Brewers Best Smoked Porter

[PIGMAN]

Hello All,

Has anyone brewed Brewers Best Smoked Porter, and if so how did you like it? After four weeks in primary and
five weeks in the bottle, mine tastes kind of bland, not much malt character. They're fully carbed, but lacking in flavor and body. As a general rule, do porters take longer to condition? The OG was 1.061, FG was 1.015. Thanks.:fro:

 

[headbanger]

Well, att looks good but w/o seeing the recipe proper and so on it's kinda hard to say... If'n you know what I mean.. so to speak

 

[1ratdog]

pigman, did you do a full or partial boil. how long did you steep, what temp?
i didnt try it yet, but its on my brew calandar. i want to have it ready to go for halloween party.

 

[PIGMAN]

pigman, did you do a full or partial boil. how long did you steep, what temp?
i didnt try it yet, but its on my brew calandar. i want to have it ready to go for halloween party.

Partial boil, steeped for 20 minutes at 155 - 160 as per kit instructions. The fact that you are brewing this in time for Halloween leads me to believe that porters should age for months rather than weeks, despite the fact that it's not a particularly big beer. If that's the case, I'll just put it away for awhile and forget about it. I just broke out the Falconer's Flight Extra IPA from Brewers Best, and that came out fantastic. First time I ever dry hopped.

 

[1ratdog]

Partial boil, steeped for 20 minutes at 155 - 160 as per kit instructions. The fact that you are brewing this in time for Halloween leads me to believe that porters should age for months rather than weeks, despite the fact that it's not a particularly big beer. If that's the case, I'll just put it away for awhile and forget about it. I just broke out the Falconer's Flight Extra IPA from Brewers Best, and that came out fantastic. First time I ever dry hopped.

i dont think porters really require alot of aging. id like to give it a month or 2 just so the smoke flavor blends nicely. i will be serving this to bud/miller/coors drinkers. i dont expect them to like it. i will also have a cream ale that seems to somewhat please them in the past.

 

[PIGMAN]

That's one of the things, I really don't taste the smoke. I'm hoping like you said, that it shows up after more aging. I brewed a cream ale for the same reason as you, it's hard to convert the BMC crowd.

 

[spencerholm31]

Just want to share my (very noob) experiences with this kit. I ended up dry-hopping this with some leftover hops from my Double Ipa (Cascade). I figured, why waste hops when I can just dump them into my smoked porter? WRONG!!
I ended up having a harsh, spicy, almost offensive Cascade taste, and I thought the batch was ruined! I let it sit for a few months, and the dry hop addition was still taking over the taste.

A couple weeks ago, I was thinking about what to do with this mistake (I didn't want to dump them all out) so I ended up steeping 2 Jalepeno's (in a hop bag) into some leftover Gin I had in the freezer. After a day of steeping, I cracked the remaining bottles open, poured a little out of each one into a glass, and started experimenting with ratios of my Jalepeno-Gin to compensate for the Cascade hop presence. At the end of it, I put 2 tablespoons of Jalepeno-Gin into each bottle and let them re-carb a little bit. Just cracked one open, and it's great! I've now got a "Smoked Jalepeno Porter" and can finally taste the caramelly malt presence, smoked notes, and a lasting taste of true Jalepeno spice instead of inappropriate Cascade dry-hop (as you can see, I am NOT recommending a Cascade dry-hop with this beer. I'm really stupid for doing that)

All in all, I just wanted to let other homebrewers know that there are ways to fix stupid rookie mistakes. I've attached some photos in different lighting so that you can see the coloration of this delicious beer. Hats off to Brewer's Best!