The historically used brown malt has not much in common with the modern one (I know that you know, just for people who don't), therefore historical porter recipes are hard to handle as there simply is no modern brown malt that equals the one from back in the days.
I suspect that the Fuller's porter has a unique "brown malt" inside, created according to their own needs, if there is something like brown malt inside at all.
The big change was from diastatic brown to non-diastatic brown during the Napoleonic Wars(-ish) I suspect you're thinking of the diastatic malts of the 18th century? The brown malts at the time of porter's peak in the mid-19th century were non-diastatic and so not so different to modern ones, although not identical (as it's not dried over wood fire). Goose Island made a nice video about their attempt to recreate a mid-19th century London porter with Ron Pattinson, blending old and new beer -
there's about 2 minutes just on recreating 19th-century brown malt. But even so it's still closer to modern brown malt than the 18th century stuff.
As it happens Ron
posted a few recipes the other day from the dying days of London porter in the 1920s when the recipe was largely dictated by the other components of the partigyle, but you'll see that most of them still still have 10%-ish of what would be rather more "modern" brown malt. I don't pretend to be a particular porter expert, but I don't recognise what you're seeing with brown. Can't remember what I've used in the past, suspect it was probably the Warminster brown from BrewUK.
You might also be interested in a recent webinar by Ron on porter :
https://www.crowdcast.io/e/bjcp_study_groups-ron_pattinson-porter (free registration needed)
My problem is that I don't have access to Brown malt, and everybody says that is no substitute to him. So I'm going to make a porter with another malts, as recommended previously.
If you have access to pale malt and an oven, then you have access to brown malt, as above....
It would help if you put your country in your profile, it would help people give you better answers and maybe come up with a source in your country that you don't know about.
So, I'm using s-04, Thinking in do with pilsen, caraaroma and chocolate. What would you suggest me to go for hop? Styrian Golding or Nugget? If you have more ideas please let me know.
S-04 is OK, but if you're going dry then S-33 or Windsor would give you more appropriate attenuation, although they don't flocc as well.
Personally if you're going with that grist then I'd be careful with the chocolate (and pale chocolate would be better).
The hop for bittering isn't so important, Nugget would be OK, I guess Target would be more appropriate but you could use just about anything that wasn't too high in alpha acids. Yes Target has a relatively harsh bitterness - some people like it, some people don't. I suspect it won't make a huge difference given that you're using chocolate malt etc.
Target typically has around 10% alpha acids but it can really vary - my usual shop has 2017 pellets at 8.2% and 2018 leaf at 14.4%. Since you're aiming for 30-35 IBU, that would mean using 26g of the 2017 pellets or 15g of the 2018 cones in 20 litres, you have to adjust the amount you use depending on how much alpha acid it has, as per the label.
Styrian would be great for the late addition - it's a Fuggle derivative.
