Baltic Porter recipe

[WI_Wino]

Looking to brew a Baltic Porter for a competition in late June. I started with JZ's recipe and have made some tweaks. Thoughts/comments on the recipe are welcome!

5 gallon batch (6 gallons post boil, 5.5 to fermenter)

Munich malt - 12 lbs
Pils malt - 7 lbs
C-60 - 6 oz
C-120 - 6 oz
Extra Special - 6 oz
Chocolate (350L) - 6 oz
Special X - 6 oz

2 oz Willamette @ 60 mins
1 oz Willamette @ 15 mins

yeast is Omega 111 (German Bock yeast)

water adjusted to ~60 ppm each calcium, sulfate, and chloride
~60% mash efficiency
7.6% ABV, 35 IBUs

 

[jdauria]

Looks good to me. If I had to nitpick, for a competition, I would change out the Willamette hops, for something more continental, as the BJCP guideline do mention that. I mean with spicy and woodsy notes, the Willamette may be fine, but it also has grassy notes, which could get you dinged a little by an experienced judge.

I recently brewed a Baltic Porter using Perle and Mittelfrueh. It was the Means Brew recipe that won the author a silver at NHC last year. So far, it's picked up a silver and bronze for me. with a few more comps to go. Here's that recipe for reference. Mean Brews Baltic Porter

 

[WI_Wino]

I'm leaning towards willamette as they descend from fuggles. I was also thinking with this much character malts hops would definitely be subdued. Safe play is probably hallertau like hops...


I am a little surprised at pilsner to Munich ratio in the recipe you linked. That's the inverse of what I have seen for Baltic porter recipes on the web.

 

[AlexKay]

It certainly looks workable. If I were making it myself, I’d probably swap all the American crystal for British, or maybe some of the Weyermann cara-whatevers.

Though I do like Extra Special.

Maybe Carafa Special instead of chocolate?

And maybe swap out some of the Pilsner for white wheat, as a placating gesture to the foam gods.

I like Willamette in European styles. Obviously, you couldn’t go wrong with anything noble, though I’d vote Saaz if you went that way. Or if you want to try something off the beaten path, Sterling or Contessa.

 

[Agent]

I'm not sure if I've been living under a rock for the past decade plus, but the idea of a porter run with a good bock yeast is quite alluring. I'm gonna pen that one in after my citrus wheat and at least two Hazy IPAs.

 

[WI_Wino]

Grain is in the mash tun as I type this out. I spoke with Neil at ritebrew.com (my LHBS) and he mentioned that briess extra special is supposedly very similar to special x and special b. I thought they were similar color but different taste profiles. Idk.

Also as a wisconsinite I try to support breiss whenever I can.

I'll see how it turns out.

 

[jdauria]

I'm leaning towards willamette as they descend from fuggles. I was also thinking with this much character malts hops would definitely be subdued. Safe play is probably hallertau like hops...


I am a little surprised at pilsner to Munich ratio in the recipe you linked. That's the inverse of what I have seen for Baltic porter recipes on the web.

In the videos he does for each of his recipes, he did kind of touch on that somewhat. He pointed out that if a brewer was using English malts, Maris Otter or Golden Promise, that Munich was usually lower in the recipe, but those who used more German grains, i.e. German Pilsner malt, those winning recipes used higher levels of Munich for the malt complexity. It's at the 4 minute mark in his video Mean Brews Baltic Porter vide His recipe was based on 34 award winning recipe, of which 22 were gold medal winners. And as listed on the Brewfather recipe, so far 12 people has medaled with his recipe, that have let him know.