Baltic Porter. Help?

[Coder Myers]

Hey, looking for some quick opinions, cause it's brew night and I'm going for a big Baltic Porter. I have brewed about 15 beers, but I'm not very knowledgeable about hops.

For hops I have 1 oz Magnum, 1 oz Perle, and 0.5 oz Hallertau. I will brew 5 to 5.5 gallons at ~8% ABV. 10lbs Munich, 5 lbs Pilsner, 3 lbs Vienna. Some Caramunich III and Carafa I.

Any quick opinions on hop quantity and timing? I see some recipes at 30 IBU, some at 60.

 

[Cool_Hand_Luke]

Great style. Here are the BJCP style guidelines if you are trying to brew it to style:
OG: 1060 - 1090
FG: 1016 - 1024
ABV: 6.5 - 9.5
IBU: 20 - 40
SRM: 17 - 30

They aren’t hop forward beers so you likely could just go for a bittering addition at the start of the boil. Noble hop varieties would be good, but it’s just bittering not aroma so as long as you stick in the 20-40 IBU range you should be good. I’d adjust to be higher at the IBU range if you are at the higher end of the OG range and same for the low end.

 

[Coder Myers]

Cool, thanks for the quick response.

 

[brewing_clown]

I brewed one a couple of years ago. Was very similar to yours, except I had some complexity with the crystal (Caramunich 2 and 3), and the base was munich and vienna only.

It was a really good lager but, if I did it again, I'd add a bit of chocolate wheat instead of the carafa 3. The overwhelming "munich" flavor needed a little roasty to offset. That's just me, and I don't care about style or competition.

Sorry, just reread your OP, and realized it was about hops.

You'll be lagering this for such a long time that a lot of hop complexity will not really be in the finished beer. You really just want to balance IBUs with the sweetness of such a big beer.

I would FWH with enough Magnum for about 35 IBUs and leave it at that.

 

[Coder Myers]

Chocolate wheat, OK, my grain bill is fixed at this point but will consider that for next time! Thanks for the hop advice!

 

[Coder Myers]

Wow, just found that there are different formulas formulas for IBUs. I think I'm going with Tinseth. Looks like 1 oz Magnum for 60 minutes and 0.5 oz Perle and 0.5 oz Hallertau at 30 minutes will put me right at 40 ABU. This is by far the most calculated approach to hops I've used. Fingers crossed!

 

[Hayden123982]

Not sure how far along with your process you are but extended boils can work well for this style. Really let the malt shine.

I'd just stick with a simple 45-60 minute addition for hops. Makes it less work and less hop matter into your wort... unless you are just trying to get through the extra Perle and Hallertau hops

 

[Cool_Hand_Luke]

Cool, thanks for the quick response.

No problem. Hope it turns out great! If you are getting into recipe building you certainly don’t need it, but Beersmith is a really helpful program and will do those hop addition calculations for you and lots of other ones.