roasty but after it went 2-1/2 weeks, that became a little more subtle and not what I thought it was going to be from that first taste. But for the time being:

1 - Yes, 60 min boil
2- Ferment for 2-1/2 to 3 weeks. The first 5-6 days I run at around 17*(S-04 yest) then I generally pull it out of the chamber and let it climb up to room temp and sit until bottling.
3 - This time I mashed at 156 for 60 min
4 - OG was 1.062 and I got 1.060. FG (estimated) came up at 1.017 I believe.
5 - I figure my post boil at around 2 gl. I leave about .5 in the kettle for trub so 1.5 into fermentor. I use 2 gl buckets for these batches also.

Probably in a couple of days here I'll have a better idea on the flavor and I can get you the recipe if you still want. Or I guess if you really want to try it anyways, I'll post it. Just let me know.

-Brad
 
If you would like, I'd give you the recipe after it ferments out and when I bottle. Like I said it tasted great on brew day but I don't rely on that to gauge if it turned out or not. I just don't want to throw it out there for you not completely knowing how it finishes. Just for example, the first run I did with no brown malt tasted really nice and roasty but after it went 2-1/2 weeks, that became a little more subtle and not what I thought it was going to be from that first taste. But for the time being:

1 - Yes, 60 min boil
2- Ferment for 2-1/2 to 3 weeks. The first 5-6 days I run at around 17*(S-04 yest) then I generally pull it out of the chamber and let it climb up to room temp and sit until bottling.
3 - This time I mashed at 156 for 60 min
4 - OG was 1.062 and I got 1.060. FG (estimated) came up at 1.017 I believe.
5 - I figure my post boil at around 2 gl. I leave about .5 in the kettle for trub so 1.5 into fermentor. I use 2 gl buckets for these batches also.

Probably in a couple of days here I'll have a better idea on the flavor and I can get you the recipe if you still want. Or I guess if you really want to try it anyways, I'll post it. Just let me know.

-Brad

Thanks for the info. If you'd rather wait until fermentation completes before sending the recipe, that's fine. I'm just looking to start a batch in the next week or so.
 
I brewed the following porter a few weeks ago. I used Gordon Strong's cold-steep process for the chocolate malt. Packaging this weekend and really looking forward to the first taste.

PORTER:
55% MO
20% Wheat
10% Brown
10% C75
5% Chocolate
 
Have you been drinking it yet?

I bottled today and wow, it smelled and tasted amazing. I'm approaching now my personal favourite grist with something along the lines of 74% Maris Otter, 18% Brown Malt, 5% Amber Malt and 3% Patent Malt. Same grist for all strengths of porter and stout, just scaling up the weight. For stout I add a touch of brewers' caramel for colour correction as well.
 
Have you been drinking it yet?

I bottled today and wow, it smelled and tasted amazing. I'm approaching now my personal favourite grist with something along the lines of 74% Maris Otter, 18% Brown Malt, 5% Amber Malt and 3% Patent Malt. Same grist for all strengths of porter and stout, just scaling up the weight. For stout I add a touch of brewers' caramel for colour correction as well.

With all the different recipes floating about in this thread, I wasn't sure if you're referring to me or not, but I'll answer anyways, lol. We tried a bottle last week after only 1 week. So far, it's a hit with the wife. I felt there is a slight "sweetness" to it, but at the same time, it may be because it's only a week old bottled. On Wednesday this week we'll try another at the 2 week mark to see how it's changed at all. I think next time though I'm going to do the exact same thing but use US-5 instead of S-04 and see what happens. It finished at 1.020 from 1.060 which I was hoping for a little lower. Closer to 1.014 or 1.012. Other than that, so far so good!
 
Just for the record, I have started drinking my first porter as well. It came out great!Everyone who tasted it loved it.
I went with
66% pale ale
14% brown malt (oven roasted)
9.5% munich
4.7 % carafa special I (pale chocolate dehusked)
2.4 % light caramel and
2.8 % flaked barley

S-04 took it from 1.052 to 1.015. Magnum for bittering and some EKG at 20 minutes.
It's got a great but not overwhelming roasty flavor. Tasting from de bottling bucket was pure coffee! I happen to like coffee so very happy with the results. I'm sure to brew this again when I run out.
Everyone who chimed in, thanks for your suggestions! Found a new love. Porter!
 
Back
Top