Porter extract recipe help

[drunkinThailand]

Thanks in advance for the help. Gonna make a porter soon from a recipe I found online and I would love some advice. Here is the recipe as I found it:

6 oz. chocolate malt
2 oz. black patent malt
0.5 lb. crystal malt, 120° Lovibond
0.5 lb. wheat malt
0.5 lb. victory malt
7 lbs. Alexander's pale malt extract
1 oz. Chinook hops (13% alpha acid), for 60 min.
1 oz. Cascade hops (5.5% alpha acid), for 10 min.
1 oz. Strissal Spalt hops (4% alpha acid), for 2 min.
1/2 tsp. Irish moss, for 20 min.
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale yeast

I live in Thailand, which means I have limited selections of ingredients, plus I don't have a brew fridge so even with water/frozen water bottles temperatures can get high during the day when I'm at work. But with careful selection of heat tolerant yeasts I've been ok so far. So here is what I have to work with:

950-EBC Chocolate Malt - Thomas Fawcett & Sons
CHÂTEAU 1300-EBC BLACK Malt - Castle Malting
CHÂTEAU 300-EBC SPECIAL B® - Castle Malting
Wheat Malt - Thomas Fawcett & Sons
CHÂTEAU 50-EBC BISCUIT® Malt - Castle Malting
Muntons Light Dried Malt Extract
1 oz. Chinook hops
1 oz. Cascade hops
1 oz. Strissal Spalt hops
Mangrove Jack's - M10 U.S. WORKHORSE ALE, LAGER Porter Fruit Dry Yeast

Here are my questions:

1. Overall does this look like it will be ok?

2. I'd like to substitute 2 pounds of 2-row pale malt for 1 pound of light extract. What do you think about that?

3. Should I substitute some sugar for some of the malt extract? If so how much?

4. Any other suggestions?

thanks again

 

[flatlanderHQ]

The thing with Porter is that there aren't too many rules. The recipe looks reasonable in terms of grains and amounts. I would suggest, however, not using Cascade. These hops do not really complement the rich malt profile you want to emphasize. I would go with English varieties or hops that have a more herbal profile as opposed to citrus.

 

[tjacks04]

Agree. I am brewing a porter tomorrow and decided against citrus for the same reason. Malt flavor should prevail.

 

[drunkinThailand]

Great, thanks for the advice. Could you suggest some hops and the hops schedule?

Also, how about the sugar for malt extract substitution? I read you should do that for some beer styles but not others. If I did it it would be 1 pound of brown sugar for 1 pound of extract.

I'm now thinking I'm going to substitute 2 lb marris otter pale ale malt for 1 lb of malt extract. What do you think about that?

And I forgot to mention I will be doing a partial boil, boiling 3.5 gallons then topping up to 5.

 

[chickypad]

It looks like you've selected the correct substitutions for the recipe based on what you have. I like the idea of subbing in the maris otter for some extract. The wheat really should be mashed anyway so adding the MO you've got 2.5 lb base malt total which is fine for turning that recipe into a partial mash. I would not use sugar in a porter recipe personally. Not sure if that is DME or LME, do you have the calcuated OG and IBU's? Besides the selection of citrus hops as mentioned it it looks like it may be overbittered especially if it's a lower gravity. I like hops like Willamette or some of the English hops in porters, even if I'm using an American style yeast.

 

[drunkinThailand]

Thanks for the advice.

Why wouldn't you use sugar in a porter? I've never substituted the sugar before so just wondering what makes that a bad idea in this case verse what would make it a good idea in another case.

I'm using DME, and in regards to the OG and IBU's I've been tinkering around a bit and this has led to a few more questions.

1) About the OG, I was playing with the calculator and substituting the brown sugar for one of the 6 remaining DME lbs after I substitute the marries otter in. But the DME comes in 2 lb packs, so I figured why not just keep all six and add a lb of brown sugar too. That would up the abv which is always ok with me. So I wanted to ask if that was a bad idea. The two options were:

option A: Reduce the DME from 7 lbs to 5 lbs, substituting 2 lbs marris otter and 1 lb brown sugar. That would give an OG of 1.068 and a FG of 1.017 (according to brewgr)

option B: Only reduce the DME to 6 lbs for the substituting of 2 lbs marris otter and throw the 1 lb of brown sugar in on top of that. That would give an OG of 1.076 and a FG of 1.019

But now with your advice that would be option C: 6 lbs of DME, 2 lbs marris otter and no sugar. That would give OG 1.067 and FG 1.017

So any advice about the pros/cons or what to expect from each would be greatly appreciated. I am pretty new to this and would love to understand more about how each would affect the end product.

Also about the IBU's, here hops are very expensive so I took the advice to ditch the cascade hops, and since I don't like overly hoppy beers I though I might do it like this:
0.5 oz chinook hops 60 min
1 oz chinook hops 15 min
1 oz strissalspalt 2 min

that would give 37-38 IBUs (tinseth) with options A and C above and 34.6 in option B.

Any ideas/advice/etc? I would love to learn as much as possible at this point so all feedback is awesome.

thanks

 

[chickypad]

Sugar is often used in place of some of the malt to thin the beer out a bit, for example in Belgian styles or a big IPA. Not sure you want that in a porter, but if you are going for a higher gravity one I guess that would be okay. As far as choice of sugar I don't really care for the molasses/brown sugar taste so I've never used it but go for it if you like it.

For your hop situation I'd just look for the cheapest high gravity hop for bittering - magnum, warrior, nugget, etc. You can use chinook if you want, though some find it's bittering to be harsh. Chinook is also pretty distinctive as a late hop, you may want to rethink that 15 min addition. Unless you are trying for a hoppier American style porters don't really need a lot of late hops, a single addition of 0.5-1 oz in the 0-10 min range is probably all you need besides a bittering addtion at 60. If you go bigger on the OG you probably want to bump that up a bit.

 

[drunkinThailand]

Thanks for all the advice. As it stands now I think I'll scrap the sugar and the middle hop addition as per your advice.

If anyone else wants to chime in or drop some more knowledge that would still be appreciated as well.