Local Brewery - Porter Clone

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Brian Parfitt

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Hey all,

I'm, trying to recreate a porter brewed by one of our local breweries. Their website gives just a bit of information about the beer:

In quotes:
6.8 ABV
45 IBU
32 SRM

Notes of: Chocolate, Caramel, Coffee, Dark Fruits
Style - Robust Porter
Marris Otter, Brown, Caramel, and Choc malts
Northern Brewer hops

End quotes

I'll definitely back the notes of Choc, caramel and coffee on this one.. It's magical.

I've tried starting with a generic porter recipe and scaling up, but the 6.8 ABV has me stumped.. I just keep ramping up the base malt but haven't done anything with the adjuncts to compensate.
Curious to see what others would recommend here. Here is my starting point which only gets me to about 1.052 according to Brewfather. Hop schedule also a guess, but based on another Porter recipe.

9.5 lbs Pale Malt
1.25 lbs Choc Malt
10 oz Dextrine
8 oz Brown Malt
8 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt

Hops
Northern Brewer
1 oz @ 60
.5 @ 30
.5 @ 20
.25 at 2 min

Any tips suggestions appreciated.

Brian
 
A few thoughts on good porters; of course I don't know how your local brewery's tastes.

  • Use Maris Otter instead of pale malt. I make this substitution for just about everything, but it really makes sense in a porter, where you want that bready-toasty goodness.
  • I don't believe dextrine malts really do anything. If you want more body, mash higher, or better yet, add in flaked barley. If you like the way it tastes, make that flaked rye.
  • Make sure your crystal malt is English. If you want caramel and dark fruits, medium crystal (45L) or darker (77L) is what you want.
Weikert (Make Your Best Robust Porter) is always fun to read. He suggests Munich, and while I'm also a fan of adding Munich to everything, I dunno.
 
Agreed to the above.

Hard to say the ingredient ratios they use without tasting. and even then - still hard!

You can easily do more base malt. I like the Maris Otter idea here. 12 pounds could be fine with 1.25 chocolate, that chocolate is still > 10% of the total. More brown could be added as well, I find it yummy but it can take things a different direction than what may or not be what you are trying to duplicate. Crystal, yeah, I find 60-ish to be somewhat "toffee" and 120 to be "raisin" (perhaps their dark fruits?). A half pound's a good starting point. If you find their beer to be on the sweeter side you could go more on the caramel if it's the lighter version, or take it down to 40L, or do a combinaiton.
 
this one seems pretty straightforward -- assuming the grain bill list is in descending order of quantity the way most ingredient lists are, this just looks like an amped up version of fuller's london porter
 
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