Request: Catamount Porter Clone Recipe?

[cushdan]

So I asked my Dad what his favorite Porter was and he said that he loved the Catamount but they don't make it anymore. Anyone have a recipe (Extract if possible)? I see some people have a clone of this in their "recently brewed" sig's so hopefully there's a recipe out there.

Edit: someone had it, its posted farther down

 

[Zymurgrafi]

As in Catamount brewing White River Junction VT? Not sure where you are by your profile so maybe I have it all wrong...

They have been gone for a while if so. I think Harpoon may have had something to do with them at one point. You may try contacting them in Windsor VT. and see if anyone there has any leads. If I am way off base, sorry.

 

[cushdan]

yeah, thats the brewery. From what I found when searching they were bought by Harpoon and all of their old recipes were never brewed by Harpoon.

I saw some people mention that they have brewed a clone of the Catamount Porter but I haven't found the recipe so I thought I'd check here first.

 

[Greyhound]

Catamount's gone??? No wonder I can't find their beer anymore. I used to love their Porter, too.

 

[vtchuck]

seem to have disappeared along with Stephen Morris. Harpoon bought the Windsor brewery & after a few years switched production over to Harpoon products. I've made a number of inquiries, but Harpoon is tight-lipped about Catamount and its recipes.

 

[Pelikan]

I did some searching, and this one's actually got me interested. The Catamount Porter was apparently a top notch brew, but there's about zip that I could find in a preliminary search in terms of recipes (but some serious google digging might turn something up...).

The only lead I could find was, ironically, a member here on Homebrewtalk, drengel. He had a Catamount Porter clone listed in his sig, but he hasn't been active on the forums in years, and his PM box is full (so we can't send him a message).

Is the Catamount Porter destined to obscurity? I, for one, hope someone digs it back up. I'd def add it to the brew roster.

 

[cushdan]

Bump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Moonpile]

According to this site, there's a recipe on page 120 of North American Clone Brews.

 

[Pelikan]

Ah-ha! You can probably sneak into a Barns 'n Nobel and copy down the recipe...not that I'd advocate such a thing...

(Edited to reflect new info)

~75% Efficiency; subtract MO or add DME as required.

7 lb Maris Otter

1 lb Chocolate
12 oz Crystal 40L
12 oz Brown Malt
8 oz Golden Naked Oats
8 oz CaraPils
8 oz 120L

.75 Nugget (12% AA, whole/leaf) @ 60 min
.5 Kent Golding (6% AA plug) @ flame-out

OG: 1.058
FG: 1.014
IBU: 30
Color: 39 SRM
ABV: 5.7%

Try to use a yeast starter, or double up on your smack-packs. If you can't locate 1028, 1335 British Ale II will work as well. I had a brown porter lined up for a few months down the road, so I'm going to tweak it a bit and do the above recipe. It's going to take something like 3 months for me to work it into my brew schedule, but keep an eye out for it.

 

[cushdan]

Thanks for putting that together.

As for the hops, I came across a site at one point that had Catamount Porter as an example of a brew with Galena hops, so that might have some validity to it.

Ref: Beer - hops in the BrewPot

Regarding borrowing it from Barnes & Nobles...sounds like a plan.

Edit: I've also made a thread asking anyone if they have that book...we'll see how that goes. other thread

 

[cushdan]

Someone had the book, heres his post:

I have the book. Partial mash version.
Catamount Porter from Windsor, Vermont

2 lbs. pale malt
.5 lb. black patent
.25 lb. chocolate malt
.75 lb. crystal 90L
2.5 lbs amber malt extract (dry)

6 AAU Galena hops - 60 minute bittering
4 AAU Cascade hops - 15 minutes
London Ale yeast Wyeast 1028

OG - 1.044
FG - 1.012
4% ABV
30 IBU

That's what is says although it seems a bit light on the extract even though it is a 1.044 brew. Should be easy enough to compensate for if that is the case.

 

[Pelikan]

Looks interesting. Just glancing at it, the extract does seem a tad on the low side, but I suppose that will depend upon your mashing efficiency with the pale malt. As you say, easy to correct for. Run it through some brewing software or the Recipator to check the numbers. Otherwise, it seems a fairly straight forward Brown Porter.

One thing worth mentioning, when I was doing some searches for that book, it received fairly negative reviews on Amazon and the like. Some folks said the info it contained was patently false in a few cases. I did, however, find this site, which had a really nice writeup on the details of the Catamount Porter, and even a pic of the label:

Beer of the Month Newsletter

The core info there is 5.8% ABV, 30 IBU, 1.060 OG, 1.014 FG, and Nugget + Yakima Golding hops. That info is pulled right off the label/extrapolated from Harpoon, so I'd lend more credence to their take when compared to the recipe book. Here's their write-up:

The Catamount Porter is a dark, rich, brown porter with a thick & creamy tan head. It's brewed with no less than seven different types of malts along with Nugget and Yakima Goldings hops. We found it a hugely aromatic brew, slightly sweet, with a big roasted coffee nose which also hinted of chocolate and caramel. Look for a very creamy and smooth mouthfeel. The flavor profile is complex, bursting with notes of coffee, chocolate, sweet malts, caramel, and roasted malts. There is a slight hint of the citrus hops in the moderately dry finish.

A perusing of BeerAdvocates 25 reviews on the Catamount Porter agrees with the above blurb.

So with that in mind, I'd say an approximation (or an interpretation) would be a tweaked version of the recipe I posted, with the chocolate bumped up to get some of that coffee effect, and an 8 oz 120L addition for complexity. I've edited it to reflect the changes. The one from the recipe book doesn't seem to come anywhere close to capturing everything that the Catamount is supposed to be.

Either way, I'm pretty excited to brew this one up. It's bringing back a ton of memories from my college days.

Good luck with it, and let us know how it comes out whatever way you go.

 

[cushdan]

Thanks again, I'll definitely give this a shot in the near future.

 

[GloHoppa]

I'll talk to some of the guys at work and see what I can do!

 

[hampshirebrewer]

Catamount was my favorite brewery here in Vermont. Very distinctive beers when they were made in the original brewery. When they moved to the Windsor plant (now Harpoon), everything changed.

The recipe I've seen for Catamount Porter looks a lot like the 'ighly 'opped Hentire from Terry Foster's book, Porter.

I've made it a couple times and can't quite get the roasted malt flavor Catamount had.

The closest current commercial beer I've had is Nimbus Brown Ale, made in Tucson Arizona. Go figure.

 

[Rhoobarb]

I used to buy Catamount beer quite often until it went away around the turn of the century. The recipe posted looks to me to need some Black Patent malt to give it that roasty flavor I remember Catamount (and many robust porters for that matter) having. ~3% is sufficient. Galena and Nugget are pretty interchangeable.[FONT=verdana,helvetica,arial][/FONT]