Spiced Coffee Porter (first AG)

EDIT: Changed to show Stout vice Porter, as well as the recipe tweaks which were made.

I'm going to do my first AG, and it's going to be a big Stout. I've made about 7 different brews so far, all but one partial mash. I've made a Porter before, and it turned out marvelously. This will also be the first recipe I made on my own (thrown together in BeerSmith 2, with help from various grain and yeast guides)

First off, the entire goal of this recipe is smooooth. Like drinking delicious water. No acidity, minimal hops, and so on. Roughly 6-8% ABV.

I plan on doing a cooler conversion with a batch sparge.

My thoughts on the ingredient list are as such: 2 Row for base, 120L and Roasted Barley for color and flavor (the latter more for the coffee notes), Aromatic Malt because it sounded good, Biscuit Malt for the smoothness (I used it in a previous beer and thought it added a nice touch), Wheat for head retention, Carafa III for color. (NOTE - ended up not using Carafa)

2 oz. of Fuggles - unsure if 2 oz. is too much; the IBUs are on the lower edge of the normal range. As to variety, I figured either EKG or Fuggles, and went with the latter.

The spices and coffee are where it'll get interesting - my other coffee porter used coriander, and I loved it. I think it had 0.75 oz in it, and I thought a bit more would do well. I think sweet orange peel would be interesting, but I'm not sure how it'd blend. I plan on doing a cold extraction of a low acidity coffee and adding it at bottling.

The yeast sounded like a good match, and the slow attenuation doesn't bother me. This will end up at with a little higher FG than I would like, but it's necessary given the yeast's characteristics, and the ABV I want. Is anything higher than 1.02 FG going to be cloyingly sweet? I can drop down a little if required, or I suppose, blend yeasties.

I plan on doing a 1 gallon starter, which Mr. Malty says should be more than adequate. (Note: Due to LHBS being out of European Ale Yeast, I went with London ESB, and ended up making a 1.25 gallon brown ale and using the cake vice making a starter and just dumping it)

Any help, advice, and mocking is appreciated!

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Spiced Coffee Porter
Brewer: Zlotnik
Asst Brewer:
Style: Baltic Porter
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 6.52 gal
Post Boil Volume: 5.98 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 4.60 gal
Estimated OG: 1.079 SG
Estimated FG: 1.026 SG
Estimated ABV: 7.1%
Estimated Color: 44.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 24.8 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 92.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
1.00 tbsp PH 5.2 Stabilizer (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 1 -
9 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 63.2 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 3 10.5 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 4 10.5 %
1 lbs Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM) Grain 5 6.9% %
1 lbs Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 6 6.9%
8.0 oz Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM) Grain 7 3.4 %
8.0 oz Wheat, Torrified (1.7 SRM) Grain 8 3.4 %
8.0 oz Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 9 3.4%
2.00 oz Fuggles [4.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 10 24.8 IBUs
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 11 -
1.00 oz Coriander Seed (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice 12 -
0.50 oz Orange Peel, Sweet (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice 13 -
1.0 pkg London ESB Ale (Wyeast #1968) Yeast 14 -
8.00 oz Coffee (Bottling 0.0 mins) Flavor 15 -


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 14 lbs 8.0 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 19.16 qt of water at 167.4 F 156.0 F 60 min
Mash Out Add 5.78 qt of water and heat to 168.0 168.0 F 10 min

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun, , 3.39gal) of 168.0 F water

:bump: for advice...

So, after reading more Porter threads, I'm unsure if Crystal 120 is the best choice. I wanted it for the SRM, but apparently the flavors might clash with the. Roasted Barley. Also, would Oats or Maltodextrin be a better choice for mouthfeel?

Firstly, this is more of a stout, as it turns out. With that out of the way...

Bought a 70 qt cooler, SS braid, necessary fittings. Due partly to inexperience, and partly because I got confused and ended up adding my sparge water all at once before I had collected first runnings (I did remember to vorlauf, though). So, I ended up with a no sparge. My pre-boil gravity was about 1.050 instead of the expected 1.071, and my final OG was 1.063, instead of the expected 1.080. Beersmith has my efficiency at a paltry 63%. Sigh.

My initial mash temp was too low, as well - I had preheated the cooler, but apparently not enough. Grains were at about 142 F for 15 minutes while I waited for more water to boil (noob, I know), so I started the 1 hour timer after it was brought up to 152 F. I'll call it a beta rest.

All this being said, the wort is beautiful, and tastes great. Pitched it on top of a yeast cake from a brown ale, London ESB 1968. Took off like a rocket, as expected. Forgot to put on a blow off tube last night; luckily, the krausen hadn't yet made it out of the bucket. Put one on this morning just in case.

So - all grain. Turns out it's not that hard!

Coffee stout with coriander and orange peel sounds like an excellent winter beer, let us know how it turns out.

I don't have any input into your recipe (I have little experience in formulating my own) but you have definitely inspired me to get some good dark ale a-brewing.

I did a quick check of the flavor(ish) yesterday by making up a tiny bit of tea with cracked coriander, sweet orange peel, straining the liquid into coffee (which is quite good, by the way), and then added that to a Black Boss Porter. Turns out coffee:beer ratio is quite sensitive, so that was good to know. I think I'm going to change the amount of coffee to 8 ozs.

I'm glad I inspired you. Go make a big 'un!

Bottled today!

FG ended up coming in at 1.023, which was pretty close to what I had expected.

I made a cold extraction of 8 oz. of Starbucks Pike's Place roast (didn't feel like spending the coin on my usual purveyor, Peet's Coffee). I used a 4:1 ratio of water:coffee, which makes it quite sludgy. The next day, I placed a coffee filter folded a couple of times in the lip of the pitcher, which took out probably 80% of the grounds. I then poured it back and forth between two pitchers about 3 times, each time leaving more and more grounds behind.

I also made a spice tea of the rest of my coriander and orange peel (about 0.5 ozs each). I made a mistake in that I added them to my priming sugar water. As I was dumping the spices in, I thought "hmm, these will probably absorb a lot of water..." About 4 ozs worth, as it turns out. Some quick calculations, and I figured I had lost somewhere around 0.6 ozs of priming sugar, so I made a second batch and mixed it together.

The spice tea was essential - so much so, I think I may just stop doing spice adds at flameout. It doesn't seem to do very much for the flavor after it's been sitting for a couple of weeks. I'm assuming since these things are usually volatile, it comes out with the CO2.

The flavor was delicious, though. Wonderful roasted and coffee notes, with the coriander and orange lending nice spicy notes on the edges.

Sorry for the thread re-vitalization, but I wanted to add some aging notes.

My beer sat for ~4.5 months while I was away, and I tried a bottle today. First, I really, really need to get better about priming sugar adds and mixing. Brown geyser. Anyway...

The beer, sadly, has not aged well. The spice notes are completely gone, and the beer overall has taken on a more dry, slightly burned note; a bit like an Irish Stout. I knew the spices would fade with time, but I was hoping the flavors would meld and blend better. The excess CO2 may also have had an effect on the harshness, I suspect.